Serbia’s history as a country begins with the Slavic settlements in the Balkans, established in the 6th century in territories ruled by the Byzantine Empire.
Serbia Flag
The current form of the flag of Serbia was the Serbian National Assembly with a recommendation on 17 August 2004. Serbia was then part of the State of Serbia and Montenegro. With the rupture of 2006, the flag of its current state as the national flag. The national flag is a tricolor with pan-Slavic colors. It consists of three equal horizontal stripes, red top, blue in the middle, bottom, white (red, blue and silver heraldic). The aspect ratio is 2: 3. Each color occupies a third of the height, the small coat of arms of Serbia centered vertically and horizontally, 5/14, the width of the flag from the outside of the mast (on the left). The Republic of arms with the red five-pointed star, which had been in use since 1946, was replaced by a coat of arms, which,as in the time of the Serbian Kingdom (until 1918) it contains an eagle of two.
Over the centuries, the Serbian kingdom evolved into a Kingdom (1217), then an Empire (1345), before the Ottomans annexed it in 1540. Several minor revolts or unsuccessful events took place against the Ottoman rule, with a brief independence gained the regions of the north in the 18th century.
In 1804 the Serbian Revolution began, resulting in the liberation of Serbia .
In 1918, Yugoslavia was established as a confederation of South Slavic nations.
In 1991, Yugoslavia was dissolved, with Serbia and Montenegro continuing the federation.
From 2006, Serbia came to exist under the name “ Republic of Serbia “.
The northern city of ancient Macedonia was in southern Serbia (Kale-Krševica).
The Celtic Scordisci tribe conquered most of Serbia in 279 BC, building many forts across the region.
The Roman Empire conquered the region during the 2nd century BC until the 1st century BC.
The Romans continued the expansion of Singidunum (current capital of Belgrade), Sirmium (Sremska Mitrovica) and Naissus (NIS), among other centers, and some notable remains of monuments have survived, such as Via Militaris, Trajan’s Bridge, Diana, Felix Romuliana (UNESCO), etc.
Slavs formed Sklavinia beginning in the 6th century, from which the first Serbian Principality of Vlastimirovici arose.
It evolved into a Grand Principality around the 11th century, and in 1217, the Kingdom and national church (Serbian Orthodox Church) were established, under the Nemanjici.
In 1345, the Serbian Empire was established: it crossed a large part of the Balkans.
In 1540, the Ottoman Empire was added to Serbia.
The Serbian kingdom disappeared by the middle of the 16th century, torn apart by internal rivalries, and conquered by the Ottomans.
The success of the Serbian revolution against Ottoman rule in 1817 marked the birth of the Principality of Serbia, which achieved de facto independence in 1867, and finally won recognition by the great powers at the 1878 Berlin Congress.
As a winner in the 1913 Balkan war, Serbia recovered Vardar Macedonia, Kosovo and Raška (formerly Serbia).
In 1918, the Vojvodina region proclaimed its secession from Austria-Hungary and united with the Pan-Slavic state of Slovenians, Croats and Serbs.
The Kingdom of Serbia joined the Union on December 1, 1918, and the country received the name Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
In 1918, Serbia was recognized as a state by the world for the first time.
The Serbia reached its current borders after World War II, when it became a federal unit of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
After the dissolution of Yugoslavia, in a series of wars in the 1990s, Serbia returned to being an independent state on June 5, 2006, after the rupture of a short-lived union with Montenegro.
Origins
The Serbs are believed to be purely Slavic people who originated in Ukraine. Some scholars now argue that Serbs and Croats were original Central Asian Sarma nomads who entered Europe with the Huns in the 4th century AD The theory proposes that Serbian Serbs settled in a land designated as White Serbia, in what is today Saxony and western Poland. The Sarmatian Serbs, it is argued, married the indigenous Slavs of the region, approved their language and transferred their name to the Slavs.
Arrival in the Balkans
Byzantine sources report that some Serbs migrated from the south in the 7th century AD and ended up settling in lands that today make up southern Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Rival chiefs, or “zupani,” vied to control the Serbs for five centuries after the migration. Zupan Vlastimir formed a Serbian principality under the Byzantines around 850, and the Serbs soon converted to Eastern Christianity.
Serbs had two political centers in the 11th century: Zeta, in the mountains of present-day Montenegro, and Raska, located in southwestern modern Serbia.
First Serbian State
Raska’s Zupan, Stefan Nemanja I (1159-1196), threw away Byzantine domination and laid the groundwork for medieval Serbia by conquering Zeta and part of southern Dalmatia. His son and successor, Stefan Nemanja II (1196-1228), transformed Serbia into a stable state, friendly with Rome, but with religious loyalty to Constantinople.
