Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia first appears clearly in the historical record in the late twelfth century, when Ban Kulin governed the land between roughly 1180 and 1204. His charter of 29 August 1189, granting the merchants of Dubrovnik freedom to trade throughout his realm, is among the oldest surviving state documents of the South Slavs and a foundation stone of Bosnian statehood. Lying between the Catholic kingdom of Hungary-Croatia and the Orthodox Serbian and Byzantine worlds, Bosnia developed as a distinct frontier polity, periodically pressed by Hungarian claims of overlordship but retaining its own rulers.

Two features set medieval Bosnia apart. The first was the Bosnian Church, an organisation of monastic 'krstjani' (Christians) regarded by Rome as heretical and accused of dualism, which gave Bosnia a reputation for religious independence and drew repeated crusading threats and Franciscan missions. The second was the stećci, monumental limestone tombstones carved between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries with reliefs of figures, hunts, dances and enigmatic symbols; tens of thousands survive, and a selection across Bosnia and neighbouring lands was inscribed by UNESCO as World Heritage in 2016.

The realm reached its height under the Kotromanić dynasty. Ban Stjepan Kotromanić (ruled 1322–1353) expanded Bosnia southward, incorporating the principality of Hum, the future Herzegovina. His successor Tvrtko I extended the state to a stretch of the Dalmatian coast and in 1377 had himself crowned king, making Bosnia for a time the strongest power of the western Balkans. After Tvrtko's death in 1391 dynastic quarrels and overmighty magnates weakened the throne, and Hungarian and Ottoman intervention steadily eroded the kingdom until the Ottomans conquered it in 1463.

Turning points

1. 29 Aug 1189Formation

   Charter of Ban Kulin

   Ban Kulin granted the merchants of Dubrovnik (Ragusa) freedom to trade across Bosnia; the document is one of the oldest state charters of the South Slavs and a landmark of early Bosnian statehood.

   [6] [1]

2. 1322–1353Politics & Power

   Stjepan Kotromanić expands Bosnia

   Ban Stjepan Kotromanić of the Kotromanić dynasty enlarged Bosnia southward, incorporating the principality of Hum, the territory later known as Herzegovina.

   [2] [1]

3. 1377Formation

   Coronation of Tvrtko I

   Tvrtko I was crowned king, raising Bosnia from a banate to a kingdom; under him it reached the Dalmatian coast and became, briefly, the most powerful state in the western Balkans.

   [2] [1]

4. 12th–16th c.Culture & Ideas

   The stećci tombstones

   Across medieval Bosnia, communities raised monumental carved limestone tombstones known as stećci; sites in Bosnia and neighbouring lands were inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage in 2016.

   [7]

5. 1463War & Rupture

   Ottoman conquest of Bosnia

   The armies of Sultan Mehmed II conquered most of Bosnia in 1463, ending the medieval kingdom and beginning more than four centuries of Ottoman rule.

   ↗See the data

   [1] [3]

Figures of the era

With the conquest of 1463 Bosnia became a province of the Ottoman Empire, governed as a sanjak and later an eyalet. The Ottomans developed the modest settlement of Vrhbosna into Sarajevo, which together with Mostar grew into a flourishing commercial and administrative centre adorned with mosques, bridges, bazaars and endowments. The Drina and Neretva were spanned by the great Ottoman bridges that survive today: the Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge at Višegrad, completed in the 1570s to designs by the imperial architect Sinan, and the single-arch Old Bridge (Stari Most) at Mostar, both later recognised by UNESCO.

Bosnia became, uniquely in the Balkans, a land where a large share of the local Slavic population embraced Islam. Conversion was gradual and shaped by economic and social incentives within the Ottoman order, in which full participation in civic and landholding life favoured Muslims. Over generations this produced a distinctive Bosnian Muslim community alongside the existing Orthodox and Catholic Christians; Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain settled in Sarajevo from the sixteenth century. The result was a remarkably interwoven, multi-confessional society organised in part through the Ottoman millet system.

