Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group native to Southeastern Europe who share a common Serbian ancestry, culture, history, and language. They primarily live in their nation-state of Serbia, and in neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and Kosovo, with smaller communities in North Macedonia, Hungary, and Romania. They also constitute a significant diaspora with communities across Europe, the Americas, and Oceania.
The Serbs are predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christians and speak Serbian language which is official in Serbia, co-official in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, and spoken by the plurality in Montenegro.
Etymology
The origin of the ethnonym *Sŕbъ is unclear. The most prominent theory holds that it is of Proto-Slavic origin, meaning "family kinship" or "alliance". Word *srъb- / *sьrb- roots in Slavic words meaning "to sip, munch", found in Polish serbać, Russian serbatThe earliest mention of the Serbs in the Balkans are from Einhard's Royal Frankish Annals, written in 822 AD. Einhard mentions "the Serbs, a people that is said to hold a large part of Dalmatia".
Genetic origins
According to a three genetic systems – paternal, maternal, and autosomal – of available data from large-scale studies on Balto-Slavs and their proximal populations, the whole genome SNP data place Serbs in the middle between a Western South Slavic cluster and Eastern South Slavic cluster. The western cluster has an inclination toward Hungarians, Czechs, and Slovaks, while the eastern cluster toward Romanians and, to some extent, Greeks.Y chromosome results show that haplogroups I2a and R1a together account for the majority of the Serb makeup. Recent studies indicate that roughly half of Serbian I2a lineages trace their recent origin to Herzegovina/Old Herzegovina, reflecting strong historical gene flow from that region.
Mitochondrial DNA studies of Serbs show a predominantly Slavic maternal gene pool, with common U haplogroups shared with other Slavic populations. At the same time, a significant presence of Balkan-specific lineages and southern European lineages points to considerable genetic continuity with pre-Slavic Balkan populations. These findings support both the impact of early medieval Slavic migrations to the Balkans and a strong autochthonous substrate.
Based on the autosomal IBD survey, the speakers of Serbian share a very high number of common ancestors dated to the migration period approximately 1,500 years ago with Poland and Romania-Bulgaria cluster among others in Eastern Europe. It is concluded to be caused by the Hunnic and Slavic expansion, which was a "relatively small population that expanded over a large geographic area", particularly "the expansion of the Slavic populations into regions of low population density beginning in the sixth century" and that it is "highly coincident with the modern distribution of Slavic languages".
According to 2023 archaeogenetic study autosomal qpAdm modelling, the modern-day Serbs are 58.4% of Central-Eastern European early medieval Slavic ancestry, 39.2% local Balkan pre-Slavic, and 2.3% West Anatolian ancestry.
Several recent studies showed that Serbia's people are among the tallest in the world, with an average male height of.
History
Arrival of the Slavs
, especially Sclaveni and Antae, including the White Serbs, invaded and settled Southeastern Europe in the 6th and 7th century. Up until the late 560s, their activity consisted primarily of raiding across the Danube, although Slavic settlement remained limited and occurred mainly through Byzantine foederati colonies. The Danube and Sava frontier was overwhelmed by large-scale Slavic settlement in the late 6th and early 7th century. The area that is now central Serbia was an important geostrategic province through which the Via Militaris passed. The numerous Slavs mixed with and assimilated the descendants of the indigenous population Illyrians, Thracians, Dacians, as well as Romans and Celts. The White Serbs from White Serbia settled primarily in the region between the Dinaric Alps and the Adriatic coast, although during their migration some groups temporarily reached as far as the area near Thessaloniki. The region of Raška was the center of Serb settlement and Serb tribes also occupied most of modern-day Herzegovina and Montenegro.Middle Ages
The first Serb states, Serbia and Duklja, were formed chiefly under the Vlastimirović and Vojislavljević dynasties, respectively. The other Serb-inhabited lands, or principalities, that were mentioned included the "countries" of Zachlumia, Travunia, and Pagania. As the Serbian state of Duklja declined in the late 11th century, Raška gained independence and succeeded it as the most powerful Serbian state. Grand Prince Stefan Nemanja, founder of the Nemanjić dynasty which ruled Serbia until the 14th century, conquered the neighbouring regions of Kosovo, Duklja, and Zachlumia. Nemanja's older son, Stefan Nemanjić, became Serbia's first recognized king, while his younger son, Rastko, founded the Serbian Orthodox Church in the year 1219, and became known as Saint Sava.Over the next 140 years, Serbia expanded its borders from numerous smaller principalities into a unified Serbian Empire. Its culture remained deeply Byzantine in character, despite political and military ambitions directed against Byzantine Empire itself. The medieval power and influence of Serbia culminated in the reign of Stefan Dušan, who proclaimed himself Emperor in 1346. At its height under his rule, the empire’s territory included Macedonia, northern Greece, Montenegro, and almost all of modern Albania.
Ottoman Turks began their conquest of the Balkans in the 1350s, sparking a major conflict with the Serbs. The first major battle was the Battle of Maritsa, in which the Serbs were defeated. The deaths of two key Serbian commanders in the battle, followed by the death of Emperor Stefan Uroš V later that year, caused the Serbian Empire to fragment into several smaller domains. These states were ruled by regional lords: Zeta by the Balšić noble family; Raška, Kosovo, and northern Macedonia by the Branković noble family; and Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović, who controlled modern-day Central Serbia and parts of Kosovo. Because of his marriage to a member of the Nemanjić dynasty, Lazar was acknowledged as the titular leader of the Serbs. In 1389 the Serbs faced the Ottomans at the Battle of Kosovo on the plain of Kosovo Polje, near modern-day Pristina. Both Prince Lazar and Sultan Murad I were killed. The battle most likely ended in a stalemate, and Serbia thereafter enjoyed a period of relative prosperity under Despot Stefan Lazarević while resisting Ottoman conquest until 1459.
