Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to indicate the image of the Balkan “other”/neighbour as presented in the school textbook “History of Modern and Contemporary World: From 1815 to Today”, currently in use in the last class of the secondary education in Greece. As expected, the most frequent reference is to Turkey/Turks, the major “national other” for Greek nationalism. Second comes Bulgaria/Bulgarians, a country/nation considered as an enemy during the most part of the historic period covered by the specific textbook. Countries/nations that had not been engaged in major conflicts against Greece/Greeks during the given period follow in rank. In most cases a neutral vocabulary is used and, with the exception of Turks, negative expressions about a country/nation are rare. Nevertheless, the projected image of the neighbouring countries/nations is completely one-sided. They appear only in periods of war/conflict, as friends/allies or enemies/rivals of the Greek nation. Any of these nations’ culture aspects and civilization achievements is almost totally neglected, which is not the case with the nations/countries of Central and Western Europe and, of course, the Greek nation itself. Thus, the book reproduces the stereotype which it is trying — as mentioned in it — to rebut: Balkans as a region of conflict and instability, where people are more occupied in fighting against each other than producing acts of peace and civilization.

Key words: history textbook, content analysis, Greece, Balkan countries/nations