In 1218, Serbian Pope Honorius III recognized political independence and crowned King Stefan II. The writings of Stefan II and his brother (canonized as Saint Sava) were the first works of Serbian literature.
Later kings on the Nemanja line overcame internal rivalries and pressure from Bulgaria and Constantinople. They also rejected papal invitations to link the Serbian Orthodox Church with Rome, and who ruled the country through a golden age.
Serbia expanded its economy, and traders sold Serbian Dalmatian goods across Europe and the Levant. The Nemanje dynasty left Serbia for masterpieces of religious art combining Western, Byzantine and local styles.
Serbia dominated the Balkans under Stefan Dusan (1331-1355), who conquered lands stretching from Belgrade to the present-day southern Greece. He proclaimed himself emperor, raised the Archbishop of Pec to the level of patriarch, and wrote a new legal code combining Byzantine law with Serbian customs.
Dusan had ambitions toward a weakened Byzantine empire, but the Byzantine emperor suspected his intentions and called on the Turks to contain him. Dusan repelled attacks in 1345 and 1349, but was defeated in 1352.
He then offered to lead an alliance against the Turks and recognize the pope, but those moves were also rejected.
Noble rivals divided Serbia after Dusan’s death in 1355, and loyalty switched many to the sultan after the last Nemanja died in 1371. The most powerful Serbian prince, Lazar Hrebeljanovic, raised a multinational force to involve the Turks in the battle of Kosovo Polje on St. Vitus’ day in 1389.
The Turks barely defeated Lazar, and both he and the sultan were killed. The defeat did not bring immediate Turkish occupation of Serbia, but during the centuries of Turkish domination that followed, the Serbs endowed the battle with the myths of honor and heroism, which helped to preserve their dignity and sense of nation.
Serbs still recite epic poems and sing songs about the nobles who died in Kosovo Polje. The anniversary of the battle is the Serbian national holiday, Vidovdan (St. Vitus Day), 28 June.
Turkish conquest of Serbia
Civil war in the Turkish Empire saved Serbia in the early 15th century, but the Turks soon gathered their forces to conquer the Serbian stronghold in the last Smederjevo in 1459 and subdue the entire country. Serbs fled to Hungary, Montenegro, Croatia, Dalmatia and Bosnia, and some bands formed outside the law. In response to the latter’s activities, the Turks dug up and burned the remains of Saint Sava.
By the 16th century, southern Hungary had a sizable Serbian population that remained after the Turks conquered the region in 1526.
Montenegro, which emerged as an independent principality after Dusan’s death, waged an ongoing guerrilla war on the Turks, and was never won. The Turkish threat, however, forced Ivan of Montenegro to move his high capital to the mountains. There, he founded a monastery and created a press. In 1516, Montenegro became a theocratic state.
Social and economic life in Serbia has changed radically under the absolute sultan of the Turkish sultan. The Turks split Serbia between several provinces, recruited Serb boys into their elite forces, exterminated Serbian nobles, and deprived Serbs of contact with the West as the Renaissance was beginning.
The Turks used the Orthodox Church to be the intermediary between the state and the peasants, but most of the land expropriated from the church. Poorly trained Serbian priests struggled to maintain the decaying national identity.
In 1459, the Serbian Sultan subordinated to the Greek patriarch, but the Serbs hated Greek domination of his church, and in 1557, Grand Vizier Mehmed Sokolovic Pasha, a Serbian who had been introduced to the Turkish army as a boy, convinced the sultan to restore the autonomy of the Serbian Church. Mistreatment and Turkish exploitation grew in Serbia after the 16th century, and the Serbs fled to become “hajduci” (mountain bandits).
Serbian failed rebellions
From 1684-1689, Christian forces tried to push the Turks out of the Balkans, inciting Serbs to rebel against their Turkish masters. The offensive rebellion failed, exposing the southern Serbs of the Sava River for revenge by the Turks. Fearing Turkish reprisals, the Serbian patriarch, Arsenije III Carnojevic, emigrated in 1690 to Austro-ruled southern Hungary with up to 36,000 families.
The Austrian emperor promised these people religious freedom, as well as the right to choose their own “vojvoda” (military governor), and incorporated much of the region, where they settled, later known as Vojvodina, on the military border.
Refugees founded new monasteries, which have become cultural centers. In Montenegro, Danilo I Petrovic de Njegos (1696-1737) became bishop-prince and instituted the succession of the Petrovic-Njegos family.
