Serbia Preeminent

Abstract

While the Fourth Crusade and its aftermath preoccupied the central and southern Balkans, new states were consolidated in the peninsula’s northern regions. Two Slav states—Bosnia and Raška Serbia—emerged in the northwest, and, in the northeast, two Romanian states—Wallachia and Moldavia—were established. Of the four, Serbia eventually rose to preeminence among all of the Balkan states by the mid-fourteenth century. Restored Byzantium, after a brief period of initial vigor, slipped into progressive decline. Bulgaria never fully recovered from the effects of Mongol-Tatar clientage and growing political fragmentation. Bosnia barely held its own against the expansionary pressures of Hungary and the centripetal tendencies of its nobility. Wallachia and Moldavia, while heavily influenced by Bulgarian Orthodox political and religious culture, were isolated from the rest of the Balkan world south of the Danube and became virtual Hungarian satellites. Thus Slavic Orthodox Serbia came to lead the fourteenth-century Balkan Orthodox world, though its preeminence proved short-lived.