From the seventeenth century the empire's long retreat exposed Bosnia to instability, heavy taxation and revolt. As a frontier province facing Habsburg Austria, it suffered repeated warfare and the loss of territory, while its largely autonomous Muslim landed elite resisted reform from Istanbul. By the mid-nineteenth century discontent, agrarian grievance among the Christian peasantry and great-power rivalry over the 'Eastern Question' had made Bosnia a flashpoint. A peasant uprising that began in Herzegovina in 1875 widened into a Balkan crisis that drew in the great powers and brought Ottoman rule to its close.

Turning points

1. 1463Politics & Power

   Bosnia incorporated into the Ottoman Empire

   Following the conquest, Bosnia became an Ottoman province; the settlement of Vrhbosna was developed into Sarajevo, the future provincial capital.

   [3] [1]

2. 16th c.Religion

   Islamization and a multi-confessional society

   Over generations much of Bosnia's Slavic population converted to Islam, creating, alongside Orthodox, Catholic and Jewish communities, the uniquely interwoven multi-confessional society that defines the country.

   [3]

3. 1566–1577Culture & Ideas

   The Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge, Višegrad

   The eleven-arch Ottoman bridge over the Drina at Višegrad was built to designs by the imperial architect Sinan; it was inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage in 2007.

   [9]

4. 1566Culture & Ideas

   The Old Bridge at Mostar (Stari Most)

   The single-arch Old Bridge over the Neretva, a masterpiece of Ottoman engineering, gave Mostar its name; the Old City of Mostar was inscribed by UNESCO in 2005 after the bridge's wartime destruction and reconstruction.

   [8]

5. 1875–1878War & Rupture

   Herzegovinian uprising and the Eastern Crisis

   A peasant revolt in Herzegovina widened into a great-power crisis over the 'Eastern Question', ending Ottoman rule and leading to Austro-Hungarian occupation in 1878.

   ↗See the data

   [1] [3]

Figures of the era

The Congress of Berlin in 1878 placed Bosnia and Herzegovina under Austro-Hungarian occupation while leaving it nominally under Ottoman sovereignty. Vienna built railways, schools and industry and imposed an orderly but paternalistic administration over a population it could not easily reconcile. In 1908 Austria-Hungary formally annexed the provinces, provoking an international crisis and inflaming South Slav nationalism, especially among young Serbs and others who dreamed of uniting the region's peoples into a single Yugoslav state and resented Habsburg rule.

That resentment exploded in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, when Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Young Bosnia movement, assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife Sophie. The killings set off the diplomatic chain reaction that, within weeks, plunged Europe into the First World War. The shots fired on the Sarajevo quayside thus made Bosnia the unlikely birthplace of the catastrophe that destroyed the old European order.

The defeat and collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918 brought Bosnia into the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, renamed Yugoslavia in 1929. Within this centralising, Serb-dominated monarchy Bosnia lost its historic identity, partitioned among administrative regions, while tensions among its communities and the wider Serb-Croat rivalry went unresolved. The interwar years brought political instability and, after the royal dictatorship of the 1930s, left Bosnia exposed when Yugoslavia was invaded and dismembered by the Axis powers in April 1941.

Turning points

1. 1878Politics & Power

   Austro-Hungarian occupation

   The Congress of Berlin authorised Austria-Hungary to occupy and administer Bosnia and Herzegovina, ending effective Ottoman rule while leaving nominal sovereignty in Istanbul.

   [1] [3]

2. 1908Politics & Power

   Annexation by Austria-Hungary

   Vienna formally annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, triggering a European diplomatic crisis and inflaming South Slav nationalist opposition to Habsburg rule.

   [1] [10]

3. 28 Jun 1914War & Rupture

   Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

   In Sarajevo, Gavrilo Princip of the Young Bosnia movement shot dead Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, the act that triggered the outbreak of the First World War.

