History of Bosnia and Herzegovina
This is the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina. See also the history of Yugoslavia, history of Europe, and history of present-day nations and states.
Bosnia has been inhabited at least since Neolithic times. In the early Bronze Age, the Neolithic population was replaced by more warlike tribes known as the Illyres or Illyrians. The Illyrians spoke an Indo-European language. In the year 168 BC the land of Illyres became the Roman Province of Illyria. In year 10, following a four-year rebellion of Illyres, Illyria was divided and the northern strip of today's Bosnia along the south side of the Sava River became part of the new province of Pannonia, while the rest of what is today Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Dalmatia, western Serbia became part of the Roman province of Dalmatia. Latin-speaking settlers from all over the empire settled among the Illyrians, and roman soldiers were encouraged to retire in Illyria, Pannonia, and the province of Dacia across the river Danube. The town of Blagaj on the Buna River is built on the site of the Roman town of Bona. Illyria and Pannonia were later included in the Western Roman Empire (following events from the years 337 and 395 when the Empire split).
The Romans lost control of Pannonia and Dalmatia in 455 to the Ostrogoths. The Ostrogoth Kingdom was defeated by Eastern Roman Empire in the 'Gothic War' from 535-553 by the Emperor Justinian, and for a time in the mid-Sixth Century the Dalmatian province became part of the Eastern Roman Empire.
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2 Ottoman era 3 19th and 20th century 4 External links |
The Slavs, who had originated in Galicia (Central Europe), were subjugated by the Turkic Avars in the Sixth Century, and together they invaded the Eastern Roman Empire in the in the Sixth and Seventh centuries, settling in what is now Bosnia, Herzegovina, and the surrounding lands. The Serbs and Croats came in a second wave, invited by Emperor Heraclius to drive the Avars from Dalmatia. The Serbs settled most of present-day Bosnia and Hercegovina east of the river Vrbas whereas the Croats settle north-west of the river Cetina in Dalmatia. Serb tribal states, called ÃÂÃÂupas were established in Bosnia, the Drina River valley and in Herzegovina, known in the Middle ages as Hum or Zachumlje.
Around 925, Bosnia was briefly ruled by Tomislav, the king of Croatia. From the 930's to the 960's eastern Bosnia, together with part of western Serbia, was ruled by Serb Prince Časlav Klonimirović, who liberated his state from Bulgarian rule and acknowledged the sovereignty of the Byzantine Empire. The first mention of the name "Bosnia" is in the De Administrando Imperio of Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus in 958, in which the region of "Bosona" (Βοσωνα) around Vrhbosna (today's Sarajevo) is described as "a small country" (χοριον). In the early Middle Ages, the term Bosnia described roughly the territory between modern cities of Sarajevo and Zenica, including present locations of these cities. Later this term spread to cover most of what is today Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In 1019 the Byzantine Emperor Basil II forced Serb and Croat rulers to acknowledge Byzantine sovereignty. Prince Mihailo of Zeta (also known as Duklja), took control of Hum (Herzegovina), and declared his independence from the Byzantine Empire before 1077. Mihailo was crowned as King of Serbia by Pope Gregory VII. Mihailo's son Konstantin Bodin conquered much of Bosnia after 1083, but his rule of Bosnia lasted only a short time, and discord among his heirs led to the breakup of the kingdom shortly after his death in 1101.
All of Bosnia came under Hungarian rule in 1137 when the king adopted the title "rex Ramae", referring to Rama, a region of Herzegovina. Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus defeated Hungary and restored Bosnia to the Eastern Roman Empire for a time.
Throughout the Middle Ages, Herzegovina was made up of separate small duchies: Zachumlje (Hum), centered around the town of Blagaj and Travunija-Konavli, centered on the town of Trebinje. These states were sometimes ruled by particularly influential dukes but never powerful enough to form a larger, independent state. Their territories included modern Herzegovina and parts of Montenegro and Southern Dalmatia.
Middle Ages
Bosnian Christian Hval's Miscellany, ca. 1400 |
The religion of the original Slavic population of Bosnia and Herzegovina was mixed: there were Catholic and Orthodox Christians, but also many were Krstjani ("Christians"), an indigenous Bosnian Church. This early protestant church was accused by the Catholic and Orthodox authorities of being a dualist heresy and linked to the Bogomils (Patarens). Several important rulers of Bosnia were Krstjani, but they would often renounce their confession or even perform conversions in return for military or other support from the Holy See. |
| After some centuries of rule by Croatia, Serb principalities, and the Byzantine Empire, an independent Bosnian state flourished in central Bosnia between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. Beginning with the reign of ban Borić in 1154, Bosnia was an independent banovina. The second ban, Kulin, issued the first written Bosnian document written in the Serbian language in 1189. (List of Bans and Kings of Bosnia) |
The Kulin Ban charter, 1189 |
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Excerpt of charter of Ban Stefan II to Dubrovnik from 1333. (From slike/1333.GIF at [1]; Franz Miklosich, Monumenta Serbica, Vienna 1858, p. 105-109)
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By the mid-14th century, Bosnia reached a peak under ban Tvrtko Kotromanić who came into power in 1353. Tvrtko made Bosnia an independent state and is thought (by some historians) to have been initially crowned in Mili near today's Sarajevo. He went on to claim not only Bosnia and Hum, but the surrounding lands as well:
- in 1377 he was crowned King of the Serbs and Bosnia in Serb Orthodox MileÃÂÃÂevo monastery by the grave of Serb patron saint St. Sava, some believe he adopted the name Stephanus (Stjepan/Стјепан) to emulate the Nemanjić dynasty.
- by 1390, Tvrtko I expanded his empire to onto Croatia and Dalmatia, and added the title of King of Croats and Dalmatia.
After the death of Tvrtko I, the power of the Bosnian state slowly faded away. Finally, under the king Stjepan Tomašević Bosnia "fell with a whisper" (šaptom pala) in 1463 and became the westernmost province of the Ottoman Empire.
During most of the Middle Ages, Herzegovina was known as Hum (Zahumlje), which passed from Bosnian, to Zetan rule before coming under the Nemanjić Rascian rule. In 1435/1448, it asserted its independence under a Duke (Herceg) Stjepan Vukčić Kosača, and adopted the name "Hercegovina". The state fell to the Turks in 1482.
The arrival of the Ottoman Turks marked a new era in Bosnian history.
The Turks created the pašaluk of Bosnia and the sandŽak of Herzegovina. The Turks introduced a "spahi" system which revamped and probably set back the development of agriculture.
All of the Krstjani believers eventually converted to either Orthodoxy, Catholicism or Islam. There are conflicting claims on the exact ratios or whether or how much of it was voluntary or not.
During the Ottoman period, many Christian children were forcibly separated from their families and raised to be members of the Yeni ÃÂÃÂeri (new troops) and became Muslims. This practice was known as the devşirme or blood tax.
The Turkish conquest also changed the ethnic and religious makeup of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Many Catholic Bosnians retreated Croatia, which was controlled by Austria after the Turkish conquest of Hungary before 1541, and to Dalamatia, which was controlled by the Republic of Venice after the fall of Hungary . Orthodox Serbs and Vlachs from Herzegovina and the Belgrade pašaluk migrated into parts of Bosnia. Many Vlachs later assimilated into the local Serb and Croat populations.
The Ottoman period saw the development of a Sephardic Jewish community in Bosnia, chiefly in Sarajevo. The Sephardic Jews were expelled from Spain at the end of the fifteenth century, and many resettled in the Ottoman Empire. The first Synagogue was built in Sarajevo in 1581.
The Turks, who had conquered Slavonia and most of Hungary by 1541, lost the war of 1683-1697 to Austria, and ceded Slavonia and Hungary to Austria at the Treaty of Karlowitz. Bosnia's northern and western borders became the frontier between the Austrian and Ottoman empires until 1878. Austria occupied northern Bosnia and northern Serbia from 1716 to 1739, when they were ceded to the Ottoman Empire at the Treaty of Belgrade. The wars between The Ottomans and Austria and Venice impoverished Bosnia, and encouraged further migration and resettlement; Muslim refugees from Hungary and Slavonia resettled in Bosnia, assimilating into the Bosniak population, and many Serbs, mostly from Kosovo but also from Bosnia and Serbia, resettled across the Bosnian border in Slavonia and Krajina at the invitation of the Austrian Emperor.
The Ottoman Empire divided its subjects by religion, rather than nationality, nationalist movements in Bosnia and Herzegovina and elsewhere in the Empire gained strength in the 19th century. Bosnia and Herzegovina's Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks shared a common language, variously called Serbo-Croat, Serbian, Croatian, or Bosnian. The Orthodox Serbs were the most nationally organized, and were encouraged by neighboring Serbia, which won autonomy within the Ottoman Empire in 1817, and later independence. Bosnia and Herzegovina's Catholics identified with the Croats from neighbouring Austro-Hungarian province of Croatia-Slavonia. Both Serb and Croat nationalists claimed Bosnia's Slav Muslims, and some Muslims did embrace Serb identity (Osman Đikić, Šukrija Kurtović), or Croat identity. Although Bosnia's Muslims enjoyed a privileged status under Ottoman rule relative to their Christian neighbors, many desired autonomy from the detested Ottoman governors and officials. The Ottomans didn't distinguish Muslim Bosniaks from the empire's other Muslims, and many Bosniaks continued to identify with their Turkish co-religionists, although a Bosniak national movement and identity began to develop in the late Nineteenth Century. In addition to Serb, Croat, and Bosniak national movements, the Yugoslav movement, which sought to unite all the South Slav peoples, and Pan-Slavism, a movement to unite all Slavs, had adherents as well.
In 1875, a rebellion broke out among Christian peasants in Herzegovina, which spread to Bosnia and Bulgaria. Heavy-handed Ottoman suppression of the rebellion encouraged neighboring states to intervene; Serbia and Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire in 1876, and Russia intervened the following year in support of Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria.
At the Treaty of Berlin of 1878, The Ottomans ceded Bosnia and Herzegovina to occupation and administration by Austria-Hungary, although the province still formally remained Ottoman territory. Muslims and Orthodox Serbs violently resisted the entry of Austrian troops, who quickly crushed the rebellion. The Austrian troops, on the other hand, were welcomed by the Catholics who would thrive under the Austrian occupation.
In 1908, Austria formally annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, on June 28 1914 in Sarajevo triggered the first World War. The Serb nationalist organization Mlada Bosna organized the attack, and student conspirator Gavrilo Princip fired the fatal shot.
Following the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dismantled, and Bosnia and Herzegovina were incorporated into the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, later named the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
After the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, Bosnia and Herzegovina were occupied by the Nazi puppet state of Croatia. Thousands of Bosnia and Herzegovina's Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies were killed by the Fascist Ustasha regime. Communist Partisan and royalist Chetnik rebels, aided by Britain and the US, fought the Ustasha and Nazi troops. After World War II ended, Bosnia and Herzegovina became one of the six republics of Yugoslavia in 1945, when the country was re-organized as a communist federal state under Josip Broz Tito.
Yugoslavia's unraveling was hastened by the rise of nationalism: Bosniaks led by Alija Izetbegović, Serbs led by Slobodan Milošević and Croats led by Franjo Tuđman. Bosnia and Herzegovina was the only Yugoslav Republic where there was no majority of a single ethnicity, and its capital Sarajevo was the prime example of inter-ethnic mixing and tolerance. But in the 1990s fate had twisted and Bosnia became a particularly problematic area.
In 1990, Slovenia declared independence which caused a short conflict with the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) which tried to prevent secession. Later that year, Croatia did the same and JNA responded the same way, but with the Serb majority in Krajina separating from Croatia. Bosnia was ethnically heterogenous and there could not be a remotely clear delimitation between the areas that wanted to secede and those that did not. The Constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina provided for three constitutional nations: the Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, so no major constitutional changes were to be granted short of a unanimous agreement from all three sides. This was pretty much a guarantee that the warfare would be very bloody.
On February 29th and March 1st 1992, the Bosnian government held a referendum on independence. The Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks mostly voted on the referendum while the Bosnian Serbs mostly boycotted it, because of its unconstitutionality as the Serb delegates in parliament did not approve it.
