ASIANOVERLAND.NET WINTER EUROPEAN DAY 38/211:  BULGARIA TO BELGRADE, JUGOSLAVIA

“18-1-81 JUGOSLAVIA”

Yugoslavia was a country for most of the 20th century, into existence in 1918 after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. It’s original name was the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes by the merger of the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. It was formed from territories of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire with the Kingdom of Serbia, and constituted the first union of the South Slavic people as a sovereign state, following centuries in which the region had been part of the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary. Peter I of Serbia was its first sovereign. The kingdom gained international recognition on 13 July 1922 at the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris, and its official name was changed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 3 October 1929.

Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis powers on 6 April 1941. In 1943, a Democratic Federal Yugoslavia was proclaimed by the Partisan resistance. The monarchy was subsequently abolished in November 1945. Yugoslavia was renamed the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia in 1946, when a communist government was established. It acquired the territories of Istria, Rijeka, and Zadar from Italy. Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito ruled the country as president until his death in 1980.

Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia, where the Sava and Danube rivers join at the crossroads of the Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula.

Belgrade is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe and the World. One of the most important prehistoric cultures of Europe, the Vinča culture, evolved within the Belgrade area in the 6th millennium BC. In antiquity, Thraco-Dacians inhabited the region and, after 279 BC, Celts settled the city.

It was conquered by the Romans under the reign of Augustus and awarded Roman city rights in the mid-2nd century. It was settled by the Slavs in the 520s, and changed hands several times between the Byzantine Empire, the Frankish Empire, the Bulgarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Hungary, before it became the seat of the Serbian king in 1284. Belgrade served as capital of Serbia until it was returned it to the Hungarian king in 1427.

Noon bells in support of the Hungarian army against the Ottoman Empire during the siege in 1456 have remained a widespread church tradition to this day. In 1521, Belgrade was conquered by the Ottomans. It frequently passed from Ottoman to Habsburg rule, which saw the destruction of most of the city during the Austro-Ottoman wars.

In the period after the Serbian Revolution, Belgrade was again named the capital of Serbia in 1841.

Northern Belgrade remained the southernmost Habsburg post until 1918, when it was attached to Belgrade, due to former Austro-Hungarian territories becoming the part of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes after World War I. Belgrade was the capital of Yugoslavia from its creation in 1918 to its dissolution in 2006. In a fatally strategic position, the city has been battled over in 115 wars and razed 44 times, being bombed five times and besieged many times.

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