His efforts to unify Montenegro provoked a massacre of Muslims in 1702 and subsequent reprisals.
Austrian forces took Serbian regions south of Turkey’s Sava in 1718, but Jesuits after the proselytizing army so heavily that Serbs went on to hate Austrians as well as Turks.
In the 18th century, the Turkish economy and the social fabric began to deteriorate, and the Serbs who remained under the Ottoman Empire suffered attacks by bands of soldiers. Corrupt Greek priests, who had replaced Serbian clergy in the direction of the sultan, also took advantage of the Serbs.
The Serbs in southern Hungary fared much better. They cultivated successfully on the fertile Danube plain. A middle-class Serb emerged, and the monasteries trained scholars and writers who inspired national pride, even among illiterate Serbs.
The 18th century brought Russia’s participation in European events, particularly in competition with Austria for the spoils of the Turkish collapse. The Orthodox Serbs looked to the support czar, and Russia forged ties with Montenegro and the Serbian Church in southern Hungary.
In 1774, Russia won the diplomatic right to protect Christian themes from the Turks; later, he used this right as a pretext to intervene in Turkish affairs.
When Russia and Austria fought a war with Turkey in 1787 and 1788, the Serbs fought guerrilla battles against the Turks. Austria abandoned the campaign, and the Serbs in 1791. To guarantee their border, the Turks granted their Serbian affairs a measure of autonomy and formed a Serbian militia.
Montenegro expanded in the late 18 and early 19th century. Bishop-Prince Petar I Njegos (1782-1830) convinced the sultan to declare that Montenegrins had never been Turkish affairs, and Montenegro remained independent until the 19th century.
In 1804, renegade Turkish soldiers in Belgrade murdered Serbian leaders, sparking a popular uprising in Karadjordje (“Black George”) Petrovic, founder of the Karadjordjevic dynasty. Russia supported the Serbs, and in 1806, the Sultan granted them limited autonomy. Internal strife, however, weakened the Karadjordje government, and the French invasion of Russia in 1812 prevented the tsar from protecting the Serbs.
In 1813, the Turks attacked rebel areas. Karadjordje fled to Hungary, followed by Turkey, Bosnia and Albanians ransacked Serbian villages. The atrocities provoked a second Serbian uprising in 1815, which gained autonomy under Turkish control for some regions. The corrupt rebel leader Milos Obrenovic (1817-1839) had Karadjordje murdered and his head sent to the sultan to signal Serbian loyalty.
Serbia as Principality
In 1830, Turkey recognized Serbia as a principality under Turkish control, with Milos Obrenovic as hereditary prince. The sultan also granted the Serbian Church autonomy and reaffirmed Russia’s right to protect Serbia. Poor administration, corruption and a bloody rivalry between the Karadjordjevic clans and Obrenovic marked Serbian political life from its inception.
After the sultan began to allow foreign governments to send diplomats to Serbia in intervention, 1830 foreigners further complicated the situation. Despite these obstacles and his autocratic manner, however, Milos Obrenovic stimulated trade, opened schools and guided peasant land development. He abdicated in 1838, when Turkey imposed a constitution to limit its powers.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Serbian culture made significant advances. Dositej Obradovic, Vuk Karadzic and other scholars accelerated a national renaissance. Through his translations and autobiography, Obradovic spread the Enlightenment to the Serbs.
Collections of Serbian folk songs and poems edited by Karadzic woke up pride in national history and traditions. Karadzic also overcame clerical opposition to reform the Cyrillic alphabet and the Serbian literary language, and he translated the New Testament.
His work expanded the concept of Serbian nationality to include language, as well as religious and regional identifications.
The European revolution of 1848 eroded relations between Serbs and their neighbors. As part of their revolutionary program, the Hungarians threatened Magyarize the Serbs in Vojvodina. Some Serbs did not declare their independence from Hungary and proclaimed an autonomous Vojvodina, others gathered behind the Austrian-Croat invasion of Hungary.
The Serbs almost declared war, but Russians and Turkish diplomacy contained it. The Serbs in Hungary gained nothing from helping Austria to crush the revolution. Vienna ruled Vojvodina harshly after 1850 and silenced Serbian irredentists there.
When Austria Hungary joined to form the Dual Monarchy in 1867, Vienna returned Vojvodina and its Serbs to Hungary. Meanwhile, Pedro II Njegos de Montenegro (1830-1851), who was also a first-rate poet, reformed his administration, faced the Turks and struggled to obtain a port from the Austrians. His successor, Danilo II (1851-1860), extinguished the Montenegrin theocracy.
