SERBIA - Serbia's history and culture is for many people the most interesting one. It's history starts from the Roman conquest of three Balkan provincies: Upper Mesia, Lower Mesia and Illyricum. During the existance of Roman empire, one of the biggest (if not the biggest one) and the most beautifull city at Balkan Belgrade (nowadays the most important center of the Balkan along with Athens) was established. Romans called it Singidunum, and during it's later history, it's conquerors changed it's name to The white city (Belgrade). Later on, Singidunum became one of the strongest and heaviest fortified foretresses along the shores of river Danube... After the fell of Roman Empire, these three provincies were added to the teritory of The Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium), and many nations were trying to settle these provincies but usually for only a short time...The only barbaric nation who managed to settle alongside the shores of Danube and other parts of before mentioned provincies are the Slovens, more precisely southern Slovens. Their history starts exactly here at Balkans, wher they settled a n immense teritory, which extanded from the Adriatic Sea at the west, untill the Constantinopolis at the east. Slovens started to "evolve" and very soon they become a large threat for the Byzantine and also for Hungarians at the north and the whole western Europe also. Soon they were christianized. Some of them became orthodox and some catholics... But soon, the Turks from Asia invided and destroyed the whole Byzantine and conquered Constantinopolis, so they wanted to conquer the whole Europe and destroy every christian monarchy. In their way to the west were the Serbs, who fought courageously, but a new threat, this time from the north and west thretened to destroy Serbia. It was Austro-Hungary, very strong european monarchy... Being in this situation, just encouraged Serbs to fought even more... Northern and western parts of Serbia's kingdom fell to the merceless hands of Austro- Hungary, and very soon the remaining Serbian teritory fell to the conquerers. One of the most important years of the Sebian medieval history, and history at all, is 1389, when battle at Kosovo Polje occured and where king of Serbia alongside the entire Serbian army defeated Turkey and prevented it for at least two years time from conquering Serbia and killing christians.... For more then 5 centuries Serbians had no country of their own, so they had to live at the borders either of Austro-Hungary or Turkey. There, thery had to be solders and defend the borders in order to live there... Serbian language and culture were disappearing, and it was like that untill the revolutionary age. After Greeks, Serbians also united and revolted against Turkey in order to gain back their countries. After the fell of Otoman kingdom, Serbians were again united and they helped their catholic brothers to free themselves of Austria and Hungary. They managed to do that, and all the southern Slovens were again united at the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians... Then the WW I occured... This part of history is also very interesting, but I won't "retell" it to you. If you are interested in what untill now I have written as a reply to you, you can on your own look for Serbian history. I shall only tell you that soon after the WW I and WW II SFRY (Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia) was formed under the guidance of Josip Broz Tito. SFRY existed untill the 1990 when Balkan once again was turned into a wargroud. After the fell apart of SFRY, modern republics of Slovenia (in EU from 2004), Croatia, Macedonia (candidates for joining EU), Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republic of Yugoslavia were formed. For a few years time after Republic of Yugoslavia was bombarded, and it's capital Belgrade was almost destroyed, Republic of Yugoslavia turned into a federation of two countries, Serbia and Montenegro. Recently, on a referundum, Montenegrians voted for this Federation to separate into two countries, so RoY fell apart and new states were formed: Montenegro and Serbia.
Serbian culture is very interesting, because it consists of two completely different types of cultures : western (austrian) and eatern (serbian with elements of turkish culture). Turkish culture dominates in Raska and Kosovo, because of numerous muslims who have been expelling Serbs for more than 30 years. (That is one of the main reasons why Kosovo is likely to become independent...), and Western culture, which dominates at the north of Serbia, at Vojvodina. Various nations live at Vojvodina, Hungarians, Croatians, Slovenians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Serbs and many other. This variety of nations who live here also influence Serbian culture here, so there are many slight differences which could be noticed if travelling from town to town...
This is just the smallest part of Serbia's history and culture. If this sounds interesting to you, you can look for it on Internet or just contact me, and I'll give you all the data you need.
P.S. Or you could just visit Serbia.... Why not?
Hope my answer is at least interesting.
2006-11-04 05:17:31
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answer #1
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answered by Jovan 4
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