Bosnia and Herzegovina: Encyclopedia II - Bosnia and Herzegovina - History

Bosnia and Herzegovina - History

Main article: History of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina - Pre-Slavic period

Bosnia has been inhabited at least since Neolithic times. In the early Bronze Age, the Neolithic population was replaced by more warlike Indo-European tribes known as the Illyres or Illyrians. Celtic migrations in the 4th and 3rd century BCE displaced many Illyrian tribes from their former lands, but some Celtic and Illyrian tribes mixed. Concrete historical evidence for this period is scarce, but overall it appears that the region was populated by a number of different peoples speaking distinct languages. Conflict between the Illyrians and Romans started in 229 BCE, but Rome wouldn't complete its annexation of the region until 9 CE. In the Roman period, latin-speaking settlers from all over the Roman empire settled among the Illyrians and Roman soldiers were encouraged to retire in the region.

Christianity had already arrived in the region by the end of the 1st century, and numerous artifacts and objects from the time testify to this. Following events from the years 337 and 395 when the Empire split, Dalmatia and Pannonia were included in the Western Roman Empire. The region was conquered by the Ostrogoths in 455, and further exchanged hands between the Alans and Huns in the years to follow. By the 6th century, Emperor Justinian had re-conquered the area for the Byzantine Empire. The Slavs, a migratory people from northeastern Europe, were subjugated by the Eurasian Avars in the 6th century, and together they invaded the Eastern Roman Empire in the 6th and 7th centuries, settling in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina and the surrounding lands. The Serbs and Croats came in a second wave, invited by Emperor Heraclius to drive the Avars from Dalmatia.

Bosnia and Herzegovina - Medieval Bosnia

Modern knowledge of the political situation in the west Balkans during the dark ages is patchy and confusing. Upon their arrival, the Slavs brought with them a tribal social structure, which probably fell apart and gave way to feudalism only with Frankish penetration into the region in the late 9th century (Bosnia probably originated as one such pre-feudal Slavic entity). It was also around this time that the south Slavs were Christianized. Bosnia, due to its geographic position and terrain, was probably one of the last areas to go through this process, which presumably originated from the urban centers along the Dalmatian coast. The kingdoms of Serbia and Croatia split control of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 9th and 10th century, but by the high middle ages political circumstance led to the area being contested between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Byzantine empire. Following another shift of power between the two in the late 12th century, Bosnia found itself outside the control of both and emerged as an independent state under the rule of local bans.

The first notable Bosnian monarch, Ban Kulin, presided over nearly three decades of peace and stability during which he strengthened the country's economy through treaties with Dubrovnik and Venice. His rule also marked the start of a controversy with the Bosnian Church, an indigenous Christian sect considered heretical by both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. In response to Hungarian attempts to use church politics regarding the issue as a way to reclaim sovereignty over Bosnia, Kulin held a council of local church leaders to renounce the heresy in 1203. Despite this, Hungarian ambitions remained unchanged long after Kulin's death in 1204, waning only after an unsuccessful invasion in 1254.

Bosnian history from then until the early 14th century was marked by the power struggle between the Šubić and Kotromanić families. This conflict came to an end in 1322, when Stephen II Kotromanić became ban. By the time of his death in 1353, he had succeeded in annexing territories to the north and west, as well as Zahumlje and parts of Dalmatia. He was succeeded by his nephew Tvrtko who, following a prolonged struggle with nobility and inter-family strife, gained full control of the country in 1367. Under Tvrtko, Bosnia grew in both size and power, finally becoming an independent kingdom in 1377. Following his death in 1391 however, Bosnia fell into a long period of decline. The Ottoman Empire had already started its conquest of Europe and posed a major threat to the Balkans throughout the first half of the 15th century. Finally, after decades of political and social instability, Bosnia oficially fell in 1463. Herzegovina would follow in 1482, with a Hungarian-backed reinstated "Bosnian Kingdom" being the last to succumb in 1527.

Bosnia and Herzegovina - Ottoman era

The Ottomans under sultan Mehmed Fatih conquered the region in 1463, although parts of the country held out until late 15th century. The Ottoman rule introduced a number of key changes in political and social administration of the country, namely a new landholding system (see timar), a reorganization of administrative units (see sandžak and vilayet, and a complex system of social differentiation by class (see askeri and reaya) and religious affiliation. Over four centuries of Ottoman rule, the population make-up of Bosnia drastically changed several times as a result of Ottoman conquests, frequent wars with the Habsburgs, migrations, and epidemics. Furthermore, a native bosnian speaking Bosnian Muslim community emerged during the long Ottoman rule mainly as a result of gradually rising number of conversions to Islam, while a significant number of Sephardi Jews settled in Sarajevo after their expulsion from Spain in late 15th century. The Bosnian Christian communities also experienced major changes. The Bosnian Franciscans (and the Catholic population as a whole) were protected by official imperial decree, but on the ground these guarantees were often disregarded; the Orthodox community in Bosnia initially prospered under Ottoman rule, but was later dominated by the Greek Orthodox patriarchs; and the little-known Bosnian Church disappeared altogether. The agrarian unrest in the province in the 19th century eventually sparked a widespread peasant uprising in 1875; the conflict rapidly spread and involved several Balkan states and Great Powers, which eventually forced the Ottomans to cede administration of the country to Austria-Hungary in 1878, thus ending over four centuries of Ottoman rule over Bosnia.