   ↗See the data

   [10] [11]

4. 1918Politics & Power

   Bosnia joins the Yugoslav kingdom

   With Austria-Hungary's collapse, Bosnia was incorporated into the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later renamed Yugoslavia, losing its separate administrative identity.

   [1]

Figures of the era

When the Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, Bosnia and Herzegovina was absorbed into the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), the fascist puppet regime led by the Ustaša movement. The NDH unleashed terror against Serbs, Jews and Roma, while the territory became a battleground among the Ustaša, the royalist Serb Chetniks, and the communist-led Partisans of Josip Broz Tito. The mountainous Bosnian interior, where some of the war's fiercest fighting and gravest atrocities occurred, was central to the Partisan struggle.

It was on Bosnian soil that the future shape of Yugoslavia was drawn. On 25–26 November 1943, at Mrkonjić Grad, the State Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ZAVNOBiH) held its first session and proclaimed Bosnia and Herzegovina a federal unit of its equal peoples. This affirmed that Bosnia, with its mixed population, would be restored as a distinct republic rather than divided between Serbia and Croatia.

After the Partisan victory, the People's Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina became one of the six constituent republics of Tito's socialist Yugoslavia. For four decades it enjoyed relative stability, industrialisation and a celebrated multi-ethnic coexistence, symbolised by Sarajevo's hosting of the 1984 Winter Olympic Games. Yet the republic's three large communities, Bosniaks (Muslims), Serbs and Croats, remained finely balanced, and after Tito's death in 1980 the slow unravelling of Yugoslavia's federal order, amid economic crisis and rising nationalism, placed that balance under mounting strain.

Turning points

1. Apr 1941War & Rupture

   Axis invasion and the NDH

   The Axis dismembered Yugoslavia and incorporated Bosnia into the Ustaša-led Independent State of Croatia, whose terror against Serbs, Jews and Roma helped ignite a brutal multi-sided civil war.

   ↗See the data

   [12] [1]

2. 25 Nov 1943Politics & Power

   First session of ZAVNOBiH

   At Mrkonjić Grad the anti-fascist council ZAVNOBiH proclaimed Bosnia and Herzegovina a federal unit of its equal peoples, ensuring it would be restored as a distinct republic within Yugoslavia.

   [12]

3. 1945Politics & Power

   Bosnia a republic of socialist Yugoslavia

   After the Partisan victory, Bosnia and Herzegovina became one of the six federal republics of Tito's socialist Yugoslavia, with its multi-ethnic society constitutionally recognised.

   [1]

4. 1984Culture & Ideas

   Sarajevo Winter Olympics

   Sarajevo hosted the 1984 Winter Olympic Games, a high point of confidence for the multi-ethnic socialist republic less than a decade before war engulfed the city.

   [1]

Figures of the era

As Yugoslavia disintegrated, Bosnia and Herzegovina held an independence referendum on 29 February and 1 March 1992. With most Bosnian Serbs boycotting it, the result was an overwhelming vote for independence; the country was recognised internationally and admitted to the United Nations on 22 May 1992. Bosnian Serb forces, backed by the Yugoslav People's Army and the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milošević, rejected the outcome and seized large territories, beginning a war that claimed many tens of thousands of lives and displaced millions in the worst fighting Europe had seen since 1945.

The war's defining horrors were the siege of Sarajevo and the campaigns of 'ethnic cleansing'. The siege of the capital, which began on 5 April 1992 and was not fully lifted until early 1996, lasted some 1,425 days, the longest siege of a capital city in modern history; Serb artillery in the surrounding hills shelled the encircled city day after day, killing thousands of civilians. Across the country, forces sought to expel and destroy rival communities through killings, mass deportation, detention camps and systematic sexual violence, crimes later prosecuted before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

In July 1995 the war reached its nadir at Srebrenica, a Bosniak town that the UN Security Council had designated a 'safe area' in 1993. After Bosnian Serb forces under General Ratko Mladić overran the enclave on 11 July 1995, they separated and executed up to 8,000 Bosniak men and boys and forcibly removed some 30,000 women, children and elderly. Both the ICTY and, in its judgment of 26 February 2007, the International Court of Justice found that these killings were committed with the specific intent to destroy the Muslims of Bosnia in part, and so constituted genocide; the ICJ further held that Serbia had violated the Genocide Convention by failing to prevent the genocide and to cooperate fully with the ICTY.

