history of Bosnia and Herzegovina

When the Romans extended their conquests into the territory of modern Bosnia during the 2nd and 1st centuries bce, the people they encountered there belonged mainly to Illyrian tribes. Most of the area of modern Bosnia was…

…return, acquiesced in Austria-Hungary’s acquiring Bosnia and Herzegovina. Austria-Hungary and Russia agreed to refrain from intervention for the time being, and it was only when great-power mediation proved unable to settle the conflict between Serbia and the Ottoman Empire that Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire in April 1877,…

The occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878 had reasserted Habsburg interests in Balkan affairs. Facing the possibility of conflict with Russia in this area, Austria-Hungary had looked for an ally, with the result that in 1879 Austria-Hungary and the German Empire had joined in the Dual Alliance,…

…undermine the Habsburg position in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which nominally were still under Ottoman suzerainty, Aehrenthal decided to use the opportunity to fortify the Austro-Hungarian position in the Balkan Peninsula. In September 1908 he met with the Russian foreign minister, Aleksandr, Count Izvolsky, and secured, so he thought, Russian approval…

In the 1990s in Bosnia and Herzegovina, ethnic divisions and intervention by Yugoslavia and Croatia led to widespread fighting between Serbs, Croatians, and Bosniaks (Muslims) for control of key villages and roads. Between 1992 and 1995, Bosnian Serbs and Serbian paramilitary groups conducted a nearly 1,400-day siege of Bosnia’s…

…and early 1992 Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence, the EC and the United States imposed sanctions on Yugoslavia, a UN delegation sought Serbian support for a cease-fire and peacekeeping forces, and the Security Council approved the dispatch of 14,400 UN peacekeepers (mostly British and French). A UN plan,…

…it also joined Hungary—even though Bosnia was less Catholic in its composition because many Bogomil heretics had taken refuge there.

…while the independent states of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, and Slovenia sought closer ties with the countries of the EU. However, secessionists in Montenegro soon pushed for independence from the new Yugoslavia, against the wishes of the international community, which feared that further political instability might rekindle the destructive…

… (by allowing it to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina and thereby increase its influence in the Balkans). In acting so, however, the congress left Russia humiliated by substantially reducing the gains that it had made under the San Stefano treaty. Furthermore, the congress failed to consider adequately the aspirations of the…

After Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina declared their independence from Yugoslavia, ethnic Serbs, who opposed the breakup of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, launched armed struggles to carve out separate Serb-controlled territories in both areas. Around the same time, Croats and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) also began fighting each other, largely over…

…and that Austria could annex Bosnia and Hercegovina when it wished; in the event of war between one party and a great power not party to the treaty, the other two parties were to maintain friendly neutrality.

Herzegovina, in the Balkans, was brought under direct Ottoman control in 1483. The occupation, in 1484, of two fortresses on the estuaries of the Danube and the Dniester rivers strengthened the hold of the Ottomans over the land route to Crimea, where the khan of…

Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were also recognized as new states by much of the international community in 1992, though at the time neither was able to exercise any effective control over significant parts of its territory. Although independence is required, it need not be more than…

…it entered the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995 by staging air strikes against Bosnian Serb positions around the capital city of Sarajevo. The subsequent Dayton Accords, which were initialed by representatives of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Croatia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, committed each state…

…in doubt the status of Bosnia and Hercegovina, provinces still under Ottoman sovereignty but administered by Austria-Hungary since 1878. The Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, Aloys Aehrenthal, proposed to settle the Bosnian issue and to crush Serbian ambitions once and for all by annexing the provinces. To this purpose he teased the…

…Aehrenthal, whereby Austria would occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina (over which it had exercised nominal suzerainty since 1878) in return for permitting a revision of the Straits Convention that would allow Russia to bring its warships out of the Black Sea if it were at war but Turkey were not. There…

Bosnia-Herzegovina was to be autonomous. Parts of Asiatic Turkey were ceded to Russia, and the Ottoman sultan gave guarantees for the security of his Christian subjects.

…support of an uprising in Bosnia and Herzegovina and, in the process, intensified the Balkan crisis that culminated in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78. By the settlement of that conflict Serbia and Montenegro acquired their independence from the Ottoman Empire and an expansion of their territory.

…he was saved by the Bosnian insurrection of 1875.

Austria-Hungary was given control of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the strategic district of Novi Pazar in Serbia. By a separate convention Cyprus was put under British rule.

In October 1908 Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bulgaria proclaimed its independence. Italy seized Tripoli (Libya) and occupied the Dodecanese, a group of islands in the Aegean Sea; by the Treaty of Lausanne

…popular Turkish sympathy for the Bosnian Muslims led Turkey to advocate international action on their behalf, and Turkish forces took part in the United Nations (UN) and NATO operations there. Turkey cooperated with Iraq in suppressing Kurdish disorder, although it supported the UN against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War,…

…to a peacekeeping initiative in Bosnia and Herzegovina; and a leading role in the ongoing initiatives to bring a permanent resolution to the dispute between Palestinians and Israelis. In 1993 he invited Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (who was later assassinated by a Jewish extremist opposed to territorial concessions to…

Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, however, were a different matter: there Serbs constituted 12 percent and 31 percent of the population, respectively. Serbia backed local Serbs in separatist resistance, with the apparent aim of retaining some areas of the republics within a rump of Yugoslavia.

…now recognized as independent states: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, and Slovenia. The “third Yugoslavia,” inaugurated on April 27, 1992, had roughly 45 percent of the population and 40 percent of the area of its predecessor and consisted of only two republics, Serbia and Montenegro, which agreed to abandon…