History of Bosnia and Herzegovina

The history of Bosnia and Herzegovina encompasses both the development of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Republic and the time before it. After the first settlements, the area of ​​Bosnia-Herzegovina and the entire Balkans became part of the Roman Empire . At the time of the Great Migration , several peoples came to the area, of which only a few groups remained permanently. This changed at the beginning of the early Middle Ages when Slavic peoples settled down and subsequently adopted the Christian faith. In the Middle Ages phases of independence and sovereignty of the neighbors Byzantium , Hungary and Serbia alternated. At the end of the 15th century, Bosnia-Herzegovina was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and later received the status of a province . In the 16th century in particular, large groups of the population converted to Islam.

From 1878 Austria-Hungary conquered Bosnia-Herzegovina and then formally annexed the area in 1908 . Its capital Sarajevo was the scene of the assassination attempt that sparked the First World War in 1914 . After the World War, Bosnia-Herzegovina became part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia . During the Second World War it was conquered by the German Wehrmacht . The Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia emerged from the partisan war against them , in which Bosnia-Herzegovina became a republic. After the end of the Cold War , Bosnia-Herzegovina followed the example of several other Yugoslav republics and declared itself independent in 1992. The ensuing conflicts between the country's ethnic groups escalated into a civil war . This was settled by the Dayton Treaty and Bosnia-Herzegovina was retained as a federal state subdivided into Erthnia.

Antiquity

The Illyrians

The Illyrians were the first people to inhabit what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina for which historical information is available. They settled the western half of the Balkan Peninsula and thus also Bosnia in the Bronze Age (around 1200–1100 BC). Archaeological research has shown that the tribes mainly raised livestock and less arable farming. Also mining (silver) was operated in Bosnia already by the Illyrians.

From the written tradition of the Greeks since the 6th century BC Only a few inland tribes are known by name. The area of ​​the Liburnians and Delmats residing on the coast probably extended inland into the Bosnian mountains.

To the west of the Skordisker, the Illyrian Breuker settled on the Save and the Daesitaten in Central Bosnia. Only these two inland tribes are documented in writing. Archaeologists have discovered Illyrian settlements and burial grounds in all parts of Bosnia. It seems that in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC The Celtic influence in the region declined, because the finds from this period (jewelry, weapons and ceramics) mainly belong to the Illyrian circle of shapes. In addition, Greek imports are increasing.

End of the 3rd century BC The Romans saw the Illyrian coast of the Adriatic. After the Roman-Illyrian Wars (229–219 BC) the coast was under the protectorate of the Roman Republic, while the peoples in the interior kept their freedom.

The Romans

Southeastern Europe in Roman times

Under Emperor Augustus , the Illyrian territories were 12–9 BC. Incorporated into the Roman Empire and the border of the empire finally brought forward to the Danube. Initially, the new territories were combined in a single administrative district Illyricum . A comprehensive provincial administration has not yet been organized. In the year 6 AD there was a last great Illyrian uprising against Roman rule and the empire temporarily lost control of the interior of the country (e.g. Bosnia and Slavonia) because at the same time the clashes with the Teutons on the Rhine escalated. The later emperor Tiberius was able to finally defeat the Breuker, Daesitatenden and their allies in 9 AD on the Save. Thereafter, the provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia were created, each of which also included part of what is now Bosnia. The northern areas on the Sava belonged to the province of Pannonia, the greater part of the country including Herzegovina to Dalmatia.

Since then, all Illyrian territories have been under Roman rule, and in the following period a network of Roman roads and settlements emerged, including some wealthy trading cities. Military posts were only set up in the north on the Save to protect the imperial border. No troops were stationed in Dalmatia because the province was considered pacified and safe. Gold, silver and lead were already being mined in Eastern Bosnia at that time. Many excavation finds and fortifications still bear witness to the Roman presence. The latter have been in existence since the 3rd century when the threat of great migration increased.

Roman cities on Bosnian territory were in Dalmatia: the colonies of Delminum ( Duvno ) (previously the capital of the Delmaten) and Bistue Nova ( Vitez ), as well as the old settlements of Argentaria ( Srebrenica ), Ad Salinas ( Tuzla ), Bigeste ( Ljubuški ) and Raetinum . For the Pannonian part, Servitium ( Gradiška ) on the Save should be mentioned. The road network laid out by the Romans in the Bosnian region primarily served the rapid transfer of troops from the Adriatic port of Salona ( Solin ) to the Pannonian border. Several routes radiated north from Salona: the shortest connection went through central Bosnia to Servitium, another road led further west via Raetinum to the Save, two routes ran in a north-easterly direction to Sirmium and on to Moesia. The later so-called Via Argentaria (Silver Road) also had economic importance because it established the connection between the mining region around Srebrenica and the coast.

Dalmatia was one of the south-eastern European provinces in which Latin quickly established itself as the most important language. Greek only played a role in the coastal towns on the Adriatic.

When the provinces were redistributed under Emperor Diocletian, Pannonia was divided. The later Bosnian areas were assigned to Pannonia Savia , the capital of which was Siscia ( Sisak ).

Christianity found its way into Dalmatia and Pannonia early on . As early as the 3rd century, martyrs of the persecution of Christians are attested in these regions. When the new religion was able to establish itself in the interior of Bosnia is largely unknown. It is believed that Delminum ( Duvno ) was a bishopric as early as the 4th century. Presumably this early diocese perished in the turmoil of the great migration. However, the re-establishment took place as early as the second half of the 6th century. An important center of early Christianity was the Pannonian Sirmium , whose archbishop was probably also subordinate to areas in northern Bosnia in the 4th century.

Migration period

In 376 the Visigoths crossed the Danube border. After a failed attempt by Emperor Valens to settle them in Thrace as a federation, the Battle of Adrianople took place in 378 , in which the Goths were victorious and the Roman army in the Balkans completely destroyed. For the next two decades, the Visigoths remained a constant source of uncertainty in the Balkan provinces. After devastating Greece, the Goths moved north in 401 and also devastated the province of Dalmatia on their way to Italy.

After a few decades of relative calm, the Huns under Attila invaded the Roman Balkan provinces between 441 and 447. In the sixties of the 5th century, the later emperor Zenon, as general Leo I , was able to drive the Vandals, Huns and Gepids from the areas south of the Danube. After the end of the Western Roman Empire (476), Zeno, who was now emperor, still had to do with the Ostrogoths under Theodoric in the Balkans . He succeeded in 488 in directing Theodoric against Odoacer, the ruler of Italy. The relocation of the main Ostrogothic power to Italy was the prerequisite for Emperor Justinian I to bring the territory of what would later become Bosnia, which fell to Western Rome when the empire was divided in 395, under Byzantine rule. However, the clashes with the Ostrogoths in Dalmatia lasted until the 520s. Under Justinian, the northern border of the Roman Empire ran through Bosnia. To the north of it the Lombards and Gepids stayed during this time , and from 555 the steppe people of the Avars appeared as a new threat in the Pannonian plain. Some of the Avars were settled as federates on the Reichsboden in 558. This paved the way for them and the Slavic tribes under their rule to enter the Balkans.

middle Ages

Slavic settlement

The exact course of the Slavic conquest of the Balkans since the last third of the 6th century cannot be reconstructed in detail. What is certain is that it took place under the rule of the far less numerous Avars and began roughly with the death of Justinian I in 565, when it became clear that the Restauratio imperii had failed.

By 620, the Slavs presumably invaded most of Bosnia. The oldest Slavic settlement finds in Bosnia-Herzegovina are dated to this time at the beginning of the 7th century. Overall, however, there are hardly any sources on the Bosnian early Middle Ages. Croatian and Serbian historians argue that their own ethnic group each established the first ruling structures on Bosnian soil. Others are of the opinion that rulership structures existed before their arrival in the Avar times.

