Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Bosnian-Serbian border. The second was the
invasion of the Islamic Ottomans
in the 14th
century. The Ottoman victory at the Battle of Kosovo Polje (1389) opened the door to the
region and kicked off five centuries of Islamic influence in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia,
further dividing the Balkans into Christian (north) and Muslim (south).
Because of these and other events, several distinct ethnic identities emerged. The major
ethnicities of Yugoslavia—Croat, Slovene, Serb, and Bosniak—are all considered South
Slavs. The huge Slav ethnic and linguistic family—some 400 million strong—is divided in-
to three groups: South (the peoples of Yugoslavia, explained next, plus Bulgarians), West
(Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks), and East (Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians).
Who's Who in Yugoslavia
Yugoslaviawasmadeupofsixrepublics,whichwereinhabitedbyeightdifferenteth-
nicities (notcounting small minorities suchasJews, Germans, andRoma). This chart
shows each ethnicity and the republic(s) in which they were most concentrated. Not
coincidentally, the more ethnically diverse a region was, the more conflict it experi-
enced.
