Vojvodina

History

The area of Vojvodina was inhabited ever since the Paleolithic and the Neolithic periods. Sirmium was an important Roman town.

During the early medieval migrations, Slavs (Severans) settled today's Vojvodina in the 6th century, while the Magyars arrived in the 9th century. Only isolated pockets of Slavs remained and the region was ruled by Hungary until the 16th century.

An increasing number of Serbs began settling from the 14th century onward. By 1483, according to a Hungarian source, as much as half of the population of the Kingdom of Hungary at the time would have been made up of Serbs. Another Hungarian source from the same century put the number of Serb settlers in Vojvodina at 200,000.

Vojvodina was occupied by the Ottoman Empire following the Battle of Mohacs of 1526 and the fall of Banat in 1552. This turbulent period caused a massive depopulation of the region. The Banat areas were administered from Temesvar, while Bacska and Sirmium were under Budim.

The Habsburg Empire took control of Vojvodina among other lands by the treaties of Karlowitz (1699) and Passarowitz (1718). The areas adjacent to the Turkish territory in the south were separated into the Military Frontier (Krajina), its Slavonian and Banat sections.

The Austrian rule was characterized by significant settlement of Germans. With the reshuffling of the country and the abolishment of the military frontier between 1867 and 1881, Bacska and Banat came under Hungary while the Sirmium region was part of the crownland of Croatia-Slavonia.

At the end of the World War I, Austria-Hungary was dismantling. In November of 1918 the Assembly of Novi Sad proclaimed the union of Bačka, Banat, Srem and Baranja with the then Kingdom of Serbia.

Vojvodina in its current form (south Bačka, east Srem, west Banat) was formally ceded to Yugoslavia in the Treaty of Trianon of 1920. The region was again temporarily split by the Axis Powers during World War II, but was later restored as a province of Serbia with varying degrees of autonomy (between 1974 and 1990 it was an officially autonomous province).

Geography

The region is traditionally divided by the rivers of Danube and Tisa into: Bačka in the northwest, Banat in the east and Srem in the southwest. Today, the western part of Srem is in Croatia while Baranja (which is between Danube and Drava, rather) is in Hungary and Croatia.

Demographics

The results of the 2002 census yielded 2,031,992 inhabitants.

Population by national or ethnic groups:

• 1,321,807 Serbs (65.05%)
• 290,207 Hungarians (14.28%)
• 56,637 Slovaks (2.79%)
• 56,546 Croats (2.78%)
• 55,016 undeclared (2.71%)
• 49,881 Yugoslavs (2.45%)
• 35,513 Montenegrins (1.75%)
• 30,419 Romanians (1.50%)
• 29,057 Romanies (1.43%)
• 19,766 Bunjevac (0.97%)
• 15,626 Ruthenes (0.77%)
• 11,785 Macedonians (0.58%)
• 10,154 regional affiliation (0.50%)
• 4,635 Ukrainians (0.23%)
• other

Population by gender:

• 984,942 males
• 1,047,050 females

Population by age groups:

• 0-14 years: 15.85% (165332 males, 156873 females)
• 15-64 years: 68.62% (693646 males, 700416 females)
• 65 years and over: 15.53% (125964 males, 189761 females)

Source: Republic Statistical Office of Serbia

Referenced By