Serbpeople

...It historically served as an important secondary language in Slovenia and Macedonia. The Croats, who are Roman Catholic and who lived for centuries under Venetian or Austro-Hungarian rule, and the Serbs, who are Eastern Orthodox in religion and who, after a short period of independence, lived for five centuries under Turkish domination, have adopted distinct standard (literary) forms, Croatian...

In the Balkans and in the Latin East Manuel was more successful. His armies won back much of the northwest Balkans and almost conquered Hungary, reducing it to a client kingdom of Byzantium. The Serbs, too, under their leader Stefan Nemanja, were kept under control, while Manuel’s dramatic recovery of Antioch in 1159 caused the Crusaders to treat the Emperor with a new respect. But in Anatolia...

Bosnia and Herzegovina is home to members of numerous ethnic groups. The three largest are the Bosniacs, Serbs, and Croats, who constitute about two-fifths, one-third, and one-fifth, respectively, of the population. Physically the three groups are indistinguishable; culturally the major difference between them is that of religious origin and affiliation. Serbs are primarily Serbian Orthodox,...

...The primary distinguishing characteristics for ethnic identification among the Slavs in Croatia are religion and cultural tradition, Croats being Roman Catholic and more Western-influenced than Serbs, who are Orthodox Christians. There is a very close correlation between ethnic identity and religious affiliation.

In language, religion, and history, a case could be made for identifying Macedonian Slavs with Bulgarians and to a lesser extent with Serbs. Both have had their periods of influence in the region (especially Serbia after 1918); consequently, there are still communities of Serbs (especially in Kumanovo and Skopje) and Bulgarians.

Differences between Montenegrins and Serbs are a matter of continuing controversy. Although isolated from each other for centuries during the Ottoman period, when Albanian families came to dominate the intervening Kosovo region, both groups retained their Orthodox religious traditions and many other common cultural attributes—including the Cyrillic alphabet. Because of such obvious...

...armies overran this region in the 14th century, many Serb families fled the southern basins and found shelter northward in the hills of Šumadija. Albanian tribal groups then moved into former Serbian settlements.

...of the weakness of the Byzantine Empire, Albania came under the domination, in whole or in part, of a succession of foreign powers: Bulgarians, Norman Crusaders, the Angevins of southern Italy, Serbs, and Venetians. The final occupation of the country in 1347 by the Serbs, led by Stefan Dušan, caused massive migrations of Albanians abroad, especially to Greece and the Aegean islands....

...from authoritarianism to democracy in the Balkans was punctuated in many areas, particularly in Yugoslavia, with civil war. By December 1990 both Croatia and Slovenia had voted for autonomy and the Serb minority in Croatia had sought to unite with Serbia. That same month Serbians elected the fiery nationalist and ex-communist Milošević president, and he launched a campaign aimed...

Slavs began to settle in this territory during the 6th century. A second wave of Slavs in the 7th century included two powerful tribes, the Croats and the Serbs; Croats probably covered most of central, western, and northern Bosnia, while Serbs extended into the Drina River valley and modern Herzegovina. (The terms “Serb” and “Croat” were, in this period, tribal labels;...

...between 1941 and 1945 was terrible in both scale and complexity. The Ustaša, the fascist movement that ruled Croatia during the war, exterminated most of Bosnia’s 14,000 Jews and massacred Serbs on a large scale: more than 100,000 Serbs from Bosnia died, roughly half in death camps. Two organized resistance movements emerged, a Serbian royalist force known as the Chetniks, led by...

The declining state reached its nadir in 1330 when Tsar Mikhail Shishman was defeated and slain by the Serbs at the Battle of Velbuzhd (modern Kyustendil). Bulgaria lost its Macedonian lands to the Serbian empire of Stefan Dušan, which then became the dominant Balkan power for the next four decades. Bulgaria appeared to be on the point of disintegration into feudal states when the...

...Sabor and the ban. Furthermore, it was colonized by Orthodox refugees from Ottoman-conquered territories, thus complicating the confessional map of Croatia. Such was the origin of Croatia’s minority Serb population.

...Croatian Democratic Union), led by Franjo Tudjman (a former party member who had been jailed during the suppression of the Croatian Spring), was victorious in the Croatian elections of 1990. The Serb minority was deeply alarmed by the actions of the new government, which purged Serbs from public administration, especially the police. Serbs’ fears also were aroused by accusations, especially...

From 1318 until 1337 Epirus was ruled by the Italian Orsini family, and, after a short Greek recovery, it was taken by the Serbs in 1348. Ioánnina and Arta were its main political centres. From 1366 to 1384 Ioánnina was ruled by Thomas Komnenos Palaeologus, also known as Preljubovič, the son of the caesar Gregory Preljub, who had been Serbian governor of Thessaly...

...Albanian representatives in an attempt to stop the fighting. A cease-fire agreement negotiated in November 1998 had broken down by the end of the year, when the Yugoslav army, with the aid of Serbian forces, launched a major offensive against the KLA. Talks held at Rambouillet, France, in February 1999 had secured no results by mid-March, and NATO soon began an aerial bombardment of...

During the second half of the 12th century, a more significant rival to Byzantine power in the Balkans emerged in the Serbian Nemanjić dynasty. Stefan Nemanja became veliki župan, or “grand chieftain,” of Raška in 1169, and his successors created a state that, under Stefan Dušan (reigned 1331–55), incorporated Thessaly,...

...republic was the creation of an autocephalous Macedonian Orthodox church. Since the 1890s a great deal of dissatisfaction had been expressed in Macedonia with the unsympathetic attitude of the Serbian church, with which Orthodox Macedonians had long been affiliated. There is little doubt, however, that autocephalous status would never have been achieved without the vigorous support of the...

Although the Serbs have come to be identified closely with the Eastern Orthodox tradition of Christianity, it is an important indication of the continuing marginality of Zeta that Michael, the first of its rulers to claim the title of king, had this honour bestowed on him in 1077 by Pope Gregory VII. It was only under the later Nemanjić rulers that the ecclesiastical allegiance of the...

...Although only some of the emigrants were from Swabia, in southwestern Germany, the Hungarians referred to all the newly arrived Germans as Swabians. Throughout the 18th century, communities of Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, and Romanians also settled in the plains of the Banat. Jews from Poland and Russia arrived during the first half of the 19th century.

The use of the term Serb to name one of the Slavic peoples is of great antiquity. Ptolemy’s Guide to Geography, written in the 2nd century ad, mentions a people called “Serboi,” but it is not certain that this is a reference to the ancestors of the modern Serbs. The earliest information on the Serbs dates from the late 6th century, when they were vassals of the Avars...

...the spring and summer of 1995 stripped the Krajina of virtually its entire Serb population, Serbia did not intervene (although many of the expelled Serbs were resettled in Kosovo and the Vojvodina). Serbia also failed to come to the aid of Bosnian Serbs when a Croat-Bosniac (Muslim) alliance scored a series of victories during the summer.

...6th and 7th centuries, and Hungarian (Magyar) nomads arrived there in the 9th and 10th. The Ottoman Turks controlled the region from the early 16th to the late 18th century. During that time, many Serbs emigrated to the Vojvodina from Serbia proper, which was under Ottoman rule. The town of Sremski Karlovci became an important centre of Serbian Orthodox culture, especially after the abolition...