The Slavs were organized into extended families, clans and tribes ( plemena ). The head of a tribe was the Župan . The social differentiation soon increased in the new homeland and over time the nobility developed. In connection with this, however, the estates of most of the nobles were very small and many of them had so few servants that they had to take part in the field work themselves. This small nobility had a decisive influence on the history of Bosnia until the Ottoman conquest.

The Christianization of the Slavic / Illyrian population of Bosnia began as early as the 7th century. In addition to the bishops' seats on the Dalmatian coast as mission centers, there was the aforementioned Duvno diocese in Herzegovina. Another diocese is said to have been established in central Bosnia in the 7th century. Likewise, the Slavs living in Bosnia were Christianized a little later from the south and south-east by Slav apostles.

In the 8th and 9th centuries, the Slavic tribes in Bosnia lived on the fringes of the great empires of that time. In addition to Byzantium, the Bulgarian Empire joined as a new great power in the Balkans. At times the Bulgarian influence extended as far as Bosnia.

Early medieval Serbian and Croatian principalities

So in the 9th century the first Croatian and Serbian principalities were formed, each of which also included parts of Bosnia. Under the first Croatian king Tomislav (910-928) part of it belonged to Croatia, while part of the east was under Bulgarian rule and other parts under Serbian rule. However, the Croatian kingdom was not a tightly organized state like the Byzantine Empire, on whose dependency Croatia was at times. With the recognition of the supremacy of the king, the individual tribes and their Župane were largely independent. After Tomislav's death, the few Bosnian territories were lost. Most of Bosnia was taken by the strengthened Serbian principality of Raszien, which in turn recognized the supremacy of the Byzantine Empire. The first recorded mention of Bosnia as a separate landscape comes from this time. However, this only meant a small area on the upper reaches of the river Bosna, which gives it its name .

Emperor Basil II (985-1025) was able to extend the direct influence of Byzantium once more to the Danube (Sirmium) and into Bosnia. Soon after, however, the Byzantines finally lost control of the areas far to the northwest. During this time the Serbian principality Doclea was established , to which parts of Herzegovina belonged as well as to the neighboring principality Hum (Zahumlije). After 1080 central and eastern Bosnia were again part of the Serbian Raszien under King Konstantin Bodin .

See also History of Croatia and History of Serbia

The Bosnian principality between Hungary and Serbia

Even after Croatia came to the kings of Hungary through personal union in 1102, Bosnia remained a controversial country. Neither the Croats and Hungarians nor the Serbs were able to stabilize their rule there. In the 12th century, a more or less independent principality emerged in this power vacuum, but its bane were nominally vassals of the crown of St. Stephen or the emperor in Constantinople.

Since 1137, King Bela II of Hungary also held the title rex Ramae and thus also claimed rule over Rama, a landscape in northern Herzegovina and the neighboring Serbia to the east. Starting with the rule of from Slavonia originating Ban Borić since 1154 Bosnia was a semi-autonomous principality. Borić lost the rule because he had engaged in the Hungarian throne disputes on the part of the loser. He was an ancestor of the Kotromanić family , who established an independent kingdom of Bosnia in the 14th century .

Bane in medieval Bosnia
Boric (Ban) 1154-1163
Kulin 1180-1204
Stjepan Kulinić 1204-1232
Matej Ninoslav 1232-1250
Prijezda I. 1250-1287
Prijezda II. 1287-1290
Stjepan I. Kotroman 1287 / 90-1299 / 1314
Pavao I. Šubić Bribirski & Mladen II. Šubić Bribirski 1299-1322 (controlled the Banat of Bosnia, but did not have the title)
Stjepan II. Kotromanić 1314–1353

After a victory over the Hungarians, Emperor Manuel I was able to restore Byzantine sovereignty over Bosnia for some time in 1166. At that time Ban Kulin rose to ruler of Bosnia (1180-1204). Soon he shook off the Byzantine sovereignty and allied himself in 1183 with the Hungarians and the Serbs under Stefan Nemanja against the Byzantines. The rule of Ban Kulin is considered to be the golden age of Bosnia, because after the war against Byzantium the prince was able to keep the peace for the country, which also led to economic prosperity. The ban concluded trade agreements with the republics of Venice and Ragusa, which were primarily interested in the products of Bosnian mining.

Ban Kulin wrote the first surviving document in the Bosnian variant of the Cyrillic script in 1189, in which he described his state and its inhabitants as Bosnians (Bošnjani) for the first time. During Kulin's rule, the Bosnian Church developed into an independent religious community. Both Orthodox and Catholics viewed the Bosnian Church as heretical . It is still unclear what links existed between the Bosnian Church and the Bogomils . When Prince Vukan von Dioklea denounced the Bosnians as heretics to the Pope, Kulin succeeded in convincing the papal emissaries who were sent out that he was a loyal Catholic. However, the Bosnian Church had a life of its own and neither the Pope nor Orthodoxy had any influence over it.

Culin’s son and successor Stefan, however, paid too little attention to the peculiarities of the Bosnian Church; he wanted to lead them back to Catholicism, which in 1232 led to a successful revolt against him. He was replaced by the local nobleman Matej Ninoslav (1232-1250). His relative Prijezda led the Catholic opposition. The Hungarian King Andrew II also intervened in the inner Bosnian power struggle by trying to build his own party. In 1234 he awarded the title of Ban of Bosnia to Duke Koloman. In addition, Sibislav, Count of Usora, from the Kulins family tried to bring Bosnia under his control.

Pope Gregory IX was allied with the Hungarians, who thus formed the Catholic party in the Bosnian power struggle. In 1235 he replaced the heretical Bosnian bishop with Johann, a member of the Dominican Order, and recognized Koloman as the legitimate Ban of Bosnia. Johann and Koloman waged a crusade war against Ban Matej for five years to get the country under their control. Count Sibislav also went over to the Hungarian papal party at this time. The only ally of Ban Matej was the Republic of Ragusa ( document of May 22, 1240 ), which did not fight the Catholics, but gave the Ban protection against the Serbian King Stefan Vladislav , who was only waiting for a favorable moment to appropriate Bosnian territories to be able to.

Koloman probably ceded the title of Ban of Bosnia to Prijezda in 1238, who was able to rule the country for about three years. The invasion of Hungary and Dalmatia by the Mongols in 1241 and 1242 changed the balance of power in the region. Koloman's troops were needed in Hungary, and therefore Matej Ninoslav was able to regain possession of Bosnia; Prijezda went into exile in Hungary. In March 1244 Matej renewed the alliance with Ragusa. Strengthened in this way, he was able to intervene in the disputes between the cities of Traù and Spalato in Dalmatia . This pushed him into the sphere of influence of the Hungarian king on the Adriatic coast, which is why Bela IV sent troops again against Bosnia, but soon made peace, which meant that the Pope's and Hungarian bishops' crusade plans could no longer be realized.

Castle ruins near Srebrenik , one of the oldest structures in Bosnia

After Matej's death (1250), the Hungarian king was able to install his partisan Prijezda I as a new ban in Bosnia, while the son of his predecessor got nothing. Prijezda took action against the Bogumils and tried to subordinate the Bosnian Church to the Pope. In 1253 he was only able to put down a revolt of the heretics with the help of the Hungarian King Bela IV . This made Prijezda even more dependent on the Hungarian crown, but Prijezda always seems to have been on good terms with the king. Bela then set about reorganizing the southern border provinces of his empire at the expense of Priezda. The Bosnian Banat was restricted to the area between the rivers Vrbas and Bosna, and the Banat of Usora and Soli was re-established, which was subordinate to the Banat of Mačva, where a grandson of the king was appointed duke.

