The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (, ) is one of the two federal entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being Republika Srpska. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina consists of ten autonomous cantons with their governments and legislatures.
The Federation was created by the 1994 Washington Agreement, which ended the Croat–Bosniak War within the Bosnian War, and established a constituent assembly that continued its work until October 1996. The Federation has a capital, government, president, parliament, customs and police departments and two postal systems. It occupies about half of Bosnia and Herzegovina's land. From 1996 until 2005, it had its own army, the Army of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was later merged into the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The capital and largest city is Sarajevo with 275,524 inhabitants.
History
Early history The areas in what is now the modern day Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina have been inhabited since at least the Paleolithic era. Notably, the Badanj Cave near Stolac features one of the oldest known cave engravings, depicting an animal figure believed to be a horse, dating back to approximately 13,000 to 12,000 BC.; ; ; ; . During the Neolithic period, significant cultures such as the Butmir and Kakanj emerged along the Bosna River. The Butmir culture, flourishing around 5100 to 4500 BC, is renowned for its distinctive ceramics and anthropomorphic figurines. Excavations near Sarajevo have uncovered intricately decorated pottery and realistic human figurines from this culture.
From the 8th century BCE, Illyrian tribes evolved into kingdoms. The most notable Illyrian kingdoms and dynasties were those of Bardylis of the Dardani and of Agron of the Ardiaei who created the last and best-known Illyrian kingdom. Agron ruled over the Ardiaei and had extended his rule to other tribes as well. From the 7th century BCE, bronze was replaced by iron, after which only jewelry and art objects were still made out of bronze. Illyrian tribes, under the influence of Hallstatt cultures to the north, formed regional centers that were slightly different. Parts of Central Bosnia were inhabited by the Daesitiates tribe. The Iron Age Glasinac-Mati culture is associated with the Autariatae tribe.
A very important role in their life was the cult of the dead, which is seen in their careful burials and burial ceremonies, as well as the richness of their burial sites. In the 4th century BCE, the first invasion of Celts was recorded. They brought the technique of the pottery wheel, new types of fibulas and different bronze and iron belts. They only passed through en route to Greece.
In the Neretva Delta in the south, there were important Hellenistic influences of the Illyrian Daors tribe. Their capital was Daorson in Ošanići near Stolac. Daorson, in the 4th century BCE, was surrounded by megalithic, 5 m high stonewalls (as large as those of Mycenae in Greece), composed of large trapezoid stone blocks. Daors made unique bronze coins and sculptures.
Conflict between the Illyrians and Romans started in 229 BCE, but Rome did not complete its annexation of the region until AD 9. It was precisely in modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina that Rome fought one of the most difficult battles in its history since the Punic Wars, as described by the Roman historian Suetonius.Suetonius, Tiberius 16,17 This was the Roman campaign against Illyricum, known as .Miller, Norma. Tacitus: Annals I, 2002, . It had originally been joined to Illyricum, but after the great Illyrian/Pannonian revolt of AD 6 it was made a separate province with its own governor The conflict arose after an attempt to recruit Illyrians, and a revolt spanned for four years (6–9 AD), after which they were subdued. In the Roman period, Latin-speaking settlers from the entire Roman Empire settled among the Illyrians, and Roman soldiers were encouraged to retire in the region. After the split of the Empire between 337 and 395 AD, Dalmatia and Pannonia became parts of the Western Roman Empire. The region was conquered by the Ostrogoths in 455 AD. It subsequently changed hands between the Alans and the Huns. By the 6th century, Emperor Justinian I had reconquered the area for the Byzantine Empire. Slavs overwhelmed the Balkans in the 6th and 7th centuries. Illyrian cultural traits were adopted by the South Slavs, as evidenced in certain customs and traditions, and placenames.
Middle Ages
The Early Slavs raided the Western Balkans, including the present day Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the 6th and early 7th century (amid the Migration Period), and were composed of small tribal units drawn from a single Slavic confederation known to the Byzantines as the Sclaveni (whilst the related Antes, roughly speaking, colonized the eastern portions of the Balkans).Hupchick, Dennis P. The Balkans from Constantinople to Communism, pp. 28–30. Palgrave Macmillan (2004) Tribes recorded by the ethnonyms of "Serb" and "Croat" are described as a second, later, migration of different people during the second quarter of the 7th century who could not have been particularly numerous; these early "Serb" and "Croat" tribes, whose exact identity is subject to scholarly debate, came to predominate over the Slavs in the neighbouring regions. According to Noel Malcolm, the tribal Croats "settled in an area roughly corresponding to modern Croatia, and probably also including most of Bosnia proper, apart from the eastern strip of the Drina valley" while the tribal Serbs settled an area "corresponding to modern south-western Serbia (later known as Raška), and gradually extended their rule into the territories of Duklja and Hum". John Van Antwerp Fine Jr., on the other hand, describes the settling of the tribal Croats to involve Croatia, Dalmatia and Western Bosnia, with the rest of Bosnia seemingly being a territory between early Serb and Croat rule.
