Capital : Sarajevo
Bosnia became independent from the great powers of Hungary and
Byzantium under Ban (Governor) Kulin during the C12th and, similarly
to the other Balkan Slavs, established a separate governing body
of nobles, the 'stanak'. It is not clear whether their origins
were Serb or Croat but by this stage they considered themselves
to have a separate Bosnian identity.
In 1326, Bosnia took over most of Hercegovina but Hungary continued
to advance into the area, taking control in 1328. Independence
was gained around 1353 and reasserted by Ban Tvrtko in 1369. In
1377, he crowned himself king of Serbia and Bosnia and improved
the economy with the construction of an Adriatic coastal port
in the Bay of Kotor which encouraged trade.
It was probably due to the loose regime of the ruling classes
and scattered population that the Manichean heresy called 'Bogomilism'
(which had a dualist belief in God and the Devil) gained a hold
and caused the Catholic church to send the Dominicans in 1240
and the Franciscans in 1340. By the C15th, the weakening Bosnian
state had fallen to the Hungarians and Catholicism but their cancelling
of the tribute paid to the Ottoman Empire led to Bosnia's conquest
by the Turks in 1463, followed by Hercegovian in 1483. The two
states were to remain part of the Empire until the C19th.
Under Ottoman rule, freedom of worship was given to the existing
religions but by the mid C16th, about 20% of the approximately
half a million Bosnians had become Muslims, giving them a better
chance of advancement under the Turks. It was during this period
that the main towns, including Sarajevo which had been mainly
Bosnian Muslim, began to have mixed populations of Serbs, Croats,
Muslims and Sephardic Jews. The main language was South Slavic,
a fore-runner of Serbo-Croat.
There were several peasant uprisings in the C19th, including that
of 1876 when the Serb peasants rose against their Bosnian Muslim
landlords with the help of Serbian troops and Russian volunteers.
After a period of insurrection which killed or exiled about 150
000, mainly Serbs, Austro-Hungary occupied Bosnia-Hercegovina
with tropps that were mostly Serbs and Croats and the Ottoman
rule was ended.
The Hungarian scholar and later finance minister, Benjamin Kallay,
tried to develop a single Bosnian consciousness or 'Bosnjastvo'
but the three main groups, Serbs, Croats and Muslims, were not
won over although this may have been due to reluctance to swear
allegiance to Habsburg rule rather than religious differences.
The early C20th saw mass emigration (about 5% of the population
in 1901-10) and Austria's formalising of the occupation into annexation
in 1908. Under the administration of Istvan Burin from 1903-12,
all three ethnic groups gained the right to organise and formed
political parties which gained all the seats in the 1910 elections
with the only group advocating Yugoslav unity, the Social Democratic
Party, failing to win even one. However, it was the organisation
'Young Bosnia' (mostly Bosnian Serb students) which was to become
the strongest supporter of 'Yugoslavism'. The Serbo-Croat Progressive
Organisation was formed in 1911 (including some Muslims although
Serb-Muslim relations suffered after the First Balkan War and
Serbian expansion of 1912) and it was one of its members, the
Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip, whose assassination of Franz Ferdinand,
heir to the Habsburg dynasty, precipitated the First World War.
During the war, Bosnia-Hercegovina was under the military governor General Sarkotic ( a Croat) who expelled and interned many Serbs, especially Young Bosnia members and planned to unite with Croatia-Slavonia nad Dalmatia for administrative purposes. The Muslims and Croats united to form a defence force, the 'Schutzkorps' which killed and deported many Serb villagers on the Drina border with Serbia.
After the war, the first Yugoslav state was formed with the Serbian
ruler, Alexander Karadjordjevic, proclaimed King of the Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes in 1918. This lasted until WWII when the monarchy
was deposed and the second Yugoslavia was founded after further
Balkan conflict in 1945-6 as the Federal People's Republic of
Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito, a Croatian. There were six republics:
Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Montenegro, and
two autonomous regions, Kosovo and Vojvodina.
The Communist state, against expectation, outlasted the death
of Tito in 1980. There was much rivalry amongst the various Communist
parties of the different republics and the collapse of the Soviet
Union in 1989 further weakened and eventually destroyed the single
League of Communists.
In the 1981 census, about one-fifth of the ethnically diverse
city of Sarajevo declared as Yugoslavian rather than as
part of a separate group. It was still relatively harmonious when
it hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics although several Muslims, including
Alija Izetbegovic, were jailed in 1983 for speaking out for Islamic
values and, allegedly, advocating a separate Muslim state. In
the elections of December 1988, the Muslim Party of Democratic
Action, headed by the recently released Izetbegovic, took 80 out
of 240 seats. The more secular Muslims under the emigre Adil Zulfikarpasic
took 13, the Serbian nationalists under Radovan Karadzic, 72,
49 went to Croats, of which 44 were members of Franjo Tudjman's
HDZ, and only 18 to the Communist Party. The leaders had promised
to work together as Communists to protect Bosnia-Hercegovina interests
within Yugoslavia but after the election they all began to follow
separate ethnic programs.
