The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800. By Robin Blackburn ( New York, Verso , 1997 ) 602 pp. $35.00
tion that the term “Balkan” is both pejorative and omnipresent in modern political discourse. “Where is the adversarial group that has not been decried as ‘Balkan’ and ‘balkanizing’ by its opponents? Where the accused have not hurled back the branding reproach of ‘Balkanism’?” (3). Such assertions demand rigorous use of evidence, and Todorova is occasionally cavalier in that regard. In order to slay the beast of “Balkanism,” she seems to ask readers to deny the obvious, that the Balkans are in fact different from other regions in Europe. If acknowledging the formation and existence of a negative stereotype means abandoning any attempt to understand historical processes at work in a given region, then Balkanism will merely be jettisoned in favor of a similarly reductionist relativism. But as Todorova herself acknowledges in the preface, the theme with which she grapples is demanding. One can only assume that this compelling and invigorating exploration will be the arst of many attempts to explain the phenomenon of “Balkanism,” the existence of which cannot be doubted.