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Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina Destinations Travel Guide

Language: Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian

Currency: Convertible Mark (BAM)

Calling Code: 387

Description of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina, commonly called Bosnia-Herzegovina, or simply Bosnia, is a European sovereign country, with capital in Sarajevo, located at the confluence of central and south-eastern Europe, and bordering Croatia, north, west and south ; with Serbia to the east; with Montenegro to the east and south, and with the Adriatic Sea (only 30 kilometers).

In 1992 the former Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina gained its independence as Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as one of the six constituent federal units of the former Yugoslavia that emerged at the end of the First World War, and after the Bosnian War was constituted as federal republic under the terms of the Dayton Agreements (1995), which provided for its administration supervised by a high representative elected by the Council of the European Union. Its structure is decentralized and divided into two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska. At the moment, there is no expected date for the end of the European protectorate over Bosnia and Herzegovina and the recovery of its full sovereignty. It should be noted that Bosnia and Herzegovina is the only country in Europe that is a member of the G-77, a group of 77 plus China.

Travel Destinations in Bosnia and Herzegovina

History of Bosnia and Herzegovina

The oldest inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina were Neanderthals who lived here in the Early Paleolithic. In the Bronze Age, Illyrian tribes settled on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the IV century BC e. Celts came here, which in time partially merged with the more numerous Illyrians. Since the 1st century AD e. - under the rule of Ancient Rome: as part of the provinces of Upper, Lower Pannonia and Dalmatia. Since the VI century - as part of Byzantium. In the VI – VII centuries it was inhabited by Serbs. Bosnia as a tribal reign is mentioned in the X century.

According to the Byzantine emperor Konstantin Bagryanorodny, Serbs appeared in the Balkans in the 1st half of the 7th century. They occupied the territories of modern Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of Croatia. After resettlement on the Balkan Peninsula, the first territorial associations of the Serbs, like most of the southern Slavs, had zhups. The Illyrians were assimilated by the Slavs or migrated to the mountainous regions, where they continued to live under the name of the Vlachs. Some time after the resettlement to the Balkans, the Serbs formed several large communities, which then became state entities. Between the rivers Cetina and Neretva there was the Principality of Neretva with the nearby islands, which the Byzantines called Pagania. The area between Neretva and Dubrovnik was called Zahumye. The lands from Dubrovnik to the Bay of Kotor were occupied by Travunia and Konavle. Further south, to the Boyana River, was Duklja, which later became known as Zeta. Between the rivers Sava, Vrbas and Ibar there was Raska, and between the rivers Drina and Bosna - Bosnia. After the death of the Serbian prince Caslav Klonimirovich, Bosnia fell away from his state. In 1018, it nominally came under the rule of Byzantium. At the beginning of the XII century, part of Bosnia as a result of wars fell into Hungary. The Hungarian king received the title ramae rex (king of Rama, that is, Bosnia), since the state lay mainly in the valley of the Rama river. The king of Hungary appointed his governors, the bans, to rule Bosnia.

Bosnian state
Bosnia, which originally arose in the basin of the Bosnia and Vrbas rivers, as an integrated state formation appeared, probably, in the X-XI centuries. At the head of this state was a ban. At the beginning of the XII century, the Duklian state collapsed, and Bosnia gained independence. After the Byzantine-Hungarian war in the 1160s, Bosnia fell under Byzantium for 13 years, after which it returned to the rule of the Hungarian kingdom as a vassal. The country was divided into regions called zhups [en] *. The first known church organization in Bosnia at the end of the 11th century was the Catholic Bishop Archbishopric.

At the end of the XII century, the first heretics appeared under the bathhouse Kulin, who united in the Bosnian church. In 1234, to fight the heresy at the call of the popes, devastating campaigns of Hungarian feudal lords began, who dreamed of subjugating Bosnia. Ancient Bosnian literature was closely associated with the Bosnian church. Stepan Kotromanich significantly expanded the state to the west and north, including Hum. Ban Stepan Tvrtko was married in 1377 in the Serbian monastery of Mileshev at the tomb of St. Sava as "king of the Serbs, Bosnia, Pomerania and Western countries." After the death of Stepan Tvrtko, the central authority weakened, the Bosnian ruler strengthened, primarily of such clans as Horvatini, Kosachi and Pavlovich. The last king of Bosnia, Stepan Tomashevich (the last ruler of a medieval Serbian state in 1459), under the threat of a Turkish invasion of Bosnia, turned to Rome and Venice for help, and refused to pay a devastating tribute to the country to the Sultan. In response to this, in 1463, Sultan Mehmed II with his army invaded Bosnia. In the same year, Stepan Tomashevich was executed near the city of Egg, the Bosnian state ceased to exist. In 1482 Herzegovina was completely conquered.

