During the time of the Ottoman empire most people living in the Balkan area of South East Europe, supported themselves by farming. Foreign trade was a small part of the Ottoman economy with a tiny number of goods being exported before the industrial revolution. The majority of the Balkan population lived on small, mixed farms that produced little marketable surplus or in pastoral communities. Trade and manufacture were not encouraged by the Ottomans, whose principal concerns were the extraction of revenue through taxation and the maintenance of order. As a result, education was poor and literacy levels were low.

The population tended to remain culturally introspective. The most highly educated people were clergy of all religions – Greek and Russian Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim. However, most people spent their lives within the confines of local peasant communities, often divided by mountains, with their own distinct dialects, dress, and customs. Folk songs and poetry were culturally important and were taken from region to region by gypsy communities. Despite the religious differences in the area, the separate communities shared a common dislike of the Turkish authority. Also, bad roads, communications and widespread political disengagement meant that the rural Balkans remained mostly harmonious but stifled by poverty and Ottoman exploitation.