Central Serbia - History

History

Viminacium (present-day Kostolac) was a capital of the Roman province of Upper Moesia in the 2nd century. The capitals of several medieval Serbian states were also located in the territory of later Central Serbia: Stari Ras (the capital of Raška), Debrc and Belgrade (the capitals of the Kingdom of Syrmia of Stefan Dragutin), Kruševac (the capital of the Moravian Serbia of Lazar Hrebeljanović), and Smederevo (the capital of the Serbian Despotate).

After the Serbian Despotate was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century, an Ottoman administrative unit named the Sanjak of Smederevo was formed in part of this area with its seat in the city of Smederevo. Later, the seat of the sanjak was moved to Belgrade and the territory also became known as the Pashaluk of Belgrade.

Between 1718 and 1739, part of the region was under Habsburg administration and was known as the Kingdom of Serbia. After the First Serbian Uprising in 1804, it became a free Serbian state known as Serbia. It was conquered again by the Ottomans in 1813, but the Second Serbian Uprising (1815–1817) resulted in Serbia being recognized as an autonomous principality within the Ottoman Empire. In 1878, Serbia became a fully independent state, also enlarging its territory in the south-east. The borders of Serbia established in 1878 were similar to the borders of the later Central Serbia.

In 1913, Serbia further expanded its borders to the south, taking control of much of present-day Kosovo and Macedonia. Further territorial gains were made in the north and south-west in 1918. Serbia became part of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes on December 1, 1918. The region later known as Central Serbia did not had a separate political status within the Kingdom, although in 1929, when new provinces of the Kingdom were formed, one of the provinces (Morava Banovina) was established in the eastern part of the later Central Serbia with its capital in Niš.

Between 1941 and 1944, most of the territory of what later became Central Serbia was part of the area governed by the Military Administration in Serbia which was occupied by German and Bulgarian troops with a Serbian puppet governments led by Milan Aćimović and Milan Nedić. South-western parts of what later became Central Serbia were occupied by Italy and were annexed to the neighbouring puppet state of Montenegro, while south-eastern parts were annexed by Bulgaria.

The Axis occupation ended in 1944 and the Democratic Republic of Serbia was formed as one of the republics of the new socialist Yugoslavia. In 1945, Vojvodina and Kosovo (also known as Kosmet in Serbian) became autonomous provinces within Serbia, thus the part of Serbia that was outside of these two regions became known as Uža Srbija ("Serbia Proper" in English). At the beginning of the 1990s, the term Uža Srbija was replaced with the new term Centralna Srbija ("Central Serbia" in English) and this new term was used in all official publications of the Serbian government that referred to the region.

With the formation of new statistical regions of Serbia in 2009-2010, territory of Central Serbia was officially transformed into 3 statistical regions: Region of Belgrade, Region of Šumadija and Western Serbia and Region of South and East Serbia.