Turning points

1. 29 Feb – 1 Mar 1992Independence

   Independence referendum

   Bosnians voted overwhelmingly for independence in a referendum largely boycotted by Serbs; the country was recognised internationally and joined the UN on 22 May 1992.

   ↗See the data

   [13] [4]

2. 5 Apr 1992War & Rupture

   Siege of Sarajevo begins

   Bosnian Serb forces encircled and shelled the capital from the surrounding hills; lasting about 1,425 days, it became the longest siege of a capital city in modern history.

   ↗See the data

   [4]

3. 1992–1995War & Rupture

   Ethnic cleansing and the Bosnian War

   Campaigns to expel and destroy rival communities through killings, deportation, detention camps and sexual violence devastated Bosnia, crimes later prosecuted before the ICTY.

   ↗See the data

   [13] [14]

4. 11 Jul 1995War & Rupture

   The Srebrenica genocide

   After overrunning the UN 'safe area', Bosnian Serb forces under Ratko Mladić executed up to 8,000 Bosniak men and boys; the ICTY and ICJ ruled the killings genocide.

   ↗See the data

   [15] [16] [14]

5. 26 Feb 2007Politics & Power

   ICJ Genocide judgment (Bosnia v. Serbia)

   The International Court of Justice held that genocide was committed at Srebrenica and that Serbia had violated the Genocide Convention by failing to prevent it and to cooperate with the ICTY.

   [17] [16]

Figures of the era

The war was ended by American-led diplomacy. Between August and November 1995 the negotiator Richard Holbrooke shuttled among the parties, and at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, the leaders of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia initialled the General Framework Agreement for Peace on 21 November 1995; it was formally signed in Paris on 14 December 1995. Dayton preserved Bosnia and Herzegovina as a single sovereign state while dividing it internally into two entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, with a complex shared central government and an Office of the High Representative to oversee the civilian implementation of the peace.

One territorial question could not be settled at Dayton. The status of the strategic Brčko area, where the two entities met, was referred to binding international arbitration under Annex 2 of the agreement. The Final Award of 1999 created the Brčko District, a self-governing unit held in condominium by both entities under the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina, supervised by the High Representative. The arrangement, designed to reflect the area's multi-ethnic character, removed a potential trigger for renewed conflict.

Dayton stopped the killing but entrenched ethnic division, and the state it created has proved fragile and often deadlocked. Recurrent crises have centred on the structure of the state and on threats from leaders in Republika Srpska to secede or to withdraw from common institutions, kept in check by international supervision. Even so, Bosnia and Herzegovina has pursued integration with Europe: it signed a Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the European Union and applied for membership, and on 15 December 2022 the European Council granted it the status of EU candidate country, conditional on reforms to the rule of law and its constitutional and electoral framework.

Turning points

1. 21 Nov 1995Politics & Power

   Dayton Agreement initialled

   After negotiations led by Richard Holbrooke, the General Framework Agreement for Peace was initialled at Dayton, Ohio, ending the Bosnian War.

   [18] [5]

2. 14 Dec 1995Politics & Power

   Dayton Agreement signed in Paris

   The peace agreement was formally signed in Paris, preserving a single Bosnian state divided into two entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, with an Office of the High Representative.

   [18] [5]

3. 1999Politics & Power

   Brčko District established

   Binding arbitration under Annex 2 created the Brčko District, a self-governing unit held in condominium by both entities under the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

   [19]

4. 15 Dec 2022Politics & Power

   EU candidate status granted

   The European Council granted Bosnia and Herzegovina the status of EU candidate country, conditional on reforms to the rule of law and the constitutional and electoral system.

   [20]

Figures of the era