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Serbian Emigration
- Michigan State University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
5 SerbianEmigration B eginning in the sixth century, the first Slavic groups of Serbs and Croats entered the Balkans and settled in the region between the Roman and Byzantine empires. Their choice of locations set a precedent that had far-reaching consequences for the Serbian people. Over the next thousand years, the Ottoman Turks, Croats, Austrians, Hungarians, Italians, and Bulgarians laid new claims to the same land, which in turn led to numerous battles among the rival contenders. As a community caught between rival empires, the South Slavs divided their support between the Roman Catholic West and Orthodox East that sought to dominate the region. These struggles also created a large diaspora of Serbian migrants, along with an intermingling of Roman, Byzantine, and Slavic populations in the Balkans. As a result, the Serbs emerged as a transient population with ill-defined borders, but sharing their ethnic heritage through a common language and an Orthodox religious tradition. The process of creating a distinct Serbian homeland in the Balkans began in the twelfth century with the papal recognition of the Nemanjić dynasty under King Stephan I and the establishment of an independent Serbian Orthodox Church. The king’s youngest son, Rastko, later canonized as Saint Sava, contributed to both the political and religious development of the young nation. He not only obtained recognition of an independent Serbian 6 Paul Lubotina Orthodox Church from the Byzantine Empire, he also wrote the nation’s constitution, called the Nomocanon of St. Sava, which was based on Roman law. The close relationship between the church and government continued over the next centuries as many of the early kings were elevated to sainthood. As the Nemanjić dynasty grew in strength, the later kings, such as Stephan Dušan, expanded the territorial holdings of the Serbian Empire by taking lands away from the Byzantine and Bulgarian empires. By 1355, Dušan controlled an area from Belgrade in the north to Ragusa on the Adriatic Sea and then southward to the doorstep of Athens, including much of the Aegean coastline. This “Golden Era” of Serbian history did not last past the death of King Dušan as his son Urosch lost control over the population and the nation fell into a period of civil war that ended the Nemanjić dynasty. Eventually Prince Lazar Hrebljanović emerged as the new leader of Serbia, and he began to form military alliances with neighboring powers, including the Bulgarians, to stop the expansion of the Muslim Ottoman Turks who had begun to replace the Byzantines as the dominant power in the Balkans. In 1389, Lazar led his army into battle against the Turks in Kosovo at the Field of Blackbirds. Lazar’s untimely defeat in Kosovo brought an end to an independent Serbia as the Turks incorporated the region into their empire and established local control over the population through the creation of several sultanates in the Balkans. In the period of Turkish domination , Lazar became the martyred hero of a defeated people and the region around the city of Peć in Kosovo transformed into a religious center for the Serbian Orthodox Church to commemorate the lost battle. In order to escape Turkish domination, several thousand Serbs moved northward to Austrian lands controlled by the Hapsburg monarchy. They established a new and independent religious center at Karlovac, in modern Croatia. The Hapsburgs fortified the region, which they referred to as the Krajina, while the local Serb, Croat, and Slovenian populations formed the first line of defense against any renewed attempts by the Turks to spread Islam into the Christian-controlled portions of Central Europe. For the Serbs, Karlovac symbolized their desire to create a new independent Serbia, while the Orthodox Church helped to foster these ideas of nationalism. The church used the religious centers in Karlovac, Peć, and Belgrade to preserve and mythologize the actions of Stephan, Saint Sava, Dušan, and Lazar. The stories of these historic figures formed the basis for Serbian identity as they SERBIANS IN MICHIGAN 7 endured four centuries of Ottoman domination over the once independent Serbian population. The one exception to the Ottoman domination of the Balkans occurred in Montenegro, the highland home of the Black Mountain Serbs. The rugged terrain and fierce resistance by the population forced out the Ottomans and allowed Stefan Crnojević to set up a semi-independent state with support from the powerful Venetian city-state that bordered Montenegro to the north. The Crnojević dynasty built their political and religious capital in Cetinje and...