page_title: History of Bosnia and Herzegovina
section_title: Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918–41)
hierarchical_section_title: History of Bosnia and Herzegovina / Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918–41)
caption_attribution_description: English: "Keep/Protect Yugoslavia" (Čuvajte Jugoslaviju), a variant of the alleged last words of King Alexander, in an illustration of Yugoslav peoples dancing the kolo.
context_page_description: Bosnia and Herzegovina, sometimes referred to simply as Bosnia, is a country in Southeastern Europe on the Balkan Peninsula. It has had permanent settlement since the Neolithic Age. By the early historical period it was inhabited by Illyrians and Celts. Christianity arrived in the 1st century, and by the 4th century the area became part of the Western Roman Empire. Germanic tribes invaded soon after, followed by Slavs in the 6th Century. In 1136, Béla II of Hungary invaded Bosnia and created the title "Ban of Bosnia" as an honorary title for his son Ladislaus II of Hungary. During this time, Bosnia became virtually autonomous, and was eventually proclaimed a kingdom in 1377. The Ottoman Empire followed in 1463 and lasted over 400 years. They wrought great changes to the political and administrative system, introduced land reforms, and class and religious distinctions. A series of uprisings began 1831, which culminated in the Herzegovinian rebellion, a widespread peasant uprising, in 1875. The conflict eventually forced the Ottomans to cede administration of the country to Austria-Hungary through the Treaty of Berlin in 1878.
context_section_description: Following World War I, Bosnia was incorporated into the South Slav kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (soon renamed Yugoslavia). 
  Political life in Bosnia at this time was marked by two major trends: social and economic unrest over the Agrarian Reform of 1918–19 manifested through mass colonization and property confiscation; also formation of several political parties that frequently changed coalitions and alliances with parties in other Yugoslav regions. The dominant ideological conflict of the Yugoslav state, between Croatian regionalism and Serbian centralization, was approached differently by Bosnia's major ethnic groups and was dependent on the overall political atmosphere. Although the initial split of the country into 33 oblasts erased the presence of traditional geographic entities from the map, the efforts of Bosnian politicians such as Mehmed Spaho ensured that the six oblasts carved up from Bosnia and Herzegovina corresponded to the six sanjaks from Ottoman times and, thus, matched the country's traditional boundary as a whole.
  The establishment of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929, however, brought the redrawing of administrative regions into banates that purposely avoided all historical and ethnic lines, removing any trace of a Bosnian entity. Serbo-Croat tensions over the structuring of the Yugoslav state continued, with the concept of a separate Bosnian division receiving little or no consideration. The famous Cvetković-Maček agreement that created the Croatian banate in 1939 encouraged what was essentially a partition of Bosnia between Croatia and Serbia. However, outside political circumstances forced Yugoslav politicians to shift their attention to the rising threat posed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. Following a period that saw attempts at appeasement, the joining of the Tripartite Pact, and a coup d'état, Yugoslavia was finally invaded by Germany on 6 April 1941.
caption: "Keep/Protect Yugoslavia" (Čuvajte Jugoslaviju), a variant of the alleged last words of King Alexander, in an illustration of Yugoslav peoples dancing the kolo.
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