THE SERBS FROM SUVA MEDA IN MIGRATION, WARS AND THEIR SUFFERING DURING THE 19th AND 20th CENTURIES

Abstract

Suva or Suha Meda represented in the past, geographically speaking, the border between the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy, and today it is located on the border of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. The border between the two once powerful empires was drawn along the river courses by the Treaty of Karlovac (1699), and only Suva Meda was a land border. The westernmost point of Suva Meda is the tripoint where Bosnian Krajina, Banija and Kordun meet, the areas that were inhabited by the Serbian population. Serbs arrived in the areas of Suva Meda in migration during the 14^th century and participated in all the uprisings and wars that the Serbian people went through during the 19^th and 20^th centuries: they rose up against Turkish violence in the Pop Jovicaʼs Rebellion in 1834; They placed themselves under the command of Petar Mrkonjic in the uprising that swept through Bosnian Krajina in 1875-1878; as volunteers of the Serbian Army in World War I, they participated in the breakthrough of the Salonika Front and the liberation of Serbia in 1918; they resisted the Ustasha terror during World War II; they fought in the 1991-1995 Civil War, in which the Republic of Srpska was created. In all these uprisings and wars, the Serbian people of Suva Meda went through terrible suffering and had a lot of victims. A lot of Serbs from this area were displaced in the colonization carried out by both Yugoslav states, while the remaining part left their homes in 1995 when, with the Dayton Peace Agreement, the area of ​​Suva Meda became the part of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Today, the Serbian people are the minority in Suva Meda, with the prospect of complete disappearance from this area. In this paper, we intend to present the chronology of the suffering and the migration of Serbs from Suva Meda in the wars during the 19^th and 20^th centuries.