1254 conquered Bela in a war against the Serbian King Stefan Uros I. Zahumlije (in about Herzegovina and Central Dalmatia) and handed this region over to administration to Prijezda, who had also taken part in the campaign. But just a few years later the area fell back to the Serbs. In 1260, the Ban led Bosnian troops into the war between the Hungarian king and Bohemia. When Bela IV died in 1270, Bosnia, too, was drawn into the confusion of the Hungarian throne in the following years, and Prijezda's star began to decline, as he was fully bound to the deceased ruler. But he was able to assert himself as a Ban until his death in 1287. He sought allies among the Serbs against the Hungarian aristocrats who were besetting him.

The boom of the Bosnian principality and kingdom in the 14th century

In the 1280s, Stjepan Kotroman inherited rule over one of the northern Bosnian territories. He fought for a long time with the noble Šubićes family from the Bribir area in Dalmatia for power. This family had largely ruled the old Banat Bosnia in the first two decades of the 14th century and at times maintained friendly relations with Kotroman's son Stjepan II. Kotromanić . Kotromanić got the upper hand in 1320 and became Ban of Bosnia in 1322. He created a larger Bosnian state by uniting the old Banat with territories in the north, by conquering areas to the west of the Banat that had previously belonged to Croatia, and by further conquering a long stretch of the Dalmatian coast between Ragusa and Split. Finally he annexed most of Hum in 1326, which was the first time that Bosnia and Herzegovina was united in a political unit. Kotromanić tried to establish friendly relations with the other powers. In 1340, in order to improve relations with the Pope, he allowed Franciscans to establish a mission in Bosnia. Before 1347 he seems to have converted to the Roman Catholic faith himself. In 1353 he was buried in the Visoko Franciscan monastery. He left behind an independent Bosnian state, which under his nephew Stjepan Tvrtko Kotromanić (later King Tvrtko I ) became the most powerful state on the western Balkan peninsula.

Tvrtko's first years in government were difficult. He had to deal with revolts by Bosnian aristocratic families and Hungarian landings and even sought refuge at the Hungarian court in 1366 when a group of Bosnian nobles put his brother Vuk in his place. But by 1367 Tvrtko was back in power, apparently with the help of the Hungarian king. Tvrtko turned his attention to the south. In 1355 the strong Serbian empire had largely collapsed after the death of Stefan Uroš IV. Dušan . Tvrtko supported the Serbian nobleman Lazar Hrebeljanović , who quarreled with other nobles in south-west Serbia, Hum and Zeta over the remains of the Serbian empire. Lazar rewarded Tvrtko with the following division of the booty with a large strip of land bordering Bosnia: parts of Hum, Zeta, southern Dalmatia and the later Sandžak of Novi Pazar. In 1377 Tvrtko was not only crowned King of Bosnia, but also King of Serbia. This corresponded to boastful self-exaltation, as well as the imposing Byzantine-style courtyard that he established in the Bobovac fortress. In fact, he never seriously tried to exercise political power in Serbia. Instead, he expanded his influence to Dalmatia and parts of northern Croatia and Slavonia, and in the last few years before his death in 1391 he also called himself "King of Croatia and Dalmatia".

The key to Bosnia's prosperity in the High Middle Ages was mining. In the late 13th or early 14th century, German miners, so-called "Saxons" (Sasi), came to Bosnia from Hungary. The pits belonged to local landowners and were run by "Saxons", some of whom achieved wealth and prestige. Copper and silver were mined from Kreševo and Fojnica , lead from Olovo , gold, silver and lead from Zvornik and, above all, silver from Srebrenica . In the mining towns and in important trading towns such as Foča and Visoko there were important colonies of Ragusans - Ragusa had a monopoly on the silver trade within Bosnia and on silver exports by sea. When the Franciscans in Bosnia began to found monasteries, they were drawn to the cities with Roman Catholic Saxons, Ragusans, and other Dalmatians. So these cities were strongly influenced by Catholicism.

In the countryside, the majority were Kmets , serf farmers. There were also slaves traded in the Ragusa market. Shepherds lived in the Bosnian mountains, including Wallachians . The most important dividing line within society was that between people and nobility, with the nobility being differentiated into lower and higher. The aristocracy exercised great political power and could raise and remove bans and kings. From 1390 until after 1420 it met in a "Council of State" to discuss succession to the throne and important questions of domestic and foreign policy.

The last decades of the Bosnian kingdom

From the 1380s onwards, Ottoman armies had begun raiding Serbia as well. In 1388 a Turkish division had invaded Hum, which was ruled by Bosnia. In 1389 Trvtko's old Serbian ally Lazar refused to recognize Turkish sovereignty and called allies to help. King Trvtko sent a strong Bosnian army that fought alongside Lazar Hrebeljanović's army in the Battle of Blackbird Field in June 1389 . The Turkish armies returned year after year, bringing all Serbian Orthodox territories, apart from the Bosnian-ruled Hum, under Ottoman suzerainty by 1392.

Tvrtko's death in 1391 brought a prolonged period of weak governments to Bosnia. Noble families with regional power bases strengthened their positions. The Hungarian king also regained more influence in Bosnia. An unstable balance of strength between the Hungarian-backed King Ostoja and the most powerful of the Bosnian nobles, Hrvoje, broke up in 1414. The Ottomans proclaimed the illegitimate son of King Trvtko, Tvrtko II , who had been driven out, as the rightful king and invaded Bosnian territory. The following year the Hungarian army was defeated in central Bosnia. Ostoja was able to achieve that he and not Trvtko II was confirmed as king, but in fact the influence of the Ottoman Empire reached or exceeded that of Hungary. After Ostaya's death in 1418, his son was expelled in 1420 and, with Turkish support, Trvtko II was again king. But the alliances and loyalties remained fragile; there were repeated changes in controls over Bosnian territories. In 1440 Srebrenica was conquered by the Turks. Trvtkos II's successor, Stjepan Tomaš, was always busy defending against Turkish attacks, along with other armed conflicts. In 1450 he desperately turned to the Pope and finally declared himself ready to go over to the direct persecution of the schismatic Bosnian Church. When he died in 1461 and his son Stjepan Tomašević succeeded him, the end of the Bosnian kingdom was in sight. Tomašević asked the Pope and Venice in vain for help against a large-scale Turkish invasion. On May 20, 1463, the old royal stronghold of Bobovac was the first Bosnian fortress to fall. Tomašević fled to Jajce and from there to the fortress Ključ . When the Turkish besiegers gave protection, he surrendered, but was executed.

Ottoman rule

Bosnia , Herzegovina and Serbia just before the Ottoman conquest in the 15th century

In 1463 Jajce was taken by the Ottomans . After several years of war, the last cities in the south also fell, so that the last queen Katarina Kosača-Kotromanić had to go into exile. She died in Rome on October 25, 1478 .

Bosnia was one of the most important provinces of the Ottoman Empire as it protected the empire's European border. The Bosnian governor of Sultan Beylerbey had very far-reaching powers and unlimited power over the people of the country. In order to stabilize their rule on the north-western edge of the empire, the Turks brought many Muslim settlers to Bosnia. Those parts of the local population who belonged to the Bosnian Church before the conquest could be won over to Islam relatively quickly. A crucial aspect was that this was the only way for the Bosnian nobility to maintain their leading position in society. Therefore he integrated himself into the Ottoman Tımar system within a few decades . Many men from Bosnia and Herzegovina acquired high dignity at the court of the Sultan and became military leaders, diplomats and grand viziers of the empire.

Ottoman architecture: Bridge in Mostar

Apart from Albania , Bosnia was the country in the Balkans where Islamization was most pronounced among the locals. However, until the country passed to Austria-Hungary (1878), the Muslims were always a minority. About half of the population were Orthodox Christians in the 17th century and after. In addition, there was a Catholic minority that was becoming ever smaller due to the oppression by the Turks. After their expulsion from Spain , Sephardic Jews also settled in Bosnia in the 16th century , as they were not persecuted by the Ottomans.