Bosnia is also believed to be first mentioned as a land (horion Bosona) in Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus' De Administrando Imperio in the mid 10th century, at the end of a chapter entitled Of the Serbs and the country in which they now dwell. This has been scholarly interpreted in several ways and used especially by the Serb national ideologists to prove Bosnia as originally a "Serb" land. Other scholars have asserted the inclusion of Bosnia in the chapter to merely be the result of Serbian Grand Duke Časlav's temporary rule over Bosnia at the time, while also pointing out Porphyrogenitus does not say anywhere explicitly that Bosnia is a "Serb land". In fact, the very translation of the critical sentence where the word Bosona (Bosnia) appears is subject to varying interpretation. In time, Bosnia formed a unit under its own ruler, who called himself Bosnian. Bosnia, along with other territories, became part of Duklja in the 11th century, although it retained its own nobility and institutions.
In the High Middle Ages, political circumstance led to the area being contested between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Byzantine Empire. Following another shift of power between the two in the early 12th century, Bosnia found itself outside the control of both and emerged as the Banate of Bosnia (under the rule of local bans). The first Bosnian ban known by name was Ban Borić. The second was Ban Kulin, whose rule marked the start of a controversy involving the Bosnian Church – considered heretical by the Roman Catholic Church. In response to Hungarian attempts to use church politics regarding the issue as a way to reclaim sovereignty over Bosnia, Kulin held a council of local church leaders to renounce the heresy and embraced Catholicism in 1203. Despite this, Hungarian ambitions remained unchanged long after Kulin's death in 1204, waning only after an unsuccessful invasion in 1254. During this time, the population was called Dobri Bošnjani ("Good Bosnians")., p. 71; In the Middle Ages the Bosnians called themselves "Bosnians" or used even more local (county, regional) names., p. 120; ..medieval Bosnia was a country of one people, of the single Bosnian people called the Bošnjani, who belonged to three confessions. The names Serb and Croat, though occasionally appearing in peripheral areas, were not used in Bosnia proper.
Bosnian history from then until the early 14th century was marked by a power struggle between the Šubić and Kotromanić families. This conflict came to an end in 1322, when Stephen II Kotromanić became Ban. By the time of his death in 1353, he was successful in annexing territories to the north and west, as well as Zahumlje and parts of Dalmatia. He was succeeded by his ambitious nephew Tvrtko who, following a prolonged struggle with nobility and inter-family strife, gained full control of the country in 1367. By the year 1377, Bosnia was elevated into a kingdom with the coronation of Tvrtko as the first Bosnian King in Mile near Visoko in the Bosnian heartland.Anđelić Pavao, Krunidbena i grobna crkva bosanskih vladara u Milima (Arnautovićima) kod Visokog. Glasnik Zemaljskog muzeja XXXIV/1979., Zemaljski muzej Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, 1980,183–247
Following his death in 1391, however, Bosnia fell into a long period of decline. The Ottoman Empire had started its conquest of Europe and posed a major threat to the Balkans throughout the first half of the 15th century. Finally, after decades of political and social instability, the Kingdom of Bosnia ceased to exist in 1463 after its conquest by the Ottoman Empire.
There was a general awareness in medieval Bosnia, at least amongst the nobles, that they shared a joint state with Serbia and that they belonged to the same ethnic group. That awareness diminished over time, due to differences in political and social development, but it was kept in Herzegovina and parts of Bosnia which were a part of Serbian state.
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman conquest of Bosnia marked a new era in the country's history and introduced drastic changes in the political and cultural landscape. The Ottomans incorporated Bosnia as an integral province of the Ottoman Empire with its historical name and territorial integrity. Within Bosnia, the Ottomans introduced a number of key changes in the territory's socio-political administration; including a new landholding system, a reorganization of administrative units, and a complex system of social differentiation by class and religious affiliation.
Following Ottoman annexation, there was a steady flow of people out of Bosnia and a large number of abandoned villages in Bosnia are mentioned in the Ottoman registers while those who stayed eventually became Muslims. Many Catholics in Bosnia fled to neighboring Catholic lands in the early Ottoman occupation. The evidence indicates that the early Muslim conversions in Ottoman Bosnia in the 15th–16th century were among the locals who stayed rather than mass Muslim settlements from outside Bosnia. In Herzegovina, many Orthodox people had also embraced Islam. By the late 16th and early 17th century, Muslims are considered to have become an absolute majority in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Albanian Catholic priest Pjetër Mazreku reported in 1624 that there were 450,000 Muslims, 150,000 Catholics and 75,000 Eastern Orthodox in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
There was a lack of Orthodox Church activity in Bosnia proper in the pre-Ottoman period. An Orthodox Christian population in Bosnia was introduced as a direct result of Ottoman policy. From the 15th century and onwards, Orthodox Christians (Orthodox Vlachs and non-Vlach Orthodox Serbs) from Serbia and other regions settled in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Favored by the Ottomans over the Catholics, many Orthodox churches were allowed to be built in Bosnia by the Ottomans. Quite a few Vlachs also became Islamized in Bosnia, and some (mainly in Croatia) became Catholics.