During this period nationalist groups became increasingly intolerant of each other and ever ready to go to war. The major European powers, in turn, manipulated the nationalist aspirations of the subject peoples in europe to further their own imperialist aims. The most serious source of nationalist tension in Europe after 1871 was the ares called the Balkans.

The Balkans which was a region comprising of geographical and ethnical variation comprising modern day Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro whose inhabitants were b