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Greece
Greece
Serbia
Breakup of Yugoslavia
For centuries the Orthodox Christian Serbs were ruled by the Muslim Ottoman
Empire. The success of the Serbian Revolution against Ottoman rule in 1817
marked the birth of the Principality of Serbia. It achieved de facto independence
in 1867 and finally gained international recognition in 1878. Serbia had sought to
liberate and unite with Bosnia and Herzegovina to the west and Old Serbia
(Kosovo and Vardar Macedonia) to the south. Nationalist circles in both Serbia
and Croatia (part of Austria-Hungary) began to advocate for a greater South
Slavic union in the 1860s, claiming Bosnia as their common land based on shared
language and tradition.[67] In 1914, Serb revolutionaries in Bosnia assassinated
Archduke Ferdinand. Austria-Hungary, with German backing, tried to crush Serbia
in 1914, thus igniting the First World War in which Austria-Hungary dissolved into
nation states.[68]
In 1918, the region of Banat, Bačka and Baranja came under control of the
Serbian army, later the Great National Assembly of Serbs, Bunjevci and other
Slavs voted to join Serbia; the Kingdom of Serbia joined the union with State of
Slovenes, Croats and Serbs on 1 December 1918, and the country was named
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. It was renamed Yugoslavia, and a
Yugoslav identity was promoted, which ultimately failed. After the Second World
War, Yugoslav Communists established a new socialist republic of Yugoslavia.
That state broke up in the 1990s.[69]