Vojvodina
The Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (Serbian: Аутономна Покрајина Војводина) is a northern province of Serbia. Its capital is Novi Sad and the second largest town is Subotica. It is ethnically diverse, with non-Serb minorities representing 25 different ethnic groups and comprising a third of the region's population. It has no less than six official languages in recognition of Serbia's will to preserve the diversity of even the smallest groups.
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| Official languages | Serbian, Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, Ruthenian, Croatian | |
| Capital | Novi Sad | |
| Area - Total - % water | 21,500 km² n/a | |
| Population - Total (2002) - Density | 2,031,992 94.51/km² | |
| Ethnic groups (2002) | Serbs: 65.05% Hungarians: 14.28% Slovaks: 2.79% Croats: 2.78% Others: 15.1% | |
| Time zone | UTC +2 | |
Vojvodina is Serbian term for the territory of Northern Serbia, which belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary before WW1. It is a multi-ethnic territory, however the former major inhabitants: Hungarians and Germans are now in minority.
The area of Vojvodina was inhabited ever since the Paleolithic and the Neolithic periods. Sirmium was an important Roman town.
During the early medieval migrations, Slavs (Severans) settled today's Vojvodina in the 6th century, the Magyars arrived in the Pannonian Plain in the 9th century but are believed to have settled in present-day Vojvodina later on. Isolated pockets of Slavs remained in the Pannonian Plain, including Vojvodina. The region was later conquered by the Kingdom of Hungary which ruled over it until the 16th century.
An increasing number of Serbs began settling from the 14th century onward. By 1483, according to a Hungarian source, as much as half of the population of Vojvodina territory of the Kingdom of Hungary at the time would have been made up of Serbs. Another Hungarian source from the same century put the number of Serb settlers in Vojvodina at 200,000.
Vojvodina was occupied by the Ottoman Empire following the Battle of Mohacs of 1526 and the fall of Banat in 1552. This turbulent period caused a massive depopulation of the region. The Banat areas were administered from Temesvar, while Bacska and Sirmium were under Budim.
The Habsburg Empire took control of Vojvodina among other lands by the treaties of Karlowitz (1699) and Passarowitz (1718). The areas adjacent to the Turkish territory in the south were separated into the Military Frontier (Krajina), its Slavonian and Banat sections.
The Austrian rule was characterized by significant settlement of Germans. With the reshuffling of the country and the abolishment of the military frontier between 1867 and 1881, Bacska and Banat came back under Hungary while the Sirmium region was part of the Hungarian crownland of Croatia-Slavonia.
At the end of the World War I, Austria-Hungary was dismantling. In November of 1918 the Serbian Assembly of Novi Sad proclaimed the union of Bačka, Banat, Srem and Baranja with the then Kingdom of Serbia.
Vojvodina in its current form (south Bačka, east Srem, west Banat) was formally ceded to Yugoslavia in the Treaty of Trianon of 1920. The region was again temporarily split by the Axis Powers during World War II, but was later restored as a province of Serbia with varying degrees of autonomy (between 1974 and 1990 it was an officially autonomous province).
The region is traditionally divided by the rivers of Danube and Tisa into: Bačka in the northwest, Banat in the east and Srem in the southwest. Today, the western part of Srem is in Croatia while Baranja (which is between Danube and Drava, rather) is in Hungary and Croatia. Vojvodina has a total surface area of 21,500 km² (8,299 mi²).
Population by national or ethnic groups:
History
Geography
Demographics
Population by mother tongue:
Population by religion:
Population by gender:
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Source: Republic Statistical Office of Serbia
Former Yugoslavia (SFRY)
Republics
Bosnia and Herzegovina | Croatia | Macedonia | Montenegro | Serbia | Slovenia
Autonomous provinces of Serbia
Kosovo | Vojvodina