Not only politically, but also culturally, Bosnia was dominated by the Muslims. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Bosnia-Herzegovina experienced a second, oriental heyday. In the first decades of their rule, the Ottomans promoted the oriental urban culture in Bosnia. Mosques, madrasas , bathhouses, bazaars etc. were built in all important places. Sarajevo, which was first mentioned in writing in 1415, was not developed into an important city until the Ottoman period. For the longest time, however, Travnik was the capital of the Bosnian vilayet before it had to give up this function to Sarajevo in 1850.

With the reconquest of southern Hungary and Slavonia by Prince Eugene , the country became a border zone. Austrian troops tried several times to conquer Bosnia as well, but this failed, so that the saver boundary was able to stabilize. However, Prince Eugene destroyed Sarajevo during a campaign. Fortifications and fortified villages were established in the areas around Bihać and along the Sava. In this border area also were Vlachs settled.

The economic and political decline of the Ottoman Empire also affected Bosnia. The centralist reform attempts of the 19th century ( Tanzimat ) were unable to remedy the situation because they were primarily aimed at military and administrative issues. However, the elite of Muslim landowners resisted social and economic reforms that would have improved the poor situation of the rural population, which is predominantly Christian. A large part of the Bosnian Muslims either had extensive land holdings, which he had tenants cultivate, or found employment in the Ottoman civil service, which was largely closed to Christians. The Christians, and especially the Orthodox Serbs, were mostly farmers who had to work as tenants under very poor conditions for the large landowners. This repeatedly led to uprisings in the 19th century.

The uprising of the Bosnian Serbs, which began in 1876 and was also supported by Serbia , was the beginning of the end of Ottoman rule. In the same year Serbia and Montenegro started a war against the Ottoman Empire . However, the governments of the small Balkan countries had underestimated the strength of their opponents and were soon on the defensive. The Serbs were only saved from a military catastrophe by the intervention of the Russians, who admittedly had their own goals in the Balkans.

Austro-Hungarian time

→ Main article : Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina 1878–1918

The Berlin Congress set in 1878, the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina under Austro-Hungarian administration (the state government of Bosnia and Herzegovina). Formally, Bosnia remained part of the Ottoman Empire until its annexation in 1908.

Against considerable resistance from partisans , especially Muslims under Hajji Loja , Bosnia-Herzegovina was occupied by the Austro-Hungarian army during the occupation campaign . Because the Austrian and Hungarian politicians could not agree on which of the two states of Austria-Hungary the new acquisitions should go to, the administration was transferred to the joint Austro-Hungarian Ministry of Finance . During this time the officials coined the double name Bosnia-Herzegovina (Bosna i Hercegovina), which is still the name of the country today.

A census in 1879 showed a total population of 1,158,164, which was made up of: 496,485 Greek Orthodox / Serbs (42.87%), 448,613 Muslims (38.73%), Catholics / Croats 209,391 R (18.08%) ), 3,426 Jews and 249 others. The 1895 census in Bosnia and Herzegovina deepened the statistical knowledge.

As a result, the kuk administration created an efficient school and medical system and enabled good economic development. During this time the industrial exploitation of the natural resources and forests of Bosnia-Herzegovina began, although it was proceeded with a sense of proportion (including reforestation projects). Narrow-gauge railway lines and important highways were built. For the first approaches to industrialization, skilled workers were necessary. This led to the immigration of people from other parts of the Danube monarchy in 1880–1910. In addition to Germans and Czechs, there were also Poles, Slovenes and Ruthenians. Some of these immigrants also bought property and worked as farmers.

The Bosnian in the Vienna cartoon. Caption: Thank God, now it belongs entirely to us! From: Kikeriki , October 15, 1908

In their rule, the Austrians also relied on the old Muslim elites, whom they knew how to take for themselves through various measures. Islam was officially recognized as a religion with equal rights . At the beginning of the 20th century, Austria-Hungary was the only Christian-dominated state that had legally regulated relationships with a Muslim religious community and therefore had Muslim religious instruction given in schools, maintained military imams in the army and organized a Muslim prison chaplaincy , granted religious institutions the right to self-government and gave them the status of a corporation under public law . The Islam Act, enacted on this occasion in 1912, remained largely unchanged in the Republic of Austria until it was amended by the Islam Act 2015 . More important for the good relations with the old Bosnian elite was that the Austrian administration left the conditions in the country largely untouched. The implemented agrarian reform brought own land property for only a small number of tenants and the replacement of subservience under the Muslim Agas. As positive as this had a positive effect on the relations between Austrians and the Muslim elite, the Serbian farmers in particular were dissatisfied.

The formal annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Emperor and King Franz Joseph I on October 5, 1908, triggered a European crisis . Even now, the land was not allocated to either of the two states of Austria-Hungary , but continued to be administered by the joint Ministry of Finance. The special administrative area had its own Bosnian-Herzegovinian nationality, defined in 1910 .

On February 17, 1910, the monarch enacted a state statute (the state constitution including the basic rights of citizens), state election rules, state parliament rules of procedure, an association law, an assembly law and a law on the District Councils. The area received a state chief (as a representative of the monarch, as he was also active in the Austrian crown lands ), a state parliament (with voting rights) and a state government that emerged from this, the chairman of which was also the state parliament president. State elections were held in 1910 before the First World War.

Bills of the state parliament required the approval of the governments of Austria and Hungary as well as the joint finance minister before their introduction and, after their resolution, like all legislative resolutions of the monarchy, the sanction (= approval) of the monarch in order to be able to come into force.

In 1914, Sarajevo was the scene of the assassination attempt on Franz Ferdinand that sparked the First World War . After the defeat of the Habsburg Monarchy at the end of 1918, Bosnia became part of Yugoslavia .

Second World War

Yugoslavia was the scene of several interwoven wars during the Second World War : the war waged by Germany and Italy against Yugoslavia, the war effort of the Axis powers against the Allies, the war of the occupying powers against Yugoslav resistance movements, the civil war of Croatian extremists against the Serbian population in Croatia and Bosnia and the war of the main resistance movements ( Chetniks and communist partisans ) against each other (see also: Yugoslav Partisan War ) . Around 900,000 people fell victim to these conflicts.

Territory of the "Independent State of Croatia" (red)

After the attack on Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941, the Axis powers, led by Germany, proclaimed the “ Independent State of Croatia ” ( Nezavisna država Hrvatska, NDH ) on April 10 and installed the Ustasha leader Ante Pavelić as Poglavnik (“Führer”). Besides Croatia, it included all of Bosnia and Herzegovina and was divided into a German and an Italian zone of influence. The dividing line ran diagonally through Bosnia.

On April 16, 1941, German troops marched into Sarajevo and devastated the synagogues there. In June the mass internment of Jews began. After the end of the war, it was estimated that of 14,000 Jews in Bosnia, nearly 12,000 were killed, including local residents. The main goal of the Ustaša movement, however, was to expel the large Serb minority (1.9 out of a total of 6.3 million inhabitants). Acts of terror against Serbs began in May 1941 and expanded in the following months, with at least several hundred Serbs murdered in the process. In June 1941, Serbian farmers in the Nevesinje region then expelled the Ustaša militias and established a "liberated area" for a short time. Then they turned against Croatian and Bosniak villagers, whom they viewed as collaborators. More than 600 Bosniaks were killed in the Bileća district in southern Herzegovina, and around 500 more in the area around Višegrad in July / August . Thousands of Bosnian Serbs joined one of the organized resistance movements. However, these had different characteristics and goals, so that the beginning civil war between Chetniks and communist partisans was already visible in October 1941. Another aspect of their competition was their attitude towards the Bosniaks and the status of Bosnia. Some of the leading Chetniks were fanatical Serb nationalists who wanted to slam Serbia, Bosnia, Dalmatia, Montenegro, parts of Croatia, Slavonia and northern Albania. Stevan Moljević, political leader of the movement from 1943, wrote in February 1942 that “the cleansing of the country from all non-Serbian elements” must follow. The communist attitude during the war was ambiguous and contradictory. Milovan Djilas presented a plan according to which Bosnia should become an autonomous province, but not a “national republic”.