The Bosnian leaders did not want to be part of the smaller, Serb-dominated
federation which would be left if Croatia and Slovenia seceded
from Yugoslavia. Bosnia-Herzegovina voted to leave and independence
was declared in March 1992 after the Croatian war had been in
progress for several months. Karadzic seems to have encouraged
people to believe that a fundamentalist Islamic state in which
Serbs were persecuted was a possiblity if Izetbegovic was the
head of the independent Bosnia and the Bosnian Serbs began to
press for their own independent territory. The Bosnian Croat militias,
supported by Croatia, began to eliminate other ethnic groups in
their areas, and in April, Arkan's Serbian militia attacked Muslims
in Bijeljina.
The federal forces in Bosnia (the Yugoslav army was predominantly Serb) were considered an occupying army by the United Nations and sanctions were imposed on Serbia but the war in Bosnia continued. The reports of 'ethnic cleansing' of Muslims and concentration camps set up by the Serbs increased the Western efforts to help negotiate a peace settlement. The Bosnian civil war escalated and further sanctions were imposed on 'rump' Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). In 1993, Bosnian Serbs were persuaded to accept the Vance-Owen peace plan but the area still does not appear to be entirely stable.
Many of those included here are of Muslim origin as the Bosnian Serbs and Croats use similar names to their ethnic counterparts in Serbia and Croatia.
| Adil | Alen | Alija | Danvor | Dian | Drazen |
| Dzevat | Edib | Egzon | Ejub | Ejup | Elvir |
| Emir | Eyup | Ferid | Fikret | Hamdija | Haris |
| Hasan | Ivo | Izet | Juka | Jusuf | Kresimir |
| Mehmed | Mehmet | Milan | Mirko | Mirsad | Mirza |
| Murat | Nedad | Nenad | Nermin | Nijaz | Risto |
| Rufad | Salim | Sinan | Stjepan | Trifco |
| Aida | Dada | Dijana | Dzenana | Edita | Emira |
| Fadila | Melvina | Miloska | Nina | Raifa | Sanja |
| Sanya | Segmedina | Selma | Sinolicka | Smentijlana | Sonja |
| Tatjana | Zudha |
| Abdic | Alic | Aligic | Alispahic | Andelic | Barjamovic |
| Bocic | Bolic | Bolonic | Bukvic | Buric | Cabri |
| Delic | Durakovic | Ekmecic | Emkic | Erkocevic | Ganic |
| Ganic | Grebo | Izetbegovic | Jancic | Kecmanovic | Keranovic |
| Kljujic | Kojic | Komsic | Korjenic | Kotromanic | Kovacevic |
| Ljujic | Magas | Merdanovic | Midzic | Mijatovic | Mikulic |
| Munic | Neoric | Omeragic | Pejanovic | Pejic | Petrovic |
| Piric | Pozderac | Prazina | Redzic | Silajdzic | Spaho |
| Stanojevic | Stitkovic | Subacic | Subic | Sulejmanovic | Trivuncic |
| Trpkova | Zubak | Zukic | Zulfikarpasic |
(Kings or Bans)
| Name | Reign | Family | Spouse |
| Mladen I Subic | 1302-4 | son of Pavao Subic | - |
| Mladen II Subic | 1312-14 | son of Mladen I | - |
| Stjepan Kotromanic | d 1353 | - | - |
| Stjepan Tvrtko I | 1353-91 | son of Stjepan's brother, Vladislav + Helena, daughter of Mladen II | - |
| Stjepan Dabisa | 1391-5 | half-brother of Stjepan Trvtko | - |
| Stjepan Ostoja | 1398-1404, 1409-18 | son of Stjepan Trvtko | - |
| Stjepan Ostrojic | 1418-21 | son of Stjepan Ostoja | - |
| Tvrtko II | 1404-9, 1421-43 | son of Stjepan Trvtko | - |
| Stjepan Tomas Ostojic | 1444-61 | descendant of Ostoja | - |
| Stjepan Tomasevic | 1461-3 killed by Turks | son of Ostojic | Catherine, daughter of Stjepan Vukcic, duke of Saint Abbas |
| Stjepan Vukcic Kosaca | 1448-66 Duke/Herceg of Hum/Chelm | Comneno of Byzantium? | - |
| Vladislav Hercegovic | d 1489 | son of SVK? | - |
| Vlatko Hercegovic | d 1489 | son of SVK? | - |
This collection of names compiled by Kate Monk. Copyright January 1997, Kate Monk. Last updated November, 97. Copies may be made for personal use only.