Despite Britain entering the 20th century as the dominant world power public discourses were imbued with a cultural pessimism and rising social anxiety. Through this study Samuel Foster explores how this changing domestic climate shaped perceptions of other cultures and Britains relationship to them focusing on those Balkan territories that formed the first Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1941.Yugoslavia in the British Imaginationexamines these connections and demonstrates how the popular image of the regions peasantry evolved from that of foreign Other to historical victim suffering at the hand of modernitys worst excesses and symbolizing Britains perceived decline. This coincided with an emerging moralistic sense of British identity that manifested during the First World War.