Both resistance movements fought against the Axis powers, but more often against each other. Tito fled Serbia to the Foča region in Bosnia at the end of 1941 . In the summer of 1942 he marched with his partisans to the northwest to the area around Bihać . There the communist partisan associations founded the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ). In early 1943, the German leadership decided to drive Tito's troops from there. She wanted to strengthen control of the important hinterland because she feared the Allies might land on the Dalmatian coast. For the same reason, she planned an offensive against Chetniks in Herzegovina and Montenegro . For his part, the Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović wanted to drive out the partisans in order to pave the way for a rapid advance of the Allies inland to unite with his own troops. Tito, on the other hand, feared that an Allied occupation would mean the reinstatement of the Yugoslav king and declared to the German side that he was ready to act together with their divisions in Croatia against the troops of the Western powers that had been put ashore.

Such conflicting interests led to changing tactical alliances in 1943. Ultimately, the partisans were pushed back towards Herzegovina in early 1943. In any case, Tito had the plan to take action against Chetnik troops there and in Montenegro.

In May 1943, German troops also disarmed several thousand Montenegrin Chetniks. Then they turned against the partisans and almost locked them up on Mount Durmitor in northern Montenegro. In violent clashes, however, the partisans broke through the ring and moved westward through southeastern Bosnia. Eventually Tito set up his headquarters in the Jajce district .

Reports from British officers who had visited the partisans prompted the Allies to withdraw their support from Mihailović and turn to Tito. Its partisans gained another advantage over the Chetniks when, after the surrender of the Italian army in September 1943, large amounts of equipment fell into their hands. Now Chetnik commanders began to collaborate directly with the German side for the first time.

The second AVNOJ meeting took place in Jajce in November 1943. In the so-called “ AVNOJ resolutions ”, they agreed on a model for the new Yugoslavia. It provided for a federal state with six republics, including the People's Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (NRBiH). By recognizing the statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Tito tried to reduce the weight of Serbia in the planned new state.

Allied support for Tito was increased in 1944. In addition, Tito won over Croatian and Bosniak fighters, who were dissatisfied after the general collapse of the Ustaše rule. But other Serbs also joined the partisans. As part of the fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina was from May 25 to June 6, 1944, the 500th SS Parachute Battalion the operation rösselsprung carried out with the aim of Josip Broz Tito caught taking or killing and thus the management structures of the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army to weaken sustainably.

The retreat of the German occupiers began in the summer of 1944. Tito was sent new supplies of arms to prevent this withdrawal, but aimed much more at completing his victory in the civil war. By the end of the year, Soviet and allied Bulgarian forces had taken much of the east of the country. On April 6, 1945, Tito's partisans liberated Sarajevo. Within a few weeks they controlled all of Bosnia. On April 28, a "people's government" was set up. The Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed at the end of 1945.

The Bosnians themselves were involved in the fighting from 1941 to 1945 in different ways. A minority of Bosnian Croats actively supported the Ustaše. At first the majority welcomed the proclamation of the NDH, but became increasingly disillusioned and in 1943/44 joined the partisans in large numbers. The Bosnian Serbs quickly came into opposition to the Ustaša state and the occupying powers. Some of them joined the partisans, but also the Chetniks. The most confusing was the situation of the Bosniaks. A few days after the start of his “term of office” Ante Pavelić had promised them school and religious autonomy and assured them that they could “feel free, equal and satisfied”. Eleven former politicians from the Yugoslav Muslim Organization have been asked to join the Zagreb pseudo-parliament. The promised legal security was quickly lost in the NDH; As early as the summer and autumn of 1941, Muslim clergymen publicly protested in many places, particularly against violence against Jews and Serbs. The acts of violence against Bosniaks by Serbian villagers, particularly in Herzegovina, made it impossible for them to join the Serbian resistance against the Ustaše. Elsewhere, the Chetniks and other Serbian forces killed thousands of Bosniaks in the winter of 1941/42, in the summer of 1942, and in February 1943. Some Bosniaks joined the Ustaša militias; a larger number joined Tito's partisans. The first Bosniak partisan unit, the Mujina četa , was set up in August 1941. In the course of 1942 further Bosniak units emerged, in December the 8th Regional (Muslim) Brigade .

Overall, the number of Muslim recruits initially remained relatively small. There were also Bosniaks who advocated cooperation with Chetniks. In December 1943 it was estimated that up to eight percent of Mihailović's soldiers were Bosniaks. At times, Muslims set up local units of their own. Some of them were known as "green cadres". In October 1942 there was a "Bosniak Volunteer Legion" of around 4,000 men who tried to negotiate directly with the German side. A similar force, which was formed in the Cazin region in the summer of 1943 , had eight battalions. Many Bosniak political leaders saw a kind of autonomy for Bosnia as the only solution. From this attitude the famous "Memorandum" of Bosnian Bosniaks to Hitler of November 1942 arose. Apart from the fact that they boasted of "Gothic descent", the authors complained bitterly about the murders of the Ustasha of Bosniaks, demanded a stop of these activities and asked for approval to enlarge the Bosniak Volunteer Legion. In return, they would be prepared to submit this to direct German control. The demand for an autonomy for Bosnia was not acceptable to the German leadership, considering their connections to Zagreb. However, she was very interested in recruiting more soldiers. Against violent objections from Zagreb, the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS "Handschar" (Croatian No. 1) was set up in 1943 . Bosniak SS units fought on the side of the German occupation forces and the Ustaša against Serbs, Jews and Roma who fought in the partisan units. In addition, atrocities were committed against the civilian population, for example in the spring and summer of 1944 in northern and eastern Bosnia (Tuzla, Gradačac, Brčko, Bijeljina and Zvornik) with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of victims.

Bosnia-Herzegovina in socialist Yugoslavia

The history of Bosnia and Herzegovina in socialist Yugoslavia is largely determined by the general politics of the federal state, see Yugoslavia and History of Yugoslavia . Particularities that affected Bosnia more than the other republics are the religious policy (especially regarding Muslims), some specific economic developments and the implementation of the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo.

Religious politics

Stalinist politics were anti-religious, even if the constitution of 1946 formally described freedom of belief and the separation of church and state. The Catholic Church was treated harder than the Orthodox because some Catholic clergy in Croatia and Bosnia had collaborated with the Ustasha. Islam was thought to be backward and Asian and was also attacked because it not only affected private beliefs, but specifically social life. In several cases, Muslims have been killed by communists without any trial or investigation. The Sharia courts were overturned in 1946. The student organization “Young Muslims” resisted the campaign against Islam until several hundred of its members were imprisoned in 1949/50. In 1950 women were banned from wearing veils, mektebs were closed, and teaching children in mosques was made a criminal offense. In 1952, the dervish orders were banned and all Tekkes in Bosnia were closed. Muslim cultural and educational associations were abolished, only the state-controlled “Islamic Society” was allowed. Until 1964, no Islamic textbooks were allowed to appear in Yugoslavia. However, some of these measures were circumvented secretly. The Muslim foundations (“ Vakuf ”), which had functioned as charitable institutions for centuries, had already lost some of their property as a result of the expropriation of arable land and completely lost their foundation in 1958 with the nationalization of rental property.