Early modern period
The Ottoman devshirme system was a form of slavery in which Christian boys from the Balkans, many of them Serbs, were taken from their families, forcibly converted to Islam, and trained for infantry units of the Ottoman army known as the Janissary corps. A number of Serbs who converted to Islam rose to the highest ranks of the Ottoman Empire, including the Ottoman grand vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha and the Ottoman field marshal and war minister Omar Pasha Latas.The Serbs had taken an active part in the wars fought in the Balkans against the Ottoman Empire and had also organized numerous uprisings. Because of this, they suffered persecution and their territories were devastated, resulting in major migrations from Serbia into Habsburg territory. After allied Christian forces had captured Buda from the Ottoman Empire in 1686 during the Great Turkish War, Serbs from the Pannonian Plain joined the troops of the Habsburg monarchy as separate units known as the Serbian Militia. Serbs, as volunteers, massively joined the Austrian side.
In 1688–1689 the Habsburg army, advancing deep into the Ottoman Balkans during the Great Turkish War, captured Belgrade and much of present-day Serbia, encouraging Serbs to rise against Ottoman rule. When the Habsburg offensive collapsed in 1690 and Ottoman forces began a brutal reconquest accompanied by reprisals against the rebel population, Serbian Patriarch Arsenije III Crnojević feared massacres and loss of church privileges. He therefore led in 1690 tens of thousands of Serb families north across the Sava and Danube rivers into Habsburg territory in what became known as the Great Serb Migration. The large Serb community concentrated in the Banat, southern Hungary, and the Military Frontier consisted of merchants and craftsmen in the cities, but mainly of peasant refugees. Smaller groups of Serbs also migrated to the Russian Empire, and settled in the newly established frontier regions of Slavo-Serbia and New Serbia, located in present-day eastern Ukraine, where they were granted land and military privileges to defend the empire’s southern borders.
Modern period
The Serbian Revolution was the first successful national uprising against Ottoman rule in Europe and consisted of two phases: the First Serbian Uprising led by Karađorđe Petrović, which created an independent Serbian state for almost a decade, and the shorter but decisive Second Serbian Uprising led by Miloš Obrenović. During the First Uprising, the rebels established their own government, army, and institutions, effectively ending centuries of Ottoman feudal oppression. Although the Ottomans crushed the First Uprising in 1813, the Second Uprising forced the Sublime Porte to grant Serbia substantial autonomy in 1815–1816; in the early 1830s Serbia’s autonomy and borders were formally recognised with Miloš Obrenović acknowledged as hereditary prince, the last Ottoman troops withdrew in 1867, and full international recognition of independence finally came at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. The revolution not only laid the foundations of modern Serbia but also abolished feudalism early and inspired subsequent national movements across the Balkans. The revolution as a consequence also produced one of Europe’s earliest codified legal systems, the Serbian Civil Code of 1844, making Serbia the fourth modern-day European country, after France, Austria and the Netherlands, to have a codified legal system.File:Serbian cadre troops leaving for frontier positions, 1914.jpg|thumb|Battle of Cer, the first Allied victory in the World War I.
Serbia fought in the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, which forced the Ottomans out of the Balkans and doubled the territory and population of the Kingdom of Serbia. In 1914, a Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, provoking the outbreak of World War I. In the fighting that ensued, Serbia was invaded by Austria-Hungary. Despite being outnumbered, the Serbian Army defeated the Austro-Hungarian forces at the Battle of Cer, which marked the first Allied victory over the Central Powers in the war. Further victories at the battles of Kolubara and the Drina meant that Serbia remained unconquered as the war entered its second year. However, joint invasion by the forces of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria overwhelmed Serbia in the winter of 1915, and a subsequent withdrawal by the Serbian Army through Albania took the lives of more than 240,000 soldiers and civilians. Serbian Army spent the remaining years of the war fighting on the Macedonian front in Greece, before liberating Serbia from Austro-Hungarian occupation in 1918. Serbia suffered the biggest casualty rate in World War I.
Following the victory in World War I, the Serbs formed the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes together with other South Slavic peoples. The country was reigned over by the Serbian House of Karađorđević, most notably by King Alexander I from 1921 to 1934.
File:Logor Jasenovac.JPG|thumb|Stone Flower, a monument dedicated to the victims of Jasenovac concentration camp, a major site of the Genocide of Serbs during the World War II.
During World War II, Yugoslavia was invaded in 1941 by the Axis powers and subsequently divided, with Serbia placed under direct German occupation. Serbs in occupied Yugoslavia subsequently formed a resistance movement known as the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, or the Chetniks. The Chetniks had the official support of the Allies until 1943, when Allied support shifted to the Communist Yugoslav Partisans, a multi-ethnic resistance movement, formed in 1941. Although Serbs constituted the majority of Yugoslav Partisan fighters in the first two years of the war, other ethnic groups joined in larger numbers after the Italian capitulation in 1943. Over the entire course of the war, the ethnic composition of the Yugoslav Partisans was approximately 53 percent Serb.
Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia were targeted for extermination as part of a genocide carried out by the Croatian fascist Ustaše regime and suffered among the highest casualty rates in Europe during World War II. The Ustaše view of ethnic and racial identity, as well as the theory of Serbs as an inferior race, was under the influence of Croatian nationalists and intellectuals from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Jasenovac concentration camp was notorious for the barbaric practices which occurred in it. Sisak and Jastrebarsko concentration camps were specially established for children. Diana Budisavljević, a humanitarian of Austrian descent, carried out rescue operations and saved more than 15,000, mostly Serb, children, from Ustaše camps.