1 00:00:00,114 --> 00:00:04,507 Understanding the ethnic and religious commonalities and differences 2 00:00:04,538 --> 00:00:08,256 in the state or the region that used to be Yugoslavia can be quite confusing. 3 00:00:08,271 --> 00:00:11,318 But, what I want to do in this video is try to give a primer on it. 4 00:00:11,318 --> 00:00:14,528 It's really key to understanding some of the triggers of World War I 5 00:00:14,528 --> 00:00:19,205 and to, obviously, understand the breakup of Yugoslavia, which was quite ugly 6 00:00:19,226 --> 00:00:24,528 during the fall of communism in the late 80s and early 90s. 7 00:00:24,528 --> 00:00:26,704 So, first of all, it's a good idea to understand 8 00:00:26,704 --> 00:00:30,443 where the word Yugoslavia comes from. 9 00:00:30,443 --> 00:00:33,867 It's literally referring to the southern Slavic states 10 00:00:33,867 --> 00:00:35,971 So, "Yugo" is referring to southern 11 00:00:35,971 --> 00:00:38,635 and "slavia" is talking about the Slavic states. 12 00:00:38,635 --> 00:00:41,278 When people talk about Slavic languages, they're talking about 13 00:00:41,278 --> 00:00:43,612 the languages that are spoken in this region, but also 14 00:00:43,612 --> 00:00:48,781 much of eastern Europe and what is now Russia. 15 00:00:48,781 --> 00:00:54,302 Now, what we have here in blue is we have shaded in where 16 00:00:54,302 --> 00:00:58,984 Serbo-Croation is spoken. 17 00:00:58,984 --> 00:01:05,305 Which is the dominant Slavic language in this region. 18 00:01:05,305 --> 00:01:08,156 And, there are multiple dialects, some people will say 19 00:01:08,156 --> 00:01:12,308 "that's croation, or montenegran, or serbian" or whatever it might be. 20 00:01:12,308 --> 00:01:15,311 But, most linguists say they're pretty close to each other. 21 00:01:15,311 --> 00:01:17,823 And you can kind of categorize them as one language, 22 00:01:17,823 --> 00:01:20,823 as Serbo-Croation. 23 00:01:20,823 --> 00:01:22,977 And you see that it's now spoken in modern day 24 00:01:22,977 --> 00:01:28,156 Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro. 25 00:01:28,156 --> 00:01:33,648 That is the commonality here, the thing that ties together this region. 26 00:01:33,648 --> 00:01:37,489 Now on top of that, the slovenian language is also Slavic 27 00:01:37,489 --> 00:01:40,757 it's closely related to Serbo-Croation. 28 00:01:40,757 --> 00:01:43,225 In Macedonia they also speak a Slavic language. 29 00:01:43,225 --> 00:01:46,313 It's closer to Bulgarian, but it has some close ties, 30 00:01:46,313 --> 00:01:48,896 it's not completely different than Serbo-Croation. 31 00:01:48,896 --> 00:01:52,429 So you have this linguistic connection throughout this area. 32 00:01:52,429 --> 00:01:57,822 Now, what divides this area is really religion and history. 33 00:01:57,822 --> 00:02:00,419 So, this area, if you go back hundreds of years, 34 00:02:00,419 --> 00:02:03,561 it was under the control of various empires. 35 00:02:03,561 --> 00:02:06,089 The Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire. 36 00:02:06,089 --> 00:02:09,397 With the Austro-Hungarian Empire, you're talking about 37 00:02:09,397 --> 00:02:10,564 a Roman Catholic Empire. 38 00:02:10,564 --> 00:02:12,219 When you're talking about the Ottomans, 39 00:02:12,219 --> 00:02:13,477 you're dealing with a Muslim Empire. 40 00:02:13,477 --> 00:02:17,895 And they held different parts of this territory for hundreds of years. 41 00:02:17,895 --> 00:02:22,293 And so what ends up is really a mix of religions, 42 00:02:22,293 --> 00:02:27,762 and that often gets tied to what people percieve as their ethnicity. 43 00:02:27,762 --> 00:02:32,308 And so what I have here is kind of a religious breakdown 44 00:02:32,308 --> 00:02:36,219 of the former state of Yugoslavia. 45 00:02:36,219 --> 00:02:39,490 So, in this pinkish color right over here, I have the areas that are 46 00:02:39,490 --> 00:02:41,478 predominantly Roman Catholic. 47 00:02:41,478 --> 00:02:43,154 And I say predominantly because it really is 48 00:02:43,154 --> 00:02:44,971 all mixed together. 49 00:02:44,971 --> 00:02:47,821 So, Slovenia, Croatia, primarily Roman Catholic. 