In 1954 a new law on religion was passed, which placed the churches under the direct control of the state, but gave the Orthodox Church in particular more opportunities. Orthodox monasteries have been rebuilt since 1956. The treatment of Islam has improved since the late 1950s as part of Tito's "non-aligned" foreign policy, which had contacts with a number of Arab states. Soon a Muslim background was an advantage for the diplomatic service, even if the officials were often internally distant from their religion. In the 1980s there were occasional attempts at fundamentalist agitation in Bosnia, but with little effect. Decades of secular upbringing and communist political culture, reinforced by the increasing westernization of society and growing urbanization, provided little fertile ground for such agitation. In 1983, however, a trial was carried out against 13 Muslim activists for “hostile and counter-revolutionary acts on Muslim nationalist grounds”. The main defendant was Alija Izetbegović , who had written his “ Islamic Declaration ” 13 years earlier . The defendants, some of whom were "young Muslims" at the end of World War II, were charged with reviving the aims of a "terrorist" organization. Izetbegović was also accused of having advocated the introduction of a Western-style parliamentary democracy. The court sentenced him to a 14-year prison term, which was reduced to eleven years on appeal and ended with Izetbegović's early release in 1988 following the change in the political power structure.

Controversy over Muslims as an ethnic group

The question of whether “Muslims” in Bosnia denotes a religious, ethnic or national group was open in the early years of the “ Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia ”. The Communist Party's hope was that this problem would resolve itself by identifying Muslims with Croats or Serbs. At the first party congress after the end of the war, it was declared that “Bosnia-Herzegovina cannot be divided between Serbia and Croatia, not only because Serbs and Croats live mixed up on the entire territory, but also because Muslims still live in it have not decided nationally ”. Party members were forced to profess one of the two nationalities. In the 1948 census, Muslims had three options: they could call themselves Muslim / Serb or Muslim / Croat, or “Muslim, nationally undetermined” (or “undecided”). 72,000 declared themselves Serbs, 25,000 Croatians and 778,000 as "undetermined". In the 1953 census, the “Muslim” category was no longer given; officially the spirit of " Yugoslavism " was propagated. In Bosnia, 891,000 people registered as “Yugoslav / nationally indefinite”. In 1961 there was the category “Muslims in the ethnic sense”. The Bosnian constitution of 1963 spoke of "Serbs, Muslims and Croats", which did not expressly state, but implied that Muslims should also be regarded as an ethnic group with equal rights. In the elections for the Bosnian Communist League in 1965, the candidates were listed as “Serbs”, “Croatians” or “Muslims”. Officially, however, a communiqué was only published in May 1968 with the declaration: "It has become clear and contemporary socialist practice confirms that Muslims are a nation of their own". Despite strong objections from Serbian communists, this was accepted by the central government. In 1971 the rubric “Muslim in the sense of a nation” appeared on the census form for the first time. The advance towards this recognition was not an Islamic religious movement, but on the contrary was initiated by communists and other secular Muslims. They wanted to develop the identity of the ethnic group into something more clearly non-religious. An anti-communist trend to revive Islamic belief differed from this. However, the importance of this trend has been debated.

Economic development

In terms of economic development, Bosnia and Herzegovina lagged behind the republics of Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia. After the Second World War it was one of the poorest and most backward parts of Yugoslavia. In 1948 the illiteracy rate was 45 percent, 72 percent of the population lived from agriculture. After the break with the Cominform in 1948, however, there was a phase of economic growth. As a result of the economic blockade by the Eastern Bloc, the Yugoslav economic planners shifted their activity to the use of domestic resources.

Fearing a Soviet invasion, Tito had decided to relocate armaments and other strategically important industries to regions of Bosnia that were difficult to access. Starting from the raw material deposits in Bosnia, primarily iron ore and coal, a basic industry developed, which was followed by armaments factories. However, the relationship between the Bosnian raw materials factories and the manufacturing industries in other republics was often difficult, mainly for price-setting reasons. The more profitable industries were mainly in Slovenia and Croatia. At the end of the 1950s and 1960s, the economy steadily declined. In 1961, large parts of Bosnia were officially declared an underdeveloped region. The Bosnian national income was 20% below the national average in 1947 and 38% in 1967. In the early 1970s, Bosnia had the highest infant mortality rate and the highest illiteracy rate in Yugoslavia after Kosovo. During the 1950s and 1960s, around 16,000 people moved away from Bosnia each year - mostly Serbs who wanted to live in Serbia. This contributed to the fact that in the mid-1960s the Muslims overtook the Serbs as the strongest ethnic group. A turning point in the Bosnian economy came with the institutionalization of a Muslim "nation" in the late 1960s. At that time, other large factories and companies that turned to the civilian market emerged. They also often worked successfully abroad.

In the 1970s, in the course of the decentralization of Yugoslavia, large industrial projects were funded for more or less political reasons and high-rise housing estates were built in the suburbs. At the beginning of the 1980s there was a construction boom in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, which was primarily stimulated by the Winter Olympics, which were held in 1984. In Sarajevo, a joint venture with Volkswagen AG was established under the name TAS (Tvornica Automobila Sarajevo) , which from 1983 to 1992 built around 35,000 vehicles a year. In the 1980s, the agricultural company "Agrokomerc" achieved fame. The debt-obscuring concept of this group in Velika Kladuša in western Bosnia was the first large-scale private money creation in Yugoslavia. The group started out as a poultry farm in the 1960s and had grown so much under its charismatic director Fikret Abdić that in 1987 it employed 13,000 people in the region and was one of the thirty largest companies in Yugoslavia. Senior members of the Bosnian government were associated with the company. The company had issued bills of exchange valued at $ 500 million, which jeopardized the existence of 63 banks involved in the affair across the country. As a result, the Bosnian-Herzegovinian representative in the Yugoslav Presidium, Hamdija Pozderac, who would have become president next year, resigned. Abdić and another 100 people were arrested, and the president of the national bank of the republic was released. The entire region was threatened with a relapse into social misery. There were rumors that the Serbian leadership was already aiming to destabilize Bosnia and Herzegovina at this point and staging this “state bankruptcy at the partial republic level” in order to bring down the most prominent Muslim politicians.

The episode was indicative of a development that plagued all of Yugoslavia: the collapse of an overall ineffective economic system that was largely based on borrowed money and on close ties to the class of higher politicians who derived power and personal wealth from it. The strong increase in foreign debt and the decline in foreign exchange transfers by workers living abroad led to violent disputes in the republics over internal financial equalization, especially over the scarce foreign exchange income. The dissatisfaction of large parts of the population, among other things because of the high inflation and unemployment rates, but also because of the encrusted political structures, was ultimately the breeding ground for the success of the increasing nationalist propaganda of some politicians.

1989-1991

Since the summer of 1989, the Serbian side has claimed that Bosnia is “endangering the Serbs”. Higher Bosnian officials in autumn 1989 expressed fear that Serbia and Croatia would try to "redraw the borders". A special session of the chambers of the Bosnian parliament in March 1990 rejected ideas about changes to the Bosnian borders. The Union of Communists of Yugoslavia broke at the beginning of 1990. Several new parties were formed, including an offshoot of Tuđmans HDZ . Part of the HDZ's political program was initially to keep the Bosnian borders intact. In May 1990, the Democratic Action Party (SDA) was founded as the largest Muslim party. Alija Izetbegović, who had been released from prison in 1988, became chairman. On the one hand, the SDA emphasized the religious component, e.g. B. in the public symbols (green flags and half moons), on the other hand the pluralism of a multinational and multi-religious republic. The tension between these two elements led, among other things, to the fact that in September 1990 the previous SDA leader Adil Zulfikarpašić founded his own party with an expressly non-religious program: the Muslim Bosnian Organization (MBO). While Izetbegović was associated with the religious element of “religious or national identity”, Zulfikarpašić tried to lay the foundation for a policy that sought more than just confirmation of their national identity. In July 1990 the Serbian Democratic Party was founded in Bosnia. It appeared under the abbreviation “SDS” - like the party that had already campaigned for autonomy in the Croatian “Krajina”. In her program for the elections on November 18, 1990, she vaguely advocated the “defense of Serbian rights”, but did not speak of a partition of Bosnia, let alone a warlike one. In addition, the reform communists and the “Federation of Reform Forces” founded by Prime Minister Marković were candidates as expressly Yugoslav-minded groups.

