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Yugoslavia HISTORIES OF THE YUGOSLAV PEOPLES TO WORLD WAR I
YU010201.
Figure 2. Military Frontier Province Between the Habsburg
and Ottoman Empires, ca. 1600-1800
Source: Based on information from Great Britain, Admiralty,
Naval Intelligence Division, Yugoslavia II: History, Peoples, and
Administration, London; 1944, 20.
YU010202.
Figure 3. Expansion of Serbia, 1804-1914
YU010203.
Tombstones of heretical Bogomil sect, Bosnia
Courtesy Sam and Sarah Stulberg
Before Yugoslavia became a nation, the Slovenes, Serbs,
Croats, Montenegrins, Bosnians, Macedonians, and Albanians had
virtually independent histories. The Slovenes struggled to define
and defend their cultural identity for a millennium, first under
the Frankish Kingdom and then under the Austrian Empire. The
Croats of Croatia and Slavonia enjoyed a brief independence
before falling under Hungarian and Austrian domination; and the
Croats in Dalmatia struggled under Byzantine, Hungarian,
Venetian, French, and Austrian rule. The Serbs, who briefly
rivaled the Byzantine Empire in medieval times, suffered 500
years of Turkish domination before winning independence in the
nineteenth century. Their Montenegrin kinsmen lived for centuries
under a dynasty of bishop-priests and savagely defended their
mountain homeland against foreign aggressors. Bosnians turned to
heresy to protect themselves from external political and
religious pressure, converted in great numbers to Islam after the
Turks invaded, and became a nuisance to Austria-Hungary in the
late nineteenth century. A hodgepodge of ethnic groups peopled
Macedonia over the centuries. As the power of the Ottoman Empire
waned, the region was contested among the Serbs, Bulgars, Greeks,
and Albanians, and also was a pawn among the major European
powers. Finally, the disputed Kosovo region, with an Albanian
majority and medieval Serbian tradition, remained an Ottoman
backwater until after the Balkan Wars of the early twentieth
century.
Data as of December 1990
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