Prince Mihajlo Obrenovic (1860-1868), son of Milos, was an effective ruler who still loosened the Turkish grip on Serbia. Educated in the West and autocratic, Mihajlo liberalized the Constitution and, in 1867, guaranteed the withdrawal of Turkish garrisons from Serbian cities.
Industrial development began at this point, although 80 percent of Serbia’s 1.25 million people remained illiterate peasants. Mihajlo sought to create a South Slavic confederation, and organized a regular army to prepare for the liberation of Turkish-held Serbian territory. Scandal undermined Mihajlo’s popularity, however, and he ended up being murdered.
Political parties emerged in Serbia after 1868, and aspects of Western culture began to appear. A widespread revolt in the Ottoman Empire prompted an unsuccessful attack by Serbia and Montenegro in 1876, and a year later the Russian, Romanian and Bulgarian rebel allies to defeat the Turks.
The later treaties of San Stefano and Berlin (1878) made Serbia, an independent state and added to its territory, while Montenegro gained a coastline.
Alarmed by Russian gains, the growing stature of Serbia, and irredentism among Serbian Vojvodina, Austria-Hungary pressed and won the right to occupy Bosnia, Herzegovina and Novi Pazar in 1878.
Prince of Serbia Milan Obrenovic (1868-1889), Mihajlo’s cousin, became disillusioned with Russia and afraid of the newly created Bulgaria. He then signed a trade agreement in 1880 that made Serbia a virtual client state for Austria-Hungary. Milan became the first king of modern Serbia in 1882, but his pro-Austro-Hungarian policies undermined his popularity, and he abdicated in 1889.
The regency ruled Serbia until 1893, when Milan’s teenage son Aleksandar (1889-1903) pronounced his age and annulled the Constitution.
Aleksandar was largely unpopular in Serbia because of the rule, arbitrary scandals and his favorable position in Austria-Hungary. In 1903 military police, including Dragutin “Apis” Dimitrijevic, Aleksandar brutally murdered and his wife. Europa condemned the murders, which were celebrated in Belgrade.
Petar Karadjordjevic (1903-1914), who knew about the conspiracy, returned from exile to take the throne, restored and liberalized the constitution, put Serbian finances in order, and improved trade and education.
Petar turned Serbia away from Austria-Hungary and Russia, and in 1905 Serbia negotiated a tariff agreement with Bulgaria in hopes of breaking the Austro-Hungarian monopoly on its exports.
In response to a diplomatic disagreement, Vienna placed a punitive tariff on livestock, Serbia’s most important export. Serbia, however, refused to bow, found new trade routes and started looking for a way out to sea.
In 1908, Austria-Hungary formally annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, frustrating projects on these regions and precipitating an international crisis.
The Serbs mobilized, but under German pressure Russia convinced Belgrade to cease its protests. Thereafter, Belgrade maintained strict official decorum in its relations with Vienna, but government and military factions prepared for war to free Serbs still living under the Turkish yoke in Kosovo, Macedonia and other regions.
Balkan Wars and World War I
The wars in the Balkans and the First World War had dramatic consequences for the southern Slavs. In the Balkan wars, Serbia helped to expel the Turks from Europe and recovered lands lost in medieval times.
In 1914, alliances between Europe and ethnic friction between the South Slavs had combined to make Bosnia and Serbia’s ignition point one of the main battlegrounds of World War I When Austria-Hungary collapsed after the war , the fear of an expansionist Italy inspired Serbs, Croats and Slovene leaders to form the new federation known as Yugoslavia.
Ethnic hatred, religious rivalry, language barriers and cultural conflicts plagued the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) since its inception.
The question of centralization versus federalism bitterly divided Serbs and Croats; Democratic solutions were blocked and dictatorship became inevitable, because political leaders had little vision, no experience of parliamentary government, and there is a tradition of compromise.
Hostile neighboring states resorted to regicide to upset the kingdom, and only when the European war threatened in 1939 did the Serbs and Croats try to find a solution. That solution, however, came too late for the story.
The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes encompassed most of the Slovenian Austrian lands, Croatia, Slovenia, most of Dalmatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Vojvodina, Kosovo, the Serbian controlled parts of Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Territorial disputes subverted relations with Italy, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Albania. Italy posed the most serious threat to Yugoslavia. Although it received Zadar, Istria, Trieste and several Adriatic islands in the post-war treaties and took Rijeka by force, Italy resented not receiving all the territory promised under the 1915 Treaty of London.
Roma later supported Croatian, Macedonian and Albanian extremists, hoping to provoke unrest and hasten the end of Yugoslavia. Revisionist Hungary and Bulgaria also supported anti-Yugoslav groups.