In the elections for the two chambers of parliament, the SDA won 86 seats (out of 240), the MBO 13 seats, the SDS 72, the HDZ 44, the reform communists and their allies 14 and the Marković party 12 seats. Izetbegović could have ruled with a coalition of Muslims and Croats, but formed a formal coalition between the three largest parties, which was later attributed to him as a sign of his good faith. When the government took office at the end of 1990, the general situation in Yugoslavia was very tense (see Yugoslav Wars ). At the beginning of 1991 Slobodan Milošević publicly threatened that he would annex entire territories of Croatia and Bosnia if someone tried to replace the federal structure of Yugoslavia with a looser alliance structure. The Bosnian government sided with Slovenia and Croatia in the debates about the federal structure, but could not fully support them. Many Bosnians were concerned about the prospect that Bosnia-Herzegovina would be completely at the mercy of Serbia if the two republics left Yugoslavia.

Serbia, however, openly questioned the intended borders of Croatia and Bosnia. In May 1991, the Bosnian SDS began to demand the separation of large parts of northern and western Bosnia. They were to be united with the Croatian "Krajina" to a new republic. Three areas of Bosnia with predominantly Serbian inhabitants were declared "Serbian Autonomous Regions" by the SDS. In July 1991 it became clear that there were regular arms deliveries from Serbia to units of the Bosnian Serbs. In early August 1991, Zulfikarpašić, the leader of the MBO, attempted to reach a "historic agreement" with the SDS that would guarantee the integrity of the Bosnian Republic. However, such an agreement between a large and a small party would not have had a constitutionally binding status. Izetbegović protested on the grounds that the Croatians had not even been consulted. A few days after his criticism, the representatives of the SDS announced that they would now boycott the meetings of the state presidency. The next step of the SDS leadership in September 1991 was the involvement of the Yugoslav federal army to “protect” the “Serbian autonomous regions”. Federal troops were relocated to Herzegovina and at the end of September set the "borders" of the "Serbian autonomous region of Herzegovina". Other army bases on Bosnian territory (including Banja Luka ) were used for military operations against Croatia. Major communication centers were occupied by the army. In the winter of 1991/92 positions for heavy artillery were built around the larger Bosnian cities. When the fighting in Croatia came to an end in January / February 1992, tanks and artillery of the Federal Army were "withdrawn" with the approval of the UN. H. moved to Bosnia.

The underlying political plan was presented at the congress of the Serbian Socialist Party on October 9, 1991: “In the new Yugoslav state there will be at least three federal units: Serbia, Montenegro and a unified Bosnia-Knin. If the Bosnian Muslims wish to remain in the new Yugoslav state, they can do so. If they try to fall away, they have to know that they are surrounded by Serbian territory. ” In the Bosnian parliament, it was discussed whether Bosnia should declare its sovereignty. Before voting for it, Radovan Karadžić instructed SDS MPs to leave parliament and established a so-called “Serbian National Assembly” in Banja Luka.

The attitude of Croatia and the Bosnian Croats towards a possible independent Bosnia-Herzegovina was inconsistent: A smaller party in Croatia, the "Party of the Right", called for the annexation of all of Bosnia by Croatia. The Bosnian-Herzegovinian HDZ found itself in a difficult situation. The Bosnian Croats in central and northeastern Bosnia had an interest in a stable Bosnia-Herzegovina. Many Croatians in Herzegovina would have liked to join the newly created independent Croatia. There were talks with Tuđman in which he declared his willingness to give a “guarantee” that an independent Bosnian state would be respected, but also statements to the contrary on his part. At a meeting with Milošević in Karadjordjevo in March 1991, the two did not expressly agree on the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but talked about a "Serbian-Croatian compromise" and were not prepared to support an independent Bosnian state. Tuđman was also aware of the opinion that Bosnia-Herzegovina was created “through the Ottoman occupation of the former Croatian territories”, that all Bosnian Muslims “would feel like Croats” and that the Croatian state should be restored “within its historical borders”. Tuđman was repeatedly accused of having repeatedly endangered Croatia's important alliance with the Muslims by repeatedly speaking in 1992 about the partition of Bosnia, and of having encouraged the Serbian side not to accept the emerging Bosnian state.

War in Bosnia-Herzegovina 1992-1995

see main article: Bosnian War

Of the wars that were waged in the successor states of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the first half of the 1990s , the one in Bosnia and Herzegovina was the most protracted and - in terms of the number of victims - the most severe (see Yugoslav Wars ). After the 10-day war in Slovenia and after the first phase of the war in Croatia , during which a third of the area of ​​Croatia came under Serbian control, the political situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina came to a head at the end of 1991. Both Serbs and Croats filed claims to large parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Tensions escalated after the declaration of a "Republic of the Serb people in Bosnia-Herzegovina" by a self-proclaimed parliament in January 1992 and a referendum in which the Croat and Bosniak population of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a majority decision for the 1 March 1992 Independence had met . In the referendum, largely boycotted by Serbs, with 63% voter turnout, 99.4% were in favor of state sovereignty. Immediately afterwards, fierce fighting broke out in several places. At the beginning of the fighting on the Serbian side, groups of militants joined forces in mid-May to form the army of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina . Bosniak and Croatian associations fought on the other side. The Bosniak units were combined to form the Bosnian government army in the summer of 1992 . The Bosnian-Croatian associations formed the Croatian Defense Council (HVO), which was led from Croatia. The Bosnian Serb army was initially far superior due to its cooperation with the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and at the beginning of June 1992 controlled 60 percent of Bosnian territory. They faced an inconsistent alliance of the Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks, who from October 1992 increasingly fought against each other. The aim of the Serbs and Croats was to conquer as much land as possible in order to achieve more favorable negotiating positions for later territorial division at the Geneva peace negotiations that have been going on since September.

Sanctions by the international community such as an economic and oil embargo against the rest of Yugoslavia , a no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina, economic sanctions by the European Community and a naval blockade by NATO and WEU could not contain the war. The embargo primarily harmed the Bosniaks, while the Serbs were able to fall back on large supplies of the Yugoslav Army and the Croats had already imported large quantities of weapons via Hungary. So the Bosniaks faced Serbian and Croatian tanks with light guns. In June 1992 the UN Security Council decided to send UNPROFOR troops to control the airfield near the Serb- besieged capital Sarajevo in order to facilitate humanitarian aid flights.

At the end of June 1992, the fighting was concentrated in the eastern Bosnian Bosniak enclaves (e.g. Goražde , Žepa and Srebrenica ), the region around Mostar and the so-called "Northern Corridor" near Brčko , a link between Serbian-populated and occupied areas. Some areas (mostly with a traditional majority of Serbian population) were under Serbian control from the start. There was no open fighting here; however, the non-Serbian population was massively expelled (so-called " ethnic cleansing ") and there were often cruel massacres of the civilian population. The number of refugees rose rapidly. In addition to northeastern Bosnia, there was open fighting in Herzegovina. Mainly Serbian and Croatian troops clashed there. Bosniaks from eastern Herzegovina initially fled west and fought with the mostly Croatian troops. When later fighting broke out between Croats and Bosniaks, they fell into a kind of trap (e.g. in the eastern half of Mostar).

