Facts in Brief
The following Facts in Brief are easy to understand and will help you quickly improve your knowledge about the Balkans. Once you have read the Facts in Brief you have complete the fun quiz that is in the Student Zone. Your teacher will be able to check your answers for the quiz.
West Balkans
The Balkans received its name from the Turkish word for mountain, as the mountain range known as the Carpathians or Transylvanian Alps occupies the region.
The countries that make up the Balkans include the countries of Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnian Federation, Serbia and Montenegro, and Macedonia.
The Balkans is a very culturally diversified region with groups like the Romanians, Magyars, Jews, Bulgarians, Albanians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians, Montenegrins, Macedonians, Roma, Turks, and Greeks found here.
Between the Sixth and the Eighth centuries the people known as the Slavs arrived in the Balkan Peninsula.
In 1120 the Hungarians conquered the Croats bringing with it their full conversion to Western Christianity.
In the Twentieth century many Serbs wanted to claim the lands and glory of the medieval kingdom of Stephen Dushan of 1331 to 1355 when the Serbian state was at its height.
The Bosnian kingdom was established in 1353 and in 1377 the Bosnian ruler, Stephen Tvrtko (1353-1391) was crowned as the king of “the Serbs, Bosnians, and the Croats.”
It took over one hundred years for the Turks to take control of the Balkans with the first battle occurring in 1371 on the Maitsa River until the defeat of the Croat armies in 1493 at the battle of Krbavsko Polje.
Although there was a Serbian rebellion against the Turks or Ottomans in 1689, significant change did not occur until the 1804 and 1814 rebellions that brought about independent Serbian self government in 1816.
The 1878 Congress of Berlin gave Serbia and Montenegro independence as sovereign states.
A military coup led to the assassination of the Serbian ruler Alexander Obrenovich in 1903 . He was replaced with the new king, Petar Karadjordjevich.
Bosnia and Herzegovina were annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908.
The First Balkan War in 1912 and The Second Balkan War in 1913 arose from discontent among the newly independent Balkan nations over the territory given them.
On June 28, 1914 Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the crown prince of Austria-Hungry in Sarajevo. This set off a series of events that led to the First World War.
As the First World War ended in November 1918 Serbian troops liberated Belgrade and occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Serbians annexed Montenegro to Serbia.
By December 1, 1918 the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes came into being,. It was renamed in 1929 the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with King Aleksandar Karadjordjevich . He abolished all democratic institutions and became a dictator, but was assassinated in France in 1934.
A military coup in March 1941 temporarily blocked an alliance between the Yugoslav government with Germany and Italy. By April 17, the Germans had invaded and Yugoslavia collapsed allowing the pro-German Ustasha regime to be installed.
The future leader of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito led the Communist, Partisan Movement to oppose the Ustasha regime, declaring that they were the government of Yugoslavia in November 1943.
The Partisan Movement liberated Belgrade in October 1944 with help from the Soviet Union.
In 1945, Tito became the leader of the new Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia and remained the leader until his death in April 1980.
In 1991 both Slovenia and Croatia declared independence, but the Yugoslav Peoples Army intervened, but little fighting occurred in Slovenia, while in Croatia fighting developed between the Serb dominated Yugoslav Army and Croatian forces until an armistice signed in January 1992.
In January 1992 the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina also known as the Republic of Srpska declared independence, but both Serbian and Croatian forces moved into Bosnia and Herzegovina. By March 1992 Sarajevo was under siege and experienced massive human rights violations in the area..
On 22 May 1992 the new independent republics of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina became members of the United Nations (UN).
The Croats and the Serbs went beyond a war that would lead to the occupation and control of Bosnia and Herzegovina to a horrific process called “ethnic cleansing” where the participants set out to remove the existing ethnic populations in certain areas where they wanted only one cultural group.
The Serbs’ actions in Bosnia and Herzegovina included such human rights violations that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was removed as a member of the United Nations in 1992.
The military forces and paramilitary groups of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia moved in 1998-99 to expel the Albanians in Kosovo by force, which provoked NATO’s bombing of targets in Serbia and the placement of a force in Kosovo to protect the local population.
To maintain the peace and to allow the building of the new Bosnia and Herzegovina the NATO led the international peacekeeping force, which was made up of 60,000 troops.
With the new leadership after 2000, Yugoslavia was allowed back into the UN as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
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