The Krajina reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Krajina

Krajina is a geographic term which means borderland, akin to the present-day name of the Ukraine.

The Krajina in the Balkans is mostly associated with the Military Frontier (Militär Gränze) which acted as the Austrian cordon sanitaire against the Turks in the Middle Ages.

The border areas were separated from their crownlands into the Military Frontier in 1553 and 1578, which was divided into the following districts:

• Banat Krajina (on the Serbian-Romanian border)
• Slavonian Krajina (on the Serbian-Croatian border)
• Croatian Krajina (on the Croatian-Bosnian border)

Due to the constant border wars, the area became rather depopulated, and the authorities encouraged immigration of various peoples. The majority of settlers were Serbs and Vlachs who came from territories in the southeast, fleeing the Turkish occupation. Germans and Magyars mostly came as administrative personnel, and there was a number of other settlers and military persons from other parts of the Austrian Empire such as the Czechs, Slovaks, Ukrainians/Ruthenes and others.

The military rule from Vienna remained in place until 1869 when the demilitarization started, ending in 1871 when Franz Joseph abolished the Frontier.

The areas of Slavonian and Croatian Krajina formed Republic of Serbian Krajina in the 1990s during the Yugoslav wars. The Banat Krajina was unaffected by this.

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