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History

Medieval Bosnia (ca. 1200-1463)

Like the rest of the Mediterranean region, Bosnia was part of the Roman Empire during the first centuries of the Christian era. After the fall of Rome, the area of Bosnia was contested between Byzantium and Rome's successors in the West. By the 7th century AD, Bosnia was settled by Slavs, who formed a number of counties and duchies. The 9th century saw the establishment of two neighboring kingdoms: Serbia (southeast of Bosnia), and Croatia (in the west). In the 11th-12th centuries, Bosnia was governed by local nobles under the authority of the Kings of Hungary (the large kingdom to the north, which had also taken over neighboring Croatia).
Around 1200 A.D., Bosnia fought for and gained its independence. To retain it, the Bosnians had to fend off not only the Hungarians, but also their powerful neighbor to the east, the Kingdom of Serbia. The independent medieval Kingdom of Bosnia endured for more than 260 years (somewhat longer than the United States has thus far).
In the 14th century, the Ottoman Turks (an Islamic state originating in Asia Minor) embarked upon their conquest of the Balkans. By 1389 Serbia had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Turks (at the famous battle of Kosovo) and had been reduced to the status of an Ottoman vassal. Through skillful maneuvering between its more powerful neighbors, Bosnia managed to retain its independence until 1463, when it also succumbed to the Turks.
For more than 400 years Bosnia retained a distinct identity as the Eyalet of Bosna, a key province of the Islamic Ottoman Empire.

Bosnia Enters the 20th Century (1878-1918)

The newly installed Austro-Hungarian administration in Bosnia was determined to turn it into a showcase "model colony." Railroads and industries were developed with state subsidies; new schools, public buildings, parks and other icons of modernity were to symbolize the benefits of the new regime. There was a building-boom in Sarajevo and little intellectual circles began to discuss up-to-date European ideologies in the coffeehouses.
In the summer of 1914, a Serb nationalist youth named Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne during a state visit to Sarajevo. The ensuing World War killed millions throughout Europe. Among the casualties were many Bosnians drafted to fight in the Austro-Hungarian army (and some who fought for the Serbian army), but the city of Sarajevo itself and most of Bosnia somehow, miraculously, escaped becoming a battleground in this first World War.
 

The Second World War (1941-1945)

Hitler invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, the king fled abroad, and the country was parcelled out between Nazi Germany's allies and local clients. Then orthernmost strip (Slovenia) was annexed to the Greater German Reich; the Adriatic coastline of Croatia was assigned to Fascist Italy; Macedonia in the south was given to Germany's ally Bulgaria. What remained was divided up between the Nazi puppet-state of Croatia (compensated for the losses on the coast by being granted all of Bosnia) and a German-appointed regime in Serbia, headed by a former royal Yugoslav general named Milan Nedich.

The Cold War and Communist Yugoslavia (1945-1990)

Thanks both to their ruthless tactics and to a now continuous flow of Allied military aid, Tito's Communist Partisans emerged at the end of the war as the undisputed masters of Yugoslavia. They marked their victory with mass executions of tens of thousands of Croat and Slovene militiamen who had surrendered to them at the conclusion of hostilities. Tito awarded himself the title of Marshal and ruled Yugoslavia as a one-party dictatorship for 35 years until his death.
Bosnia-Herzegovina, restored within her pre-1918 borders, became one of six constituent republics (the others were Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Slovenia).