Being in the middle of a wider conflict, the situation in Bosnia quickly escalated. The first casualty in Bosnia was Nikola Gardović, a groom's father who was killed at a Serb wedding procession on the first day of the referendum, on February 29, 1992 in Sarajevo's old town BaÃÂÃÂčarÃÂÃÂija. A Serb Orthodox priest was also wounded in the attack.
With 99% voting for the independence out of 66% of the eligible voters, the Bosniak and Croat representatives in Bosnia's parliament declared the republic's independence on April 5, 1992. The Serb delegates, having previously left over the violation of the Constitution, declared their own state Republika Srpska on midnight between April 6th and April 7th.
Most European countries and the U.S. recognized the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina by April 7th, and the country was admitted to the United Nations on May 22nd.
The war between the three constitutive nations turned out to be probably the most chaotic and bloody war in Europe since World War II. Numerous cease-fire agreements were signed, only to be broken again when one of the sides felt it was to their advantage. Initially it was Bosniaks and Croats together against the Serbs on the other side. The Serbs had the upper hand due to heavier weaponry (despite less manpower) and established control over most of the Serb-populated rural and urban regions excluding the larger towns of Sarajevo and Mostar. Most of the capital Sarajevo was held by the Bosniaks and in order to prevent the Bosniak army from being deployed out of the town, the Bosnian Serb Army surrounded it, deploying troops and artillery in the surrounding hills, and often bombarded the civilians of all ethnicities in the city. The Serbs held on to a few Sarajevo suburbs (Grbavica and parts of Dobrinja) who were also shelled by the Bosniak forces as well. The civilian death count in Sarajevo would pass 11,000 by the end of the war.
To make matters even worse, in 1993 the Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks began fighting over the 30 percent of Bosnia they held. This caused the creation of even more ethnic enclaves and even further bloodshed.
The third incarnation of the war in the former Yugoslavia prompted the United Nations to establish the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague on May 25, 1993. The warring parties committed war crimes, committed ethnic cleansing, formed internment camps often compared to concentration camps etc, so the UN repeatedly attempted to stop the war, but wasn't particularly successful.
Eventually even NATO got involved when its jets shot down four Serb aircraft over central Bosnia on February 8th 1994; this was the alliance's first use of force since it was founded in 1949. The so-called Vance-Owen peace plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina was announced on Febrary 9, 1994 and in March 1994, Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia signed the peace agreement, creating the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This narrowed the field of warring parties down to two.
A particularly disturbing and problematic incident happened in July 1995, when, reportedly in retaliation to previous incursions by Naser Orić's troops, Serb troops under general Ratko Mladić occupied the UN "safe area" of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia, after which around 7,000 Bosniak males went missing.
The war continued through most of 1995, and with Croatia taking over the Serb Krajina in early August, the Bosniak-Croat alliance gained the initiative in the war, taking much of western Bosnia from the Serbs. At that point, the international community pressured Milošević, Tuđman and Izetbegović to the negotiation table and finally the war ended with the Dayton Peace Agreement signed on November 21, 1995 (the final version was signed December 14, 1995 in Paris).
In the end, the war caused an estimated 278,000 dead and missing persons and another 1,325,000 refugees and exiles from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Dayton Agreement divides Bosnia and Herzegovina roughly equally between the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Bosnian Serb Republika Srpska, based mostly on their wartime borders.
In 1995-1996, a NATO-led international peacekeeping force (IFOR) of 60,000 troops served in Bosnia to implement and monitor the military aspects of the agreement. IFOR was succeeded by a smaller, NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) whose mission was to deter renewed hostilities.
The United Nations' International Police Task Force in Bosnia was replaced at the end of 2002 by the European Union Police Mission, the first such police training and monitoring taskforce from the European Union.
Throughout this conflict the international community, especially the United Nations, have made fatal errors in evaluating the whole situation.
This is a point of contention -- opinions range from those that say they should have intervened earlier and stopped the bloodshed, to whether they should have intervened at all.
General history:
Ottoman era
19th and 20th century
Bosnia and Herzegovina
after Dayton Agreement
External links
War and post-war history: