Montenegro

A mountain stronghold that defied an empire, lost its crown to a union, and won back its statehood by a single percentage point.

Montenegro's history is the story of a small Balkan people that built and rebuilt its sovereignty against far greater powers. Its medieval root was the South Slavic principality of Duklja, later known as Zeta, which produced the first crowned king of the region in the eleventh century. As Ottoman power overwhelmed the Balkans, a remnant of free highlanders gathered around the Orthodox see of Cetinje, and from 1696 the Petrovic-Njegos dynasty turned this theocratic Prince-Bishopric, or Vladika, into a famous mountain redoubt of armed resistance to the Ottoman Empire, immortalised by the poet-prince Petar II Petrovic-Njegos. In 1852 the bishopric became a secular principality under Danilo; Montenegro's full independence was recognised by the Great Powers at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, and in 1910 Nikola I raised it to a kingdom. After the First World War the contested Podgorica Assembly of 1918 deposed the dynasty and merged Montenegro into the new Yugoslav state, dividing the nation between unionist "Whites" and pro-independence "Greens". For most of the twentieth century Montenegro was a Yugoslav republic; it remained with Serbia in the rump Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, until the narrow independence referendum of 21 May 2006 restored the sovereign state. Independent Montenegro joined NATO in 2017 and pursues European Union membership.