World Geography Mrs. Curtiss

 After WW I, Austro-Hungarian Empire broken up  Unified into a multi-ethnic state based on linguistic groups  Ethnic diversity in Yugoslavia was enormous:  Seven distinct ethnic neighbors  Austria, Greece, Italy, Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania  Four official languages  Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian, Slovene  Three major religions  Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Islam  Two alphabets  Roman – Croatian and Slovene  Cyrillic – Macedonian and Serbian

 Six semi-autonomous Republics within Yugoslavia  Bosnia & Herzegovina  Croatia  Macedonia  Montenegro  Serbia  Slovenia  Five Republics established on basis of ethnicity  Bosnia & Herzegovina – mixture of ethnicity  Serbia – largest republic and dominated national government

 The people known as Serbs, Bosnian Muslims, and Croats belong to three distinct ethnic groups.  All three speak their own dialect of the Serbo-Croatian language.  Serbs  Originally farmers, after World War II Serbs increasingly migrated to cities where they became wage earners.  Serbs are strongly influenced by Eastern European culture.  Their religion is Eastern Orthodox.  Bosnian Muslims  sometimes referred to as Turks  were originally ethnically the same as Serbs, but converted to the Muslim religion in the fifteenth century.  Bosnian Muslims live mostly in cities and are professionals, business owners, and government workers.  Croats  predominantly rural farmers, but many live in cities of southern Croatia.  Croats are strongly influenced by the Western European culture in literature, art, science, and education.  They are geographically located near the Italian cities of Genoa and Venice.  Croatian culture reflects Italian culture.  Croats are Roman Catholic.  retrieve&tabID=T001&prodId=GIC&docId=CX &userGroupName=lees22928&versio n=1.0&digest=b4c025643a70ec377a4bfe544a23c502&source=gale

 “a process in which a more powerful ethnic group forcibly removes a less powerful one in order to create an ethnically homogenous region.”  “…undertaken to rid an area of an entire ethnicity, so that the surviving ethnicity can be the sole inhabitants.”

 Ethnicities suppressed during 20 th century  Communist dictator Josip Broz Tito  Tito died in 1980s – Communist government collapsed  All Republics (except Serbia and Montenegro) broke away to become independent countries  1991 – Slovenia and Croatia  1992 – Macedonia  1993 – Bosnia  2003 – no more Yugoslavia  New countries combined different ethnic groups  Biggest difference – religion  Mostly dominated by 1 ethnic group  i.e. most in Croatia were Croats – but Serbs also lived there

 Serbs and Croats used ethnic cleaning as a way to claim territory  Ethnic regions and political boundaries did not match up  At time of breakup  Bosnia and Herzegovina  Herzegovina ethnicities Bosnian Muslim: 48 percent Serb: 37 percent Croat: 14 percent  Serbs and Croats Ally to eliminate Bosnian Muslim population  Dayton Accords (1996) Bosnia and Herzegovina divided into three regions

 United Nations, the United States and other European countries worked to negotiate peace between warring groups  Sent troops to enforce peace treaties  Result of Conflict:  Disrupted economies in region Unstable conditions made trade difficult  People forced from homes Had to start new lives in different countries  Today – standard of living is low in region compared to rest of Europe