The creation of Yugoslavia fulfilled the dream of many intellectual South Slavs who disregarded fundamental differences between the 12 million people in the new country.
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes had conflicting political and cultural traditions, and the South Slavic kingdom also faced considerable non-Slavic minorities, including Germans, Albanians, Hungarians, Romanians and Turks, with scatters of Italians, Greeks, Czechs, Slovaks, Ruthens, Russians , Poles, Bulgarians, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews and Gypsies.
The Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Islamists, Uniate, Jewish and Protestant beliefs were all well established and cut across ethnic and territorial lines.
In addition to the division of a large number of minority languages, linguistic differences also divide the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Macedonian Slavs. Many people considered the new government and its laws so strange, exploitative and secondary to kinship loyalties and traditions.
The Serbian memories of his medieval kingdom, his 1389 defeat by the Ottoman Turks, his 19th century uprisings, and his heavy sacrifices during the 20th century wars contributed significantly to his feeling that he had sacrificed a lot for Yugoslavia and received relatively little in return.
After the Second World War
After World War II and German Nazi occupation, a socialist federation from Yugoslavia, including Serbia, Montenegro and the other territories of former Yugoslavia, was formed. Josip Broz Tito became the leader and remained in power until his death in 1980.
In the late 1980s, a passionate Serbian nationalist revival arose that sense of unfulfilled expectation, out of the postwar distribution of Serbs among various Yugoslav political entities, and of perceived discrimination against Serbs in Kosovo in the 1970s and 1980s. process, the Serbian Orthodox Church re-emerged as a strong cultural influence, and that the government of Serbia celebrations renewed the memories of Serbian heroes and actions.
These events caused leaders in Slovenia and Croatia to fear a resurgence of the Serbian hegemony that had interrupted Yugoslavia between wars.
The Serbian-Albanian struggle in Kosovo, the heart of Serbia’s medieval kingdom, dominated Serbian political life in 1980.
Between 1948 and 1990, the share of the Serbian population in Kosovo fell from 23.6 percent to less than 10 percent, while the percentage of ethnic Albanians increased in proportion because of Albania’s high birth rate and immigration.
Demographic change was also the result of political and economic conditions, the post-war Serbian exodus from Kosovo accelerated in 1966, after ethnic Albanian communist leaders gained control of the province, and Kosovo continued further to the poor region of Yugoslavia, despite large investments government.
After resuming political control over Kosovo in 1989, the Serbian government announced an ambitious program to resettle Serbs in Kosovo, but the plan attracted little interest among Serbian emigrants from the region.
In the republics of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbs “the situation was more complex and potentially more explosive than in Kosovo. Despite the denials of the governments of both republics, Serbs in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina complained bitterly in the late 1980s about ethnic discrimination and threats.
The Serbian government reacted by publishing exposes of the atrocities of World War II against the Serbs and Croats from the chauvinism it had inspired.
Milosevic comes to power
In July 1990, a referendum was passed to essentially remove the autonomous designations of Kosovo and Vojvodina. Then, in November and December 1990, Slobodan Milosevic was elected to the presidency.
During 1991 and 1992, thousands of people were killed during the civil war between the republics of the former Yugoslavia. In early 1992, United Nations peacekeepers were dispatched to the region to help calm fighting in the region.
In the course of 1991-92, Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina separated from Yugoslavia through violence, while Macedonia peacefully separated.
Separatist republics quickly gained international recognition. Serbia and Montenegro chose to stay in Yugoslavia. At the joint session of the assemblies of Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro, in Belgrade, on April 27, 1992, the Serbs and Montenegrins approved the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Since Serbia-Montenegro was under de facto rule by President Milosevic, the army was under the control of Milosevic’s ally, Momcilo Perisic General. In the particular opposition movement, including the Serbian Renewal movement or the semi-fascist Serbian Radical Party, it has managed to offer a serious challenge to the control of Milosevic.
In fact, when opposition leaders called for a vote of no confidence in the government, Milosevic dissolved parliament and called for new elections.
Milosevic’s regime was faced with an attempt to maintain political control of the volatile and predominantly Albanian region of Kosovo, as well as the unstable Sandzak enclave Muslin near Bosnia.
Interestingly, Milosevic’s government had some degree of challenge from then Montenegrin President Momir Bulatovic, who, in the early 1990s, demonstrated an increasingly independent pattern of policy making.
At the time, several members of the Montenegro Milosevic coalition in Parliament resigned in protest of Montenegro’s subordinate relations with Serbia.