Serbia

From the medieval Nemanjić kingdom and the field of Kosovo to a modern Balkan republic at the centre of Europe's last great territorial dispute.

Serbia's history runs from a powerful medieval Orthodox kingdom, through nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule, to a modern state reborn in revolution and still defined by unresolved questions of territory. Under the Nemanjić dynasty, founded by Stefan Nemanja in the twelfth century, Serbia became a major Balkan power whose church won autocephaly under Saint Sava in 1219 and whose ruler Stefan Dušan was crowned emperor in 1346. That golden age ended at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 and the Ottoman conquest of the Despotate in 1459. A national revolution beginning in 1804 won autonomy and, at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, full international recognition; the Kingdom of Serbia led the creation of Yugoslavia in 1918. The violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s under Slobodan Milošević culminated in the Kosovo War, the NATO bombing of 1999 and UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which placed Kosovo under United Nations administration. Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence, found by the International Court of Justice in 2010 not to have violated international law, is still rejected by Serbia, which regards Kosovo as its autonomous province; the dispute remains live, addressed through the EU-facilitated Brussels and Ohrid dialogue as Serbia pursues membership of the European Union.