ABSTRACT
Independently of any vague Balkan notions of what the West might be, a self-conscious, self-assertive, secular, and expansive West was already in existence by the eighteenth century, and the East—West dichotomy had been established long before any Balkan nationalism came into being. The rest of the peoples in the area had less clear-cut solutions to offer; even their mutual boundaries remained unclear for many decades after the establishment of the first Balkan nation-states. In most cases, however, they saw themselves as standing at the crossroads, between West and East; this could be stated explicitly, for instance by the Serbs, who were proud of their role as the "guardians of the gate". Special reference should be made to the Greeks, who, apart from participating in the arrangement, had a particular mission of their own: that of civilizing the East, or rather an East of their own inspiration, consisting of the parts of the Ottoman Empire amenable to westernization.
