Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Serbian: Срби у Босни и Херцеговини, romanized: Srbi u Bosni i Hercegovini), sometimes referred to as Bosnian Serbs, are one of the three constituent peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to data from the 2013 census, the population of ethnic Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina was 1,086,733, constituting 30.8% of the total population; they are the second-largest ethnic group in the country (after Bosniaks) and live predominantly in the political-territorial entity of Republika Srpska.

Serbs have a long history of inhabiting the present-day territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as long history of statehood in that territory. Slavs settled the Balkans in the 6th century and the Serbs were one of the main tribes who settled the peninsula including parts of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina. Parts of Bosnia were ruled by the Serbian prince Časlav in the 10th century while the southeastern and eastern parts became integrated into the Serbian medieval state under the Nemanjić dynasty by the 13th-14th centuries. After the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the majority of the Orthodox Christian population in the region retained their Serbian ethnic and religious identity under the restored Serbian Patriarchate of Peć, while many landowners converted to Islam. Throughout the period of Ottoman rule, the Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, formed the core of several major uprisings against Ottoman rule. In 1878, following the Congress of Berlin, Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina, facing resistance from the Serb population, which increasingly aspired to unification with the Kingdom of Serbia, culminating in growing tensions that contributed to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, which led to the outbreak of World War I.

After the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918, the Serb population of Bosnia and Herzegovina supported the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later renamed Yugoslavia), seeing it as the realization of national unification with Serbia. During the World War II, Bosnia and Herzegovina became part of the Nazi-puppet state of Independent State of Croatia in which hundreds of thousands of Serbs were killed in a genocide carried out by the Ustaše regime, while the Partisan fought the Nazi occupiers and their collaborators. In socialist Yugoslavia, Serbs were recognized as one of the three constituent peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, holding significant political influence, while the republic experienced rapid industrialization and inter-ethnic peace until the late 1990s. The Bosnian War, triggered by the republic’s secession from Yugoslavia, saw the displacement of populations; the Dayton Agreement established Bosnia and Herzegovina as a consociational state of two entities, where Serbs today maintain strong political autonomy within the political-territorial entity of Republika Srpska, while continuing debates over centralization, secession threats, and NATO integration persist.