Bosnia and Herzegovina History

For centuries, BH was part of the Roman Empire.  In the seventh century, Slavs from across the Danube settled in the Balkans including what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina.  They morphed into Slovenes, Croats, Serbs and other groups.  After Rome fell, the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople tried to take control of the region but this was contested by various kingdoms such as Venetians which tried to fill the vacuum.  In the 9th century, the Serbs and Croats who had settled in the Balkans split up BH.

A few centuries later, a little known faith, the Bogomil, an offshoot of Christianity, played a role in Bosnian politics.  The Bosnian nobles embraced this faith and rejected Catholic and Orthodox faiths in the 1180s to try to broaden Bosnian autonomy.  In the 14th century, Bosnia power expanded under a Bosnian king who joined forces with the principality of Hum (the forerunner of Herzegovina) to unite southern Slavs, and conquered Croatia and Dalmatia. 

In 1463, Bosnia fell to the Ottomans, followed by Herzegovina in 1483.  Since then, many Catholic and Orthodox Christians fled, but the Bogomil nobles converted to Islam to retain their land and feudal privileges thus creating a Slavic Muslim noble class which exploited the Christian and Muslim serfs.  Mistreatment by the ruling class led to peasant revolts in the 19th century, including a peasant uprising across the Balkans in 1875, the ensuing war between the Europeans and the Ottomans in 1878, and the defeat of the Turks and the right of the Austro-Hungrian Empire to occupy BH to restore order. 

While BH was under Austro-Hungarian occupation, the authorities sought to increase the Catholic population of Bosnia by colonising northern Bosnia with Catholic Slavs and Germans.  The outcome was particularly not satisfactory to the Serbs who had long aimed to create a pan-Slavic nation.

Following WW I and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire, BH became part of the South Slav State of Yugoslavia, and later the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia after WW II, and reestablishment of BH as a republic with its medieval borders within Yugoslavia.  However, in the 1980s, there was a strong push among the Serbs in Serbia and those living outside Serbia in the republics to dominate the politics of the entire country, and a counter-movement on the part of the non-Serbs to maintain autonomy or independence.  Soon afterwards began the Yugoslav Wars in 1990, and BH declared independence in April 1992 from Yugoslavia, immediately followed by Bosnian Serbs attempting to secede from BH by force.  The Wars formally ended in 1995 following signing of the Dayton Accord.