50 00:02:47,821 --> 00:02:53,645 If you look at Serbia, and Montenegro, primarily Eastern Orthodox. 51 00:02:53,645 --> 00:03:00,489 In Kosovo, you have a strong Muslim majority, right over there. 52 00:03:00,489 --> 00:03:05,021 And Kosovo, before its breakup was kind of part of 53 00:03:05,021 --> 00:03:10,355 Serbia and Montenegro, despite it having this very different religious makeup. 54 00:03:10,355 --> 00:03:14,287 And then Bosnia and Herzegovina is where it gets really really mixed up. 55 00:03:14,287 --> 00:03:19,156 Roughly half of the population, and it's been moving over the centuries, 56 00:03:19,156 --> 00:03:23,229 but the dominant religion there is Islam. 57 00:03:23,229 --> 00:03:25,419 And, in general this is where it can be confusing. 58 00:03:25,419 --> 00:03:30,888 When people talk about a Bosniak, they're talking about 59 00:03:30,888 --> 00:03:35,800 a Bosnian Muslim. 60 00:03:35,800 --> 00:03:40,574 But, Bosnia and Herzgovina also has significant fractions of 61 00:03:40,574 --> 00:03:44,368 Serbs, who are Eastern Orthodox, and that's why 62 00:03:44,368 --> 00:03:46,966 I put the brown here as well, it's about a third of the population 63 00:03:46,966 --> 00:03:50,117 and it also has a pretty sizeable Roman Catholic population 64 00:03:50,117 --> 00:03:53,300 or we can say Bosnian-Croats. 65 00:03:53,300 --> 00:03:55,899 So, just to be clear here - it can be very confusing, even when you hear 66 00:03:55,899 --> 00:03:58,236 a history of it, or you hear it on the news - I remember 67 00:03:58,236 --> 00:04:01,232 in the 90s, hearing the news and getting very confused. 68 00:04:01,232 --> 00:04:04,368 If someone is talking about a Bosnian Muslim, or a Bosniak, 69 00:04:04,368 --> 00:04:07,839 that's a Muslim living in Bosnia, that's what they tend 70 00:04:07,839 --> 00:04:10,172 to be referring to. If they say a 71 00:04:10,172 --> 00:04:19,171 Bosnian-Croat, this would be an ethnically Croat, who is 72 00:04:19,171 --> 00:04:24,235 living in Bosnia. And they would tend to be Roman Catholic. 73 00:04:24,235 --> 00:04:30,103 And then if you have a Bosnian Serb, this is someone who 74 00:04:30,103 --> 00:04:34,833 ethnically identifies themselves as a Serbian, or as a Serb, 75 00:04:34,833 --> 00:04:39,235 who lives in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but is probably 76 00:04:39,235 --> 00:04:42,173 going to be Eastern Orthodox. 77 00:04:42,173 --> 00:04:44,242 So, you can imagine, you have these strong linguistic 78 00:04:44,242 --> 00:04:50,830 and even ethnic ties, but at some point, because of the religion, 79 00:04:50,830 --> 00:04:53,983 and dialect changes, there's also a significant 80 00:04:53,983 --> 00:04:56,634 amount of differences here, especially when things got ugly, 81 00:04:56,634 --> 00:04:59,120 as you had the fall of Communism. 82 00:04:59,120 --> 00:05:01,366 So, hopefully this lays a groundwork of the commonalities 83 00:05:01,366 --> 00:05:03,166 and the differences here. 84 00:05:03,166 --> 00:05:06,298 And it will help us understand what got us into World War I, 85 00:05:06,298 --> 00:05:08,431 or what triggered World War I, and also some of the 86 00:05:08,431 --> 00:05:11,785 ugliness that was seen in the early 90s. 87 00:05:11,785 --> 00:05:14,901 And just to finish up, with just a little bit of context, 88 00:05:14,901 --> 00:05:19,633 this was not a unified state until World War I was, 89 00:05:19,633 --> 00:05:22,705 to some degree was precipitated by a desire to make this a unified state. 90 00:05:22,705 --> 00:05:28,914 This ethnic grouping, this linguistic grouping, tended to be 91 00:05:28,914 --> 00:05:31,923 broken up with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, 92 00:05:31,923 --> 00:05:34,699 entering into World War I you have this decline of the 93 00:05:34,699 --> 00:05:38,919 Ottoman Empire which started to allow these people to start 94 00:05:38,919 --> 00:05:43,700 to have more energy behind their desire to form a unified state. 95 00:05:43,700 --> 00:05:46,042 World War I was essentially the catalyst that allowed 96 00:05:46,042 --> 00:05:49,496 the state of Yugoslavia to unify. 97 00:05