page_title: Kikinda
section_title: Modern history
hierarchical_section_title: Kikinda / History / Modern history
caption_attribution_description: English: Cross at the main square in Kikinda, at the beginning of 20th century.
context_page_description: Kikinda is a city and the administrative center of the North Banat District in the autonomous province of Vojvodina, Serbia. The city urban area has 38,065 inhabitants, while the city administrative area has 59,453 inhabitants.
  The city was founded in the 18th century. From 1774 to 1874 Kikinda was the seat of the District of Velika Kikinda, an autonomous administrative unit of Habsburg Monarchy. In 1893 Kikinda was granted the status of a city. The city became part of the Kingdom of Serbia in 1918, and it lost the city status. The status was re-granted in 2016.
  In 1996, the well preserved archaeological remnants of a half a million-year-old mammoth were excavated on the outer edge of the town area. The mammoth called "Kika" has become one of the symbols of the town. Today it is exhibited in the National Museum of Kikinda. Other attractions of the city are the Suvača – a unique horse-powered dry mill, the annual Pumpkin Days and the International Symposium of Sculpture "Terra". The winter roosts of long-eared owl, with a large number of individuals, are easily accessible as they are situated in town parks and therefore they attract birdwatchers both from this country and abroad.
context_section_description: The history of modern Kikinda can be traced back for 250 years; by 1751–1752, when the area where the city is presently located began to be repopulated. The first settlers were Serbs who served in the Habsburg military in border patrols. They were tasked with protecting the borders against the Ottomans along the rivers of Moriš and Tisa. After the Požarevac peace treaty, where an agreement between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire was reached, the Ottomans lost the territory of Banat which led to huge job losses among the Serb population. As a result, they founded a new settlement in an effort to make a living from agriculture. Some decades later, along with the Serbs, Germans (Banat Swabians), Hungarians, and Jews also settled the area.
  About twenty years after the establishment of the settlement, on 12 November 1774, the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, by way of a special charter, formed the Velikokikindski privileged district – Regio-privilegiatus Districtus Magnokikindiensis, as a distinct feudal governmental administrative unit with headquarters in Kikinda. Besides Kikinda, the district included another nine settlements of the Serb border military establishments in North and Central Banat: Srpski Krstur, Jozefovo (today part of Novi Kneževac), Mokrin, Karlovo (today part of Novo Miloševo), Bašaid, Vranjevo (today part of Novi Bečej), Melenci, Kumane and Taraš. During that period, the inhabitants of these places had substantial economic, and even political privileges within the Habsburg Monarchy. The District functioned, with some interruptions, until 1876 when it was abolished, and Kikinda was allocated both organizationally and administratively to the direct authority of the Torontal County with its headquarters in Veliki Bečkerek (today Zrenjanin), which covered most of the territory of present-day Serbian Banat.
  In 1848/1849, the famous uprising of the Serbs in Vojvodina took place. Initially, Kikinda's citizens expressed, almost unanimously, social revolt, while later the uprising turned into a national one, and Kikinda became part of the Serbian Voivodship, a Serb autonomous region within the Austrian Empire. During the war, control over the city changed hands between the Serbian and Hungarian governments  at the expense of great conflicts, which resulted in suffering and destruction. It was one of the most difficult and most complex periods in the history of Kikinda. Between 1849 and 1860 Kikinda was part of the Voivodeship of Serbia and Temes Banat, a separate Austrian crown land. In 1860, this crown land was abolished, and Kikinda was incorporated into Torontal county, in the Kingdom of Hungary after the compromise of 1867.
  A railway connecting Szeged, Kikinda and Timișoara was built in 1857 and is the oldest railway on the territory of present-day Serbia and the entire southeast Europe, predating Belgrade by 27 years. Kikinda had 15,000 inhabitants at the time. The first train arrived on 15 November at 15:00 at the, still unfinished, railway station. The railway itself was part of a 700 km (430 mi) long railway Vienna-Bratislava-Budapest-Timișoara-Baziaș, a spa and port on the Danube. Days before the first train arrived, public drummers were announcing the event and huge crowds gathered at the arrival ceremony. But, some complained. Farmers whose land was appropriated by the state for the route of the railway were not satisfied with the compensation they received. Others spread stories that the fumes from the locomotive are toxic, that sparks from the wheels will set grain fields on fire or that the sound of locomotive will scare the cattle. However, the railway brought an economic boom to Kikinda, as in the next five years industry began to develop, including steam mills and brickyards. When at the end of 19th century Veliki Bečkerek was linked directly to Szeged, bypassing Kikinda, the economy slowed down. In 1953 the connection with Szeged was cut as the bridge over the river Tisza was demolished. The connection to Timișoara was operational via railbuses until 2015. The Austrian emperor Franz 
caption: Cross at the main square in Kikinda, at the beginning of the 20th century.
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