Turkish period
For the sake of saving their own property, Bosnian feudal lords were forced to convert to Islam, which in the second half of the 16th century completely supplanted Christianity in the upper strata of the population. Feudal-dependent peasants were called paradise. Fortresses with military garrisons operated in many cities in the Balkans, and by the sixteenth century the ethnic composition of large cities had changed dramatically, the main population of which were the Turkish colonists and Turchens, who eventually lost touch with the national culture. The Islamization of the urban population guaranteed more favorable conditions for trade and crafts. Unlike Herzegovina and Serbia, in Bosnia, peasants massively converted to Islam. The city of Sarajevo became a major trade and craft center of Bosnia, cities such as Foca, Banja Luka, Livno, Mostar grew. At the same time, a number of old trade and craft centers fell into decay. In 1580, the Bosnian Eylet was created.

In the first half of the XIX century, the Bosnian feudal lords of the country opposed the reforms carried out by Turkey. To weaken the Bosnian opposition, the Turkish government in 1833 separated Herzegovina from Bosnia. The power of Turkey was established only in 1851. In the first half of the 19th century, a national liberation movement developed in the Catholic clergy was developed in the country. Its result was the Bosnian-Herzegovinian uprising of 1875-1878. In 1878, Bosnia and Herzegovina gained autonomy over the San Stefano Peace concluded between Russia and the Ottoman Empire after the end of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. Soon, however, according to the Berlin treaty of the same year, Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina from July to October 1878.

XX century
In 1908, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. Part of the society of Bosnia and Herzegovina hoped for the liberation of the country from the power of Austria-Hungary and the creation of a state led by Serbia. In 1913-1914, the Serbian nationalist organization Mlada Bosna was formed. Among its participants was Gavrilo Princip, who on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo, committed the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sofia, which led to the outbreak of the First World War.

On October 29, 1918, during the collapse of Austria-Hungary, the Croatian Sabor in Zagreb proclaimed the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, whose authorities immediately announced their cessation of participation in the war. On December 1 of that year, the state merged with the Serbian Kingdom and Montenegro into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In 1929, the Bosnian-Herzegovinian constituencies in the state under the new name of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia entered the Vrba, Drinsky, Zeta, and Primorsky bans. After the German attack on Yugoslavia on April 10, 1941, the Ustashi proclaimed the "Independent Croatian State", which included the lands of Bosnia and Herzegovina. By the end of May 1945, Bosnia was liberated from the German Ustash invaders. During the war, about 407 thousand inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina were killed, many settlements were almost completely destroyed, including the cities of Bosanska Krup, Klyuch, Glamoch, Visegrad, Bihach, Bosanski Brod and others.

In 1945, the People’s Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina joined the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, and since 1963, the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In the 1960s, the ratio in the number of Orthodox and Muslims in favor of the latter changed. In 1961, I. Tito granted Muslims the status of a nation (now Bosniaks). During the years of the existence of socialist Yugoslavia, the republic especially strictly observed the principle of “brotherhood and unity” of peoples, appointing equal numbers of representatives of three nationalities to positions in government bodies and institutions. In 1984, in the midst of a deep economic crisis that erupted after the death of I. Tito, the XIV Winter Olympic Games were held in Sarajevo.

After a referendum and declaration of independence in the spring of 1992, a Bosnian war broke out that swept the whole country. Muslims fought against the Serbs or Croats depending on the region, sometimes they fought together with the Croats against the Serbs. The conflict ended with NATO military intervention and the signing of the Dayton Accords on December 14, 1995, which provided for the preservation of a single state consisting of two parts: the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Republika Srpska.