Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country in Southeast Europe on the Balkan Peninsula. It has had permanent settlement since the Neolithic Age. By the early historical period it was inhabited by Illyrians and Celts. Christianity arrived in the 1st century, and by the 4th century the area became part of the Western Roman Empire. Germanic tribes invaded soon after, followed by Slavs in the 6th century.
In the mid-12th century, the Banate of Bosnia emerged as a distinct political entity governed by local bans. In 1377, Tvrtko I was crowned King of Bosnia, establishing the Kingdom of Bosnia. In 1463, Bosnia was annexed into the Ottoman Empire, marking the beginning of more than 400 years of Ottoman rule in the region. They wrought great changes to the political and administrative system, introduced land reforms, and class and religious distinctions. A series of uprisings began in 1831, which culminated in the Herzegovinian rebellion, a widespread peasant uprising, in 1875. The conflict eventually forced the Ottomans to cede administration of the country to the Habsburg monarchy through the Treaty of Berlin in 1878.
The establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes in 1918, officially called the Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1929, brought the redrawing of administrative regions into the new kingdom. This purposely avoided all historical and ethnic lines, and removed any trace of Bosnian identity. The kingdom of Yugoslavia was conquered by Axis forces in World War II, and Bosnia was ceded to the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), which led to widespread persecution and genocide.
Following Axis defeat, Bosnia and Herzegovina achieved its current borders by becoming a federal unit within the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, which was later renamed to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1963. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, three years of war began in 1992 which caused around 100,000 deaths and 2 million refugees. It was then when the country became an independent state.
Prehistory and Roman Era
Bosnia has been inhabited since Neolithic times. In the late Bronze Age, the Neolithic population was replaced by more warlike Indo-European tribes known as the 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.
Christianity had already arrived in the region by the end of the 2nd century, and numerous artefacts 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.
Middle Ages
Early Bosnia
By the 6th century, Emperor Justinian had re-conquered the area and large parts of the former Western Empire for the Byzantine Empire, named for the ancient city of Byzantium, now the capital of Constantinople since the 330s, established by Emperor Constantine the Great. The Slavs, a migratory people from southeastern Europe, were allied 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. More South Slavs came in a second wave, and according to some scholars were invited by Emperor Heraclius to drive the Avars from Dalmatia on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. Around this time the speaking Latin language in northern Balkans was replaced by the Greek language.
Modern knowledge of Bosnia in the western Balkans during the Dark Ages is patchy. Upon the looter invasions by the Avars and Slavs from 6th-9th century, bringing Slavic languages, both probably gave way to feudalism only with the might by the Frankish penetrating into the region in the late 9th century (Bosnia probably originated as one such pre-feudal entity). It was also around this time that the Bosnians 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.
In addition to the Slavic-speaking population, a good number of romanized people remained in south Bosnia by the year 1000. Speaking an Eastern Romance language (related to Romanian), and having retreated into mountainous areas and adopted a pastoralist way of life, they became known as Vlachs. With time they assimilated, though maintaining specific customs, and the word Vlach came to indicate any shepherd. Being well-versed with horse breeding, Vlachs came to dominate trade and caravan from coastal merchant town towards the interior, growing prosperous and coming to dominate entire regions of Hum, thus merging in Bosnia's medieval feudal society.
Banate of Bosnia
It is only from the 9th century that Frankish and Byzantine sources begin to mention early Slavic polities in the region. In this regard, the earliest widely acknowledged reference to Bosnia dates from the 10th century De Administrando Imperio written by Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, during which period Bosnia is part of the Serbian state of Časlav, after whose death in battle in about 960, much of Bosnia is briefly incorporated into the Croatian state of Krešimir II. Shortly thereafter, in 997, Samuel of Bulgaria marches through Bosnia and asserts his over-lordship in parts of it, however, only to be defeated by the Byzantine Empire in 1018 which annexes Bulgaria and asserts its suzerainty in Bosnia. This lasted until later in the century when some parts of the territory of today’s Bosnia are briefly incorporated into Croatia and others into Duklja from which the latter Bosnia appears to have seceded in about 1101, upon which Bosnia's bans tried to rule for themselves. During this period, the region experiences varying political influence from the Byzantine Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary (then in personal union with the Kingdom of Croatia), and, to a lesser extent, the Grand Principality of Serbia. It was primarily under Hungarian political influence from 1137 to 1167, and primarily under Byzantine influence from 1167 to 1180. Prior to 1180 and the reign of Ban Kulin parts of Bosnia were briefly found in Serbian or Croatian units, but neither neighbor had held the Bosnians long enough to acquire their loyalty or to impose any serious claim to Bosnia.
The first recorded Ban (viceroy) was Ban Borić, allied with the Hungarian king. However, he was deposed when he backed the losing claimant in a succession dispute over the Hungarian throne. In 1167, Ban Kulin (r. 1180–1204) emerged as the Ban of Bosnia, under Byzantine political influence. 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, which also fostered the schism of the Bosnian Church.
Kingdom of Bosnia
Following the rise of the rivalling Kotromanić family and Croatian Šubić family in the mid 13th century, the Šubić family took control of the Banate of Bosnia in the late 13th century. Bosnia regained its independence from the Croatian Šubić family in the early 14th century, when Stjepan II Kotromanić became ban, and the Kotromanić dynasty established itself as a resilient monarchy. 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 officially fell in 1463, while resistance was active and fierce for a few more centuries. Southern regions of Bosnia, nowadays known as "Herzegovina" would follow in 1482.
Ottoman Era (1463–1878)
The Ottoman conquest of Bosnia marked a new era in the country's history and introduced tremendous changes in the political and cultural landscape of the region. Although the kingdom had been crushed and its high nobility executed, the Ottomans nonetheless allowed for the preservation of Bosnia's identity by incorporating it as an integral province of the Ottoman Empire with its historical name and territorial integrity - a unique case among subjugated states in the Balkans.Riedlmayer, Andras (1993). A Brief History of Bosnia-Herzegovina . The Bosnian Manuscript Ingathering Project. Within this sandžak (and eventual vilayet) of Bosnia, the Ottomans introduced a number of key changes in the territory's socio-political administration; including a new landholding system, a reorganization of administrative units, and a complex system of social differentiation by class and religious affiliation.
The four centuries of Ottoman rule also had a drastic impact on Bosnia's population make-up, which changed several times as a result of the empire's conquests, frequent wars with European powers, migrations, and epidemics. A native Slavic-speaking Muslim community emerged and eventually became the largest ethno-religious groupBy the early 1600s, approximately 450,000 Muslims (67%), 150,000 Catholics (22%) and 75,000 Orthodox Christians (11%) lived Bosnia (mainly as a result of a gradually rising number of conversions to Islam),Imamović, Mustafa (1996). Historija Bošnjaka. Sarajevo: BZK Preporod. while a significant number of Sephardi Jews arrived following their expulsion from Spain in the 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, although on the ground these guarantees were often disregarded and their numbers dwindled. The Orthodox community in Bosnia, initially confined to Herzegovina and southeastern Bosnia, spread throughout the country during this period and went on to experience relative prosperity until the 19th century. Meanwhile, the native schismatic Bosnian Church disappeared altogether.