IFOR stationed in 1995 in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Political Organization (Dayton 1995)

From June 1992 to August 1995, Bosnian Muslim forces under the leadership of Naser Orić attacked Serbian villages in eastern Bosnia and caused massive destruction. Numerous Serbian civilians were displaced or captured, tortured and murdered, including in the Srebrenica police station, which was controlled by Bosnian Muslim troops during this period.

Beginning in July 1992 called the "Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia-Herzegovina" in the Herzegovinian town Grude the "Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna " with capital from Mostar.

In August 1992, the American journalist Roy Gutman reported for the first time on mass murders in internment camps run by Bosnian Serbs, particularly in Omarska near Prijedor (northwestern Bosnia ). Refugees also reported about such camps, in which a total of more than 100,000 people were interned. They later reported that thousands of Muslim women had been raped by Serbs in special camps. However, the United Nations also reported numerous Bosnian Muslim and Croatian internment camps where Serb civilians had been detained, tortured and killed. In October 1992 fighting began in central Bosnia between the previously allied Croats and Bosniaks.

The year 1993 was marked by a multitude of failed peace plans (including the Vance-Owen-Plan , Owen-Stoltenberg-Plan ), countless cease-fire agreements that were entered into and were broken again shortly afterwards, and the course of the front lines became increasingly confused.

1993 was u. a. Srebrenica declared a UN protection zone.

On January 8, 1993, Bosnian Serbs shot and killed the Bosnian Deputy Prime Minister Hakija Turajlić , who was in Sarajevo with a UN convoy on the way from the airport to the seat of government, at a checkpoint in his car.

In July 1995, troops from the Republika Srpska under the command of General Ratko Mladić attacked the UN protection zone of Srebrenica and killed thousands of Bosniaks, mostly men. This incident is known as the Srebrenica massacre and has been legally classified as genocide by the UN International Court of Justice in The Hague .

Bosnia and Herzegovina under the Dayton Treaty

In 1995 the peace treaty of Dayton took place , whereby the country is divided into two entities : Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska under one roof, the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina . At the same time, international military and civilian control of the country was agreed, which continues to this day.

With the first elections for the collective state presidency of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina on September 14, 1996 , Alija Izetbegović, Krešimir Zubak and Momčilo Krajišnik were elected. Thereby 2,311,998 votes were counted.

In 2004, the President of the European Commission , Romano Prodi , submitted a plan ( Integrated Rehabilitation Project Plan / Survey of the Architectural and Archaeological Heritage (IRPP / SAAH) ) for the conservation and worthy of protection of 20 selected monuments or monument ensembles that were affected by this war Bosnia-Herzegovina before. Numerous cultural treasures of regional and European importance had been destroyed by acts of war. Libraries and museum collections were particularly hard hit.

See also

Portal: Bosnia and Herzegovina  - Overview of Wikipedia content on the subject of Bosnia and Herzegovina

• History of Yugoslavia
• International conflicts in the successor states of Yugoslavia

literature

General representations

• Agilolf Keßelring on behalf of the Military History Research Office (Ed.): Bosnia-Herzegovina (=  guide to history ). 2nd Edition. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2007, ISBN 978-3-506-76428-7 .
• Noel Malcolm: History of Bosnia . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-10-029202-2 (Original title: Bosnia - A Short History . London 1994.).

middle Ages

• Sima Ćirković: Istorija srednjovekovne bosanske države. Beograd 1964.
• Nada Klaić: Srednjovjekovna Bosna. Zagreb 1994.

Ottoman time

• Markus Koller: Bosnia on the threshold of modern times. A cultural history of violence (1747–1798) . Series: Southeast European Works, No. 121. Munich, 2004, ISBN 3-486-57639-9 .
• Markus Koller: The Ottoman History of Southeast Europe , in: European History Online (EGO), ed. from the Institute for European History (IEG), Mainz March 3, 2012. online

Austrian and Yugoslav time

• Emily Greble: Sarajevo 1941-1945. Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Hitler's Europe , Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY ISBN 978-0-8014-4921-5
• Holm Sundhaussen : History of Yugoslavia 1918–1980. Stuttgart 1982.
• Petar Vrankić: Religion and Politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878–1918). Paderborn u. a. 1998, ISBN 3-506-79511-2 .

Present from 1991

• Hans Krech : The Civil War in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992–1997). A manual. Publishing house Dr. Köster, Berlin 1997. (Armed conflicts after the end of the East-West conflict, vol. 2.)
• Helen Walasek et al .: Bosnia and the Destruction of Cultural Heritage , Ashgate, 2015.

Web links

Commons : History of Bosnia and Herzegovina  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Bosnia and Herzegovina  - Sources and full texts

• Bosnia in the Middle Ages (short overview by Robert Mießner)
• Gerhard Meder, Michael Reimann: Chronicle of the Bosnian Conflict (Jan. 1990 to March 1996) ( Memento from September 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
• The wars in Boßnien in the military campaigns 1737, 1738 and 1739 , 1789 E-Book of the University Library Vienna ( eBooks on Demand )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Σερβίτιον transcr. Serbition or Σέρβινου (Ω review) transcr. Serbinou
2. ↑ ^{a b} Markus Koller and Konrad Clewing: From the Christian Middle Ages to the 18th century . In: Agilolf Keßelring (Hrsg.): Guide to history - Bosnia-Herzegovina . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2007, ISBN 978-3-506-76428-7 , p. 13 .
3. ^ Stjepan I. Kotromanić | Hrvatska enciklopedija. Retrieved January 7, 2018 . 
4. ^ Robert J. Donia, John VA Fine: Bosnia and Hercegovina. A tradition betrayed. Columbia University Press, New York 1994, ISBN 0-231-10160-0 , p. 87.
5. ↑ The new Islamic Law 2015
6. ↑ Highest resolution of February 17, 1910 regarding the introduction of constitutional institutions , Law and Ordinance Gazette for Bosnia and Herzegovina No. 19/1910 (= p. 21 ff.)
7. ^ Marie-Janine Calic : The war in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Causes, conflict structures, international attempted solutions . Verlag Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-518-11943-5 , p. 58 f.
8. ↑ Jürgen Elvert (Ed.): The Balkans. Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-515-07016-8 , p. 256.
9. ↑ From Civil War To Assassination: Amid peace negotiations, Bosnia's Deputy Prime Minister is murdered Time, January 18, 1993
10. ↑ Unless otherwise stated, the statements in this article are based on the first instance court judgment of the UN war crimes tribunal against Radislav Krstić, the trial protocols available in German (see Bogoeva and Fetscher), the UN report on Srebrenica from 1999, the book of D. Rohde (who received the Pulitzer Prize for his reports on the subject) and in part also on the NIOD investigation.
11. ↑ http://www.icty.org/x/cases/krstic/tjug/en/krs-tj010802e.pdf
12. ↑ International Law: Genocide in Srebrenica. In: Zeit Online. February 26, 2007, accessed January 12, 2011 . 
13. ↑ Results of the elections on the website of the OSCE Mission for Bosnia and Herzegovina  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
14. ↑ Hans Schmeets, Janet Exel: The 1996 Bosnia-Herzegovina Elections: An Analysis of the Observations. Springer-Verlag, The 1996 Bosnia-Herzegovina Elections, ISBN 0-7923-4505-3 , pp. 131f.
15. ↑ Integrated Rehabilitation Project Plan / Survey of the Architectural and Archaeological Heritage (IRPP / SAAH) ( Memento from June 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 2.0 MB)
16. ^ Nataša Golob: Libraries at War: Former Yugoslavia 1991–1995. In: Gazette du livre médiéval, Volume 28 (1996) , ISSN  0753-5015 , pp. 38-43, accessed December 9, 2009.