Serbs from modern-day Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina started actively migrating to Croatia at a time the Habsburg monarchy was engaged in a series of wars against the Ottoman Empire.

From the beginning of the 20th century, the Croat-Serb Coalition led by Croat Frano Supilo and Serb Svetozar Pribićević governed the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia until the dissolution of Austria-Hungary.

[2] Many prominent Croatian Serbs have become internationally recognized in their fields, such as Nikola Tesla, Milutin Milanković, Sava Šumanović, Rade Šerbedžija, Siniša Mihajlović and Peja Stojaković.

In the 10th-century De Administrando Imperio (DAI), the lands of Konavle, Zahumlje and Pagania (which included parts of southern Dalmatia now in Croatia) is described as inhabited by Serbs who immigrated there from an area near Thessaloniki previously arrived there from White Serbia.

[23] Matthias Corvinus complained in a letter from 1462 that 200,000 peoples during the previous three years had been taken from his country by Turks, but this information was mistakenly used in Serbian and other historiographies as a reference for Serb migration to Hungary.

[55] Among the oldest Eastern Orthodox churches in Croatia are the monasteries of Krupa, Krka and Dragović, and other smaller churches (in settlements Kula Atlagića, Pađene, Golubić, Miranje, Biljane, Ostrovica, Karin, Biovičino Selo, Đevrske, Kistanje, Žagrović, Radučić, Mokro Polje, Benkovac, Dragišić-Grabovci, Bratiškovci, Kosovo-Markovac, Morpolača, Žegar, Plavno, Drniš, Ervenik, Kolarina, Brgud, Vrbnik, Kričke, Islam Grčki, Dobropoljci among others).

[56] The claim by Nikodim Milaš that they date back to the 14-15th century is controversial and unlikely, as they display Romanesque and Gothic architectural features that are unusual for Byzantine-Orthodox churches.

Their geographical position, circumstances in which they live everywhere mixed with the Serbs, and the process of general evolution where the idea of Serbianism means progress, guarantees us that those [falling] will be Croats."

Immediately upon the outbreak of the World War I, all organizations that the government considered favored unification of South Slavs or Serbia, which was on the side of the Allied Powers, were banned.

Josip Frank's associates took advantage of some provocations and the anger of the people after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serb Gavrilo Princip and organized anti-Serbian demonstrations.

After a stone was thrown on a parade in which the image of Franz Ferdinand was carried through Zagreb, many cafés and gathering places of pro-Yugoslav politicians as well as Serb-owned shops were demolished.

[88] Relative growth in the number of Serb citizens was recorded in Virovitica (35% increase), and Syrmia and Modruš-Rijeka counties, mainly due to the migration of Serbian war veterans who fought on Macedonian front to Slavonia during agrarian reform which was organized by the authorities.

The Ustaše government saw Serbs, Jews, Romanis and antifascist Croats as a disruptive element and enemies of the Croatian people, and immediately started with their prosecution.

[112][113] After the invasion of Yugoslavia by Axis forces, Serbian uprisings broke out under the Chetnik leadership in Gračac, Srb, Donji Lapac, Drvar and Bosansko Grahovo.

Following the end of the war, Croatia entered union with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia and formed the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

[citation needed] Amid rising Serbian nationalism and tensions between Yugoslav republics during the breakup of Yugoslavia, on 8 July 1989 Serbs held a rally in Knin during which numerous Chetnik symbols were exhibited and a JNA military intervention against Croatia was invoked.

[141] Tension grew following the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) 's victory in the 1990 general election, led by Franjo Tudjman, since one of its political goals was Croatia's independence from Yugoslavia.

[148] Many Serbs in government lost their jobs, and HDZ made themselves target of Serbian propaganda by having party members attempting to rehabilitate the WWII Croatian fascist movement Ustaše, or by saying that the numbers of people killed in Jasenovac, one of the largest extermination camp in Europe, were inflated.

[150] A Norwegian historian Øyvind Hvenekilde Seim stated that status of Serbs in Croatia, who made important contributions to Croatian cultural, scientific, and political history, was annulled by actions of president Franjo Tuđman during the 1990s.

[152] Under the influence of propaganda and with the support from Serbia as well as in response to actions by President Tudjman's administration,[153] rebelled Serbs established an unrecognized state called Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) in hopes of achieving independence and complete self-governance from Croatia.

According to the ICTY, the RSK implemented policies "which advanced the objective to forcibly and permanently remove the majority of Croat and other non-Serb populations from approximately the one-third of Croatia".

[167] The war ended with a Croatian military success in Operation Storm in 1995 and subsequent peaceful reintegration of the remaining renegade territory in eastern Slavonia in 1998 as a result of the signed Erdut Agreement from 1995.

These abuses, which continued on a large scale even months after Operation Storm, included summary executions of elderly and infirm Serbs who remained behind and the wholesale burning and destruction of Serbian villages and property.

He was found to have been part of a "joint criminal enterprise" which included Blagoje Adžić, Milan Babić, Radmilo Bogdanović, Veljko Kadijević, Radovan Karadžić, Slobodan Milošević, Ratko Mladić, Vojislav Šešelj, Franko Simatović, Jovica Stanišić, and Dragan Vasiljković.

[192] The property laws allegedly favor Bosnian Croats refugees who took residence in houses that were left unoccupied and unguarded by Serbs after Operation Storm.

In 2015 Amnesty International reported that Croatian Serbs continued to face discrimination in public sector employment and the restitution of tenancy rights to social housing vacated during the war.

Amnesty International also said that the right to use minority languages and script continued to be politicized and unimplemented in some towns and that heightened nationalist rhetoric and hate speech contributed to growing ethnic intolerance and insecurity.

[216] Serbs in the Croatian Military Frontier were out of the jurisdiction of the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć and in 1611, after demands from the community, the Pope established the Eparchy of Marča (Vratanija) with a seat at the Serbian-built Marča Monastery, with a Byzantine vicar instated as bishop subordinate to the Roman Catholic bishop of Zagreb – working to bring Serbian Orthodox Christians into communion with Rome, which caused struggle of power between the Catholics and the Serbs over the region.

In the Cabinet of Ivo Sanader II, the party was part of the ruling coalition led by the conservative Croatian Democratic Union, and SDSS member Slobodan Uzelac held the post of Deputy Prime Minister.

[224] After that Serbs again entered government during Cabinet of Andrej Plenković II, in which Boris Milošević become Deputy Prime Minister and responsible for Social Affairs and Human and Minority Right.