Twenty-five Lectures on Modern Balkan History - Steven W. Sowards

A series of lectures from a university course on the internet:  http://staff.lib.msu.edu/sowards/balkan/

A good general overview from a prof. at an American university - worth noting, as there is less chance of a nationalistic bias, or an underlying ethnic agenda.
Sowards begins with an attempt to find a definition for the term "Balkan" - what exactly is different about this area that sets it apart from Western Europe. 
He mentions how the mountainous terrain tends to isolate populations and make communication between areas, and with the outside world in general, more difficult. He also mentions that generally poorer soil and dryer climate which affects agricultural output, the source of wealth for much of the period in question.  He sees multi ethnicity as playing a role to a degree, and also in Turkish held areas, a tendency to identify by religious affiliation rather than linguistic or ethnic affiliation, which would otherwise form a base for the development of nationalism.
Repeated wars and suppressed revolts over two or three centuries also played a role in keeping populations low, and rural. 

Economic ideas:
Through the 18th and early 19th century (and later) land formed the basis for wealth.  Elites occupied agricultural land at the will of the Sultan, and land was not inheritable (in theory).  The Sultan worked to keep some kind of balance between rural workers and nobles in terms of taxes etc. As central authority broke down in the course of the later 18th and 19th C., local landlords became independent local centres of power, and worked to expand their land holdings.  They also increased the level of taxation in various forms on peasants working the land.  In the later 18th C, landlords began to increase wealth by selling grain, etc. directly to Western European markets, with several important effects.  First, as the West was wealthier, prices on produce rose, and this caused increased poverty in the Balkans.  Second, because the selling was direct, towns did not grow and benefit from increased commerce, so they remained small and poor, with no developing capital in a middle-class base.  Third, as well as exporting, nobles and wealthy landholders began importing cheaper mass produced goods from the West, putting local artisans and craftsmen out of business, again increasing poverty. 
As central authority collapsed further (including the Habsburgs in northern Balkans), and  revolutions against the Ottomans began to occur, like the ones in Serbia and Greece,  the only real change was who occupied the top landholder positions, changing to local strongmen instead of Ottoman officials.  The system itself remained the same.  (I am reminded here of the accounts of Patrick Leigh Fermor's hide across Central Europe in the early 30's.  You see ghosts of this old landed aristocracy still hanging on in Hungary, etc. in his book.)