Where to find the Balkans? Who has the power to name its (national) states and define its borders? In his works, travel writer Felix Philipp Kanitz uses the metaphor of “illumination” (“Aufhellung”) in the context of the Balkans. When he writes about “illuminating” the unknown past of the Balkan people, he does not mean only knowledge acquisition; he also uses the term to refer to the displacement of the “Oriental” influence, because of the Ottoman Empire’s withdrawal and Europe’s growing (cultural) penetration into the Balkans. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Kanitz and his colleagues sought to fill in the perceived “blind spots” on the map and to define Serbia’s borders. In the early twentieth century, Western media publics still offered contrasting views of Balkan territorial belonging, with the Anglo-American press framing Serbia's ambitions as national unification, while Austro-Hungarian and German narratives portrayed them as an imperialist threat under the term “Greater Serbia”. This chapter examines how such divergent representations, shaped by geopolitical interests, influenced US perceptions of Serbia’s territorial gains from the Balkan Wars and its sovereignty.