and Africa emerged in the latter 20th century due to the collapse ofimperialism,
and the subsequent devolution of structures of governance to multiple independent
states, most of which had never existed prior to the collapse of colonial authority.
Regions classified as shatterbelts are characterized by states or territories that have
a large degree of ethnic, linguistic, and/or religious diversity, and a history of
antagonism and hostility between the groups living there, and can result from the
balkanizationof larger political entities.Boundariesin shatterbelts tend to be
fluid and often contested, due to the fact that such political divisions frequently
cross cultural regions, splitting ethnic groups between two or more countries.
Although the term itself did not come into wide use until after World War II, the
general concept of a shatterbelt appeared in the writings of political geographers
several decades earlier. In a more modern context, shatterbelts often hold what
Samuel Huntington has described as “civilizational fault lines,” a key concept in
his “clash of civilizations” thesis.
The classic example of a shatterbelt is southeastern Europe, especially the Bal-
kan Peninsula. This region has been functionally a shatterbelt for at least 500 years,
as it has been geographically sandwiched between more powerful states that
attempted to control part or all of the territory. From the 16th century to the early
20th century, the Ottoman Empire controlled large swaths of the Balkans at various
times, and imposed Islamic culture on many of the peoples under its rule. Almost
the entire population of what are today Albania and Kosovo were converted to
Islam, and significant numbers were converted in portions of modern-day Bosnia
and Bulgaria as well. A majority of the Slavic-speaking peoples in the region
retained their Christian religious identity, but they too were divided into Roman
Catholics (Slovenes, Croatians) or Orthodox Christians (Serbs, Montenegrins,
Macedonians, Bulgarians) whose relationships were frequently antagonistic. Com-
pounding this complex ethnic geography was the presence of large non-Slavic
Christian minorities like the Hungarians and Germans, especially in those portions
of theregionthat fell within the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and many
other groups scattered throughout the peninsula. The collapse of the Ottoman
Empire after World War I, the subsequent creation of Yugoslavia, and four decades
of the Cold War only temporarily subsumed the turbulent character of this shatter-
belt, as witnessed by the violent birth of seven new countries, most of which had
never been independent previously, between 1991 and 2008. Kosovo’s indepen-
dence in the latter year indicates that shatterbelts will remain volatile regions well
into the 21st century.Sjoberg Model.SeePre-industrial City Model.
308 Shatterbelt