History of Vojvodina
Later that year (1849), after the Austrian and Russian armies defeated the Hungarians, a separate Habsburg crownland named the Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar was formed.
Before the Roman conquest in the 1st century BC, Indo-European peoples of Illyrian, Thracian and Celtic origin inhabited the region.
Six Roman Emperors were born in this city or in its surroundings: Decius Traian (249–251), Aurelian (270–275), Probus (276–282), Maximianus Herculius (285–310), Constantius II (337–361) and Gratian (367–383).
Slavs (Severans, Abodrites, Braničevci, Timočani, and Serbs) settled in the territory of present-day Vojvodina in the 6th and 7th centuries AD, but pockets of Romanized population remained in the area.
According to the Gesta Hungarorum, Salan, a Bulgarian voivod (duke), ruled the territory of Bačka, and his capital city was Titel.
Another Bulgarian voivod, Glad, ruled in Banat, but there are no other sources mentioning them except from the Gesta, which was written three hundred years later, so their existence is questionable.
By the Gesta Ungarorum, Glad's descendant was Ajtony or Ahtum, voivod of Banat, the last ruler who opposed the establishment of the Kingdom of Hungary.
Between 1282 and 1316 the Serbian King Stefan Dragutin ruled the Kingdom of Syrmia, which consisted of the north-western parts of present-day Central Serbia (including Mačva, Braničevo, Podrinje, etc.
Another local ruler, Ugrin Čak, ruled over Upper Syrmia, Slavonija, Bačka and Banat, and his residence was in Ilok.
After the death of Ugrin Čak, Upper Syrmia, southern Bačka and south-western Banat were placed under authority of the Hungarian king.
Serbian despots Stefan Lazarević and Đurađ Branković also had their personal possessions in the territory of present-day Vojvodina (and Pannonian part of present-day Belgrade), which included Zemun, Slankamen, Kupinik, Mitrovica, Bečej, and Veliki Bečkerek, which were given to the despot Stefan Lazarević (who was a tertiary vassal or a majordomo of Sigismund) in 1404 by Hungarian king Sigismund.
Later in the 15th century, the Serbian despot Đurađ Branković became the single largest landowner in the Kingdom of Hungary, possessing estates as far afield in the Banat, Transylvania and the region around Debrecen.
[citation needed] The Ottoman Empire took control of the territory of present-day Vojvodina following the Battle of Mohács of 1526 and the conquest of Banat in 1552.
[28] This turbulent period caused a massive depopulation of this region, with most of the Hungarians and Catholic Croats (Šokci) fled to the north, and were replaced by Serb and Muslim inhabitants.
Soon after the Battle of Mohács, Jovan Nenad, a leader of the Serb mercenaries, established his rule in Bačka, northern Banat and a small part of Syrmia.
Taking advantage of the extremely confused military and political situation, the Hungarian noblemen from the region joined forces against him and defeated the Serbian troops in the summer of 1527.
The end of the Ottoman rule dramatically altered the demographic character of the territory of present-day Vojvodina region, as much of the ethnic Serb population had been decimated through warfare.
The Serbian patriarch, Arsenije III Čarnojević, fearing the revenge of the Ottomans for the Serbian rebellion, immigrated in the last decade of the 17th century to the Habsburg monarchy with about 60–70,000 Serb refugees, but they mostly settled in the territory of what is now Republic of Hungary and only small part of them settled in western Bačka in present-day Vojvodina.
During the Kuruc War (1703–11) of Francis II Rakoczi, the territory of present-day Vojvodina was a battlefield between Hungarian rebels and local Serbs who fought on the side of the Habsburg Emperor.
[citation needed] Darvas, the prime military commander of the Hungarian rebels, which fought against Serbs in Bačka, wrote: "We burned all large places of Rascia, on the both banks of the rivers Danube and Tisa".
Serbs, however, remained the single largest ethnic group in the territory of present-day Vojvodina, until the second half of 20th century, when they became the absolute majority again.
Since the Austrian court turned against the Hungarians in the later stage of revolution, the feudal and clerical circles of the Voivodship formed an alliance with Austria and became a tool of the Viennese government.
With the help of Imperial Russia, the forces of reaction smothered the revolution in the summer of 1849, defeating all the national and social movements in the Habsburg Monarchy.
The full title of the emperor was "Grand Voivod of the Voivodship of Serbia" (German: Großwoiwode der Woiwodschaft Serbien).
Unlike Banat and Bačka, the Syrmia region was in 1860 incorporated into the Kingdom of Slavonia, another separate Habsburg crown land.
On November 25, 1918, the Assembly of Serbs, Bunjevci, and other Slavs of Vojvodina in Novi Sad proclaimed the unification of Vojvodina (Banat, Bačka and Baranja) with the Kingdom of Serbia (The assembly numbered 757 deputies, of whom 578 were Serbs, 84 Bunjevci, 62 Slovaks, 21 Rusyns, 6 Germans, 3 Šokci, 2 Croats, and 1 Hungarian).
Most deputies of the assembly were Serbs, and other local Slavs, since they mostly came from Slavic-inhabited parts of Banat, Bačka and Baranja, and not from areas with non-Slavic (Romanian, German or Hungarian) populations.
In 1921, unsatisfied with the decision of the 1920 peace treaty to assign these territories to Hungary, the South Slavic population of Baranja and north-west Bačka proclaimed the short-lived Baranya-Baja Republic.
The outbreak of the Yugoslav wars contributed to the increase of ethnic tensions, with many refugee Serbs, Romani and Ashkali who were driven from Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo being resettled in Vojvodina.
The fall of Milošević in 2000 created a new climate for reform in Vojvodina, with the province's ethnic minorities strongly supporting the new government in Belgrade.
