This text charts the continuities and discontinuities underlying the apparently confused transformation of the South Slav lands over the last 150 years. As well as the political dimension, it deals with the semi-peripheral position of the region in relation to metropolitan Europe and the process of modernization. Other themes include the passing of peasant society, the emergence of new class and economic structures, kinship, clientship, religion and atachment to locality. The text aims to explain how and why th estructures of South Slav society have changed, for better or worse, since the mid-19th century.
