Map Courtesy of the National Geographic Society Map B.3: The Ottoman Era (click to enlarge)

The Ottomans began their conquest of the Balkans in 1362 by taking Adrianople (modern Edirne in Turkey), and advanced up the Balkan Peninsula over the next century. Serbia fell after the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 (still one of the most potent memories in Serbian nationalist hagiography), Bulgaria in 1396, Constantinople in 1453, Bosnia in 1463, Albania in 1468, Herzegovina in 1482, and Montenegro in 1499.

The Ottoman conquests were made easier by divisions among the local Christian kingdoms and by the even deeper rift between the Catholics of the west Balkans and the Orthodox of the east Balkans.

In 1526 Ottoman forces defeated the Hungarians in the Battle of Mohács, and three years later made an unsuccessful attempt to conquer Vienna. By the late 1520s, the Ottomans were masters of the central as well as southeastern Balkan states, but in the northern and western areas their power was limited.

Transylvania, Moldavia, and Walachia acknowledged the suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan but managed their own internal affairs. Montenegro, which was too mountainous to subdue, was offered the same status. And the trading center of Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik) was a free city, akin to a city-state.

Religious toleration and administrative efficiency marked the early centuries of Ottoman rule. There were few forced conversions to Islam, and the empire was loosely organized around autonomous religious units known as millets. Each denomination constituted a separate millet that appointed its own council, headed by a religious leader who collected state taxes and kept the peace within his religious community.

As a rule, Ottoman rulers did not intervene in internal millet affairs, and in the early period of the empire taxes and other levies were usually lighter, though more regularly collected, than they had been under Christian rule.

Nevertheless, as an empire based on religion, the Ottoman conquest wrought a social and political revolution in the central Balkans, creating a separate class of powerful Muslim landowners, soldiers and administrators.

The old aristocracy was stripped of its power or destroyed, except in Bosnia and Albania, where substantial sections of the local gentry converted to Islam and retained their land. In Bosnia, as well, the Bogumils, a syncretic Christian sect who were persecuted by Orthodoxy and Catholicism equally, had religious as well as material incentives for converting to Islam.

Similarly, the centuries of Ottoman rule had an immense impact on the ethnic demography of the region. Defeated in periodic uprisings against Ottoman rule, Serbs fled across the Danube northwards and westwards to Hungary, Vojvodina, Slavonia, Croatia and Dalmatia.

The Ottomans themselves encouraged the migration of hardy settlers with military skills from Serbia and Herzegovina to defend the thinly populated frontiers bordering these regions.

The bulk of the new settlers were Vlachs, members of a pre-Slav Balkan population that spoke a Latinate language and specialized in stock breeding, horse raising, long-distance trade, and fighting. Most were adherents of the Serbian Orthodox Church and, under its long practice of assimilation, were drawn into the wider Serbian nation.

These settlers formed a kind of human border between the Habsburg territories of Croatia-Slavonia and the Bosnian frontiers of the Ottoman Empire.

Finally, in a late population flow, Albanians moved into the newly depopulated Slav areas of Kosovo and Macedonia, adding to the religious and ethnic mix of the South Balkans. Broadly speaking, this ethnic map was to exist into the late 20th century.

The main sources of disaffection under Ottoman rule were the land tenure and military conscription systems. Under the land tenure system, which was based on Byzantine practices, all land belonged to the sultan but was leased out to military men called spahis, who provided troops to the sultan in proportion to the amount of land held.

The taxes that Balkan Christians had to pay included a levy on male children (the devsirme), who were taken from Christian households, converted to Islam and trained as members of the administrative elite of the empire. Many joined the Janissaries, an elite corps of infantrymen who were paid regular salaries by the Ottoman sultan. The practice fell into disuse in the 17th century, and was not revived.

A series of wars with the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires in the 18th century weakened the Ottoman hold on the Balkans. There were Serbian uprisings under the leadership of Karadjordje Petrovic (1804-13) and Milos Obrenovic (1815-17). After the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-29, Serbia became an internationally recognized autonomous principality under Turkish suzerainty and Russian protection.

But Serbian independence had a fortuitous spur: a tax revolt by Christian peasants in the Nevesinje region of Herzegovina in 1875 spread rapidly across the region, becoming a full-fledged insurrection that drew in Montenegrin as well as Serbian nationalists. In 1876, Serbia and Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire, and Russia entered the war in their support the following year.

The Ottomans were defeated and, alarmed by Russia’s new influence in the Balkans, the great powers convened the Congress of Berlin in 1878.

Under peace treaties concluded at San Stefano and revised at the Congress of Berlin, Serbia and Montenegro were enlarged, Romania gained full independence and an independent Bulgaria was created. Bosnia & Herzegovina was allowed to remain under formal Ottoman sovereignty, but was placed under Austro-Hungarian administration. By 1890 only Macedonia and Albania remained under Ottoman control in the Balkans.

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