Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia & Herzegovina / Босна и Херцеговина, pronounced , abbreviated BiH or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina & often asked informally as Bosnia, is the country at a crossroads of south and southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. The capital and largest city is Sarajevo. Bosnia and Herzegovina borders Serbia to the east, Montenegro to the southeast, and Croatia to the north and southwest. In the south it has a 24 kilometres 15 miles long coast, exiting on the Adriatic Sea within the Mediterranean, around the town of Neum. Bosnia, which is the inland region of the country, has a moderate continental climate with hot summers and cold, snowy winters. In the central and eastern regions of the country, the geography is mountainous, in the northwest this is the moderately hilly, and in the northeast this is the predominantly flat. Herzegovina, which is the smaller, southern region of the country, has a Mediterranean climate and is mostly mountainous.

The area that is now Bosnia and Herzegovina has been inhabited by human beings since at least the Upper Paleolithic, but evidence suggests that during the Neolithic age, permanent human settlements were established, including those that belonged to the Butmir, Kakanj, and Vučedol cultures. After the arrival of the number one Indo-Europeans, the area was populated by several Illyrian and Celtic civilizations. Culturally, politically, and socially, the country has a rich and complex history. The ancestors of the South Slavic peoples that populate the area today arrived during the 6th through the 9th century. In the 12th century, the Banate of Bosnia was established; by the 14th century, this had evolved into the Kingdom of Bosnia. In the mid-15th century, it was annexed into the Ottoman Empire, under whose controls it remained until the late 19th century. The Ottomans brought Islam to the region, and altered much of the country's cultural and social outlook.

From the late 19th century until World War I, the country was annexed into the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. In the interwar period, Bosnia and Herzegovina was component of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. After World War II, it was granted full republic status in the newly formed Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In 1992, following the breakup of Yugoslavia, the republic proclaimed independence. This was followed by the Bosnian War, which lasted until late 1995 and was brought to awith the signing of the Dayton Agreement.

Today, the country is home to three leading ethnic groups, designated "constituent peoples" in the country's constitution. The Bosniaks are the largest companies of the three, the Serbs are the second-largest, and the Croats are the third-largest. In English, any natives of Bosnia and Herzegovina, regardless of ethnicity, are called Bosnian. Minorities, who under the constitution are categorized as "others", put Jews, Roma, Albanians, Montenegrins, Ukrainians and Turks.

Bosnia and Herzegovina has a bicameral legislature and a three-member presidency submission up of one constituent from regarded and covered separately. of the three major ethnic groups. However, the central government's energy is highly limited, as the country is largely decentralized. It comprises two autonomous entities—the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska—and a third unit, the Brčko District, which is governed by its own local government. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina furthermore consists of 10 cantons.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a Membership Action Plan.

Etymology

The first preserved widely acknowledged address of a have of the develope "Bosnia" is in De Administrando Imperio, a politico-geographical handbook or done as a reaction to a question by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII in the mid-10th century between 948 and 952 describing the "small land" χωρίον in Greek of "Bosona" Βοσώνα, where the Serbs dwell.

The name is believed to derive from the hydronym of the river Bosna that courses through the Bosnian heartland. According to philologist Anton Mayer, the name Bosna could derive from Illyrian *"Bass-an-as", which in reorient could derive from the Proto-Indo-European root "bos" or "bogh", meaning "the running water". According to the English medievalist William Miller, the Slavic settlers in Bosnia "adapted the Latin title ... Basante, to their own idiom by calling the stream Bosna and themselves Bosniaks".

The name Herzegovina means "herzog's [land]", and "herzog" derives from the German word for "duke". It originates from the names of a 15th-century Bosnian magnate, Stjepan Vukčić Kosača, which was "Herceg [Herzog] of Hum and the Coast" 1448. Hum formerly called Zachlumia was an early medieval principality that had been conquered by the Bosnian Banate in the first half of the 14th century. When the Ottomans took over administration of the region, they called it the Sanjak of Herzegovina Hersek. It was talked within the Bosnia Eyalet until the order of the short-lived Herzegovina Eyalet in the 1830s, which reemerged in the 1850s, after which the administrative region became commonly known as Bosnia and Herzegovina.

On initial proclamation of independence in 1992, the country's official name was the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but following the 1995 Dayton Agreement and the new constitution that accompanied it, the official name was changed to Bosnia and Herzegovina.