Bosnia and Herzegovina - Austrio-Hungarian rule

From 1878 to 1918, Bosnia was administered and from the 1908 annexation directly ruled by Austria-Hungary. Habsburg rule over the region did much to codify laws and introduce new political practices and modernization measures in hopes of keeping Bosnia a stable and model South Slav province that would resist the forces of nationalism. However, World War I began with the assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne; the assassin was Gavrilo Princip, a member of the "Mlada Bosna" organization.

Bosnia and Herzegovina - The first Yugoslavia

Following the war, Bosnia was incorporated into the South Slav kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed the kingdom of Yugoslavia). Political life in Bosnia at this time (from 1918 to 1941) was marked by two major trends: social and economic unrest over property redistribution, and formation of several political parties that frequently changed coalitions and alliances with parties in other Yugoslav regions. The redrawing of administrative regions into banovina units only exacerbated this process, which also encouraged plans for the official partition of Bosnia between Croatia and Serbia in the late 1930s.

Bosnia and Herzegovina - World War II

When the kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded by Nazi forces in World War II, all of Bosnia was ceded to the the Nazi-puppet state Croatia. The Nazi rule over Bosnia led to widespread persecution, murder, and near-total annihilation of the Jewish population across Bosnia, while the NDH Croatian state also specifically persecuted the Serbian population in the country. Bosnia thus became the central region in a war that included German, Italian and Croatian armies as well as troops by the royalist Serbian regime and the anti-fascist movement. On 25 November 1943 the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia with Marshal Tito at its helm held a founding conference in Jajce where Bosnia and Herzegovina was reestablished as a republic within the Yugoslavian federation in its Ottoman borders. The conference's conclusions were later confirmed by the Yugoslavian constitution. The 25th of November is considered a day of national statehood in Bosnia today.

Bosnia and Herzegovina - Socialist Yugoslavia

From 1945 to 1948, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was established under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito.

Bosnia and Herzegovina - The Bosnian war

Main article: Bosnian War

The Bosnian-Herzegovinian declaration of sovereignty in October of 1991 was followed by a referendum for independence from Yugoslavia in February 1992 boycotted by the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Serbs.

Serbia and Bosnian Serbs responded shortly thereafter with armed attacks on Bosnian-Herzegovinian Croats and Bosniaks aimed at partitioning the republic along ethnic lines and joining Serb-held areas. The UNPROFOR (UN Protection Force) was deployed in Bosnia and Herzegovina in mid-1992. 1992 and 1993 saw the greatest bloodshed in Europe after 1945. Following the peace agreement proposal by Lord Owen in 1993, which practically intended to divide the country into three ethnically pure parts, an armed conflict developed between Bosniak and Croat units in a virtual territorial grab. It was later established that Croat military actions were directly supported by the government of Croatia which made this also an international conflict [2]. At that time about 70% of the country was in Serb control, and the rest was controlled by Bosniaks and Croats.

In March 1994, Bosniaks and Croats reduced the number of warring factions from three to two by signing an agreement creating a joint Bosniak-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Each nation reported many casualties in the three-sided conflict, in which the Bosniaks reported the highest number of deaths and casualties. However, the only case officially ruled by the U.N. Hague tribunal as genocide was the Srebrenica massacre of 1995. At the end of the war approximately 102,000 people had been killed according to the ICTY [3] and more than 2 million people fled their homes (including over 1 million to neighboring nations and the west).

On November 21, 1995, in Dayton, Ohio, presidents of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Alija Izetbegović), Croatia (Franjo Tuđman), and Serbia (Slobodan Milošević) signed a peace agreement that brought a halt to the three years of war in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (the final agreement was signed in Paris on 14 December 1995). The Dayton Agreement succeeded in ending the bloodshed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it institutionalized the division between the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Muslim and Croat entity - Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (51% of the territory), and the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Serb entity - Republika Srpska (49%). Inter-Entity Boundary Line delineates the administrative division of the two Entities.

The enforcement of the implementation of the Dayton Agreement was through a UN mandate using various multinational forces: NATO-led IFOR (Implementation Force), which transitioned to the SFOR (Stabilisation Force) the next year, which in turn transitioned to the EU-led EUFOR at end of 2004. The civil administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina is headed by the High Representative of the international community.

Today the Dayton agreement is considered by many as one of the most controversial pieces of diplomacy that resulted from the Bosnian War. According to most experts while on one hand Dayton agreement did successfully end the war on the other it legitimized territorial gains achieved through ethnic cleansing and genocide, and it created enormous bureaucratic obstacles for Bosnian Herzegovinian tendencies for European integration. As a result many reforms are taking place in Bosnia and Herzegovina today as part of the revisions to the Dayton agreement such as unifying of army and police forces and enforcing of state level institutions. However, the most controversial part and the main clause of the Dayton agreement that stipulated territorial and administrative division of the country still remains in force and unchanged.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki