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A comprehensive overview of the historical development of Serbia and its predecessor states, from prehistory to the present. Learn about the origins, migrations, wars, and achievements of the Serbian people and their rulers.
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Serbia, landlocked country in the west-central Balkans. For most of the 20th century, it was a part of Yugoslavia.
The capital of Serbia is Belgrade (Beograd), a cosmopolitan city at the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers; Stari Grad, Belgrade’s old town, is dominated by an ancient fortress called the Kalemegdan and includes well-preserved examples of medieval architecture and some of eastern Europe’s most-renowned restaurants. Serbia’s second city, Novi Sad, lies upstream on the Danube; a cultural and educational centre, it resembles the university towns of nearby Hungary in many respects.
Beginning in the 1920s, Serbia was an integral part of Yugoslavia (meaning “Land of the South Slavs”), which included the modern countries of Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Montenegro. Long ruled in turn by the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary, these component nations combined in 1918 to form an independent federation known as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. In 1929 that federation was formally constituted as Yugoslavia. Serbia was the dominant part in this multiethnic union, though after World War II the nonaligned communist government of Josip Broz Tito accorded some measure of autonomy to the constituent republics and attempted to balance contending interests by dividing national administrative responsibilities (e.g., for intelligence and defense) along ethnic lines.
After Tito’s death in 1980 and the collapse of communism in eastern Europe over the course of the following decade, resurgent nationalism reopened old rifts in Yugoslav society. Serbian (and later Yugoslav) leader Slobodan Milošević attempted to craft a “Greater Serbia” from the former union, but his policies instead led to the secession of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia and civil war in the early 1990s. The civil war caused the death or displacement of hundreds of thousands of people and prompted international sanctions against the country. In the late 1990s more blood was spilled when the Albanian-Muslim-dominated Serbian province of Kosovo declared independence, resulting in the intervention of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United Nations, the bombing of Belgrade, and the placement of Kosovo under UN administration from mid-1999.
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Bounding the country to the west are the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Slavonian region of the Republic of Croatia. Serbia adjoins Hungary to the north, Romania and Bulgaria to the east, North Macedonia to the south, and Montenegro to the southwest. Kosovo, which Serbia does not recognize as an independent country, lies to the south as...
The landforms of Serbia, a landlocked country, fall into regional groupings that roughly parallel the republic’s major political divisions. The plains of the northern Vojvodina region generally lie at elevations between 200 and 350 feet (60 to 100 metres) above sea level. The Fruška Gora hills interrupt these plains on the west, stretching along a triangle of land between the Danube and Sava rivers. Their highest point is 1,765 feet (540 metres). Much of the Vojvodina is blanketed by portions of a former plateau that rose up to 100 feet (30 metres) above the territory’s floodplains; the remnants are composed of fine particles of loess deposited by winds during the last glacial period in Europe.
Hills and high mountains characterize the central body of Serbia. Its western margins include sections of the Dinaric Alps, and its eastern borderlands are part of the Carpathian and Rhodope mountain systems. Between these flanking mountains lie the Šumadija hills, the core of the medieval Serbian state.
The granite ridge of the Kopaonik Mountains, in Serbia’s southwestern Dinaric zone, reaches 6,617 feet (2,017 metres). This is a tectonically active region notable for earthquakes. To the east the Carpathians are nearly as high; one peak in the Balkan Mountains (Stara Planina) bordering Bulgaria attains an elevation of more than 7,000 feet (2,100 metres). Summits of the Šumadija hills range from 2,000 to 3,500 feet (600 to 1,100 metres).
Serbia’s northeastern border follows the Iron Gate (Ðerdap) gorge of the Danube River, the most spectacular such feature in Europe. For a distance of 60 miles (100 km), the Danube flows across the Carpathian range, its bed dropping 90 feet (30 metres). The gorge consists of four narrow constrictions connected by three basins. Before the flooding that followed completion of the joint Yugoslav-Romanian Ðerdap hydroelectric dam in 1972, rocky outcrops confined the river at one point to a width of only 300 feet (90 metres). Upstream, in the Vojvodina plains, the Danube attains widths of up to 2 miles (3 km) and depths of 45 feet (14 metres) or more.
Sep 4, 2024 · Under the Nemanjić dynasty, which was to rule the Serb lands for the next 200 years, a powerful state emerged to dominate the entire Balkan Peninsula. It was founded, in part, on the ability and administrative capacity of its rulers and also on the establishment of a link between church and state.
History. Prehistory and antiquity. Vinča culture figurine, 4000–4500 BC. Archaeological evidence of Paleolithic settlements on the territory of present-day Serbia is scarce. A fragment of a hominid jaw found in Sićevo (Mala Balanica) is believed to be up to 525,000–397,000 years old. [18]
A chronological overview of the major events and changes in Serbia and its predecessor states from the 7th to the 20th century. Learn about the origins, development and challenges of the Serbian people and their culture, religion and politics.
Jan 25, 2023 · This chapter sets the scene for the book by discussing historical legacies, changing borders and meanings of Serbia, and the Serbs relations with their neighbours, the empires and Great Powers, and how these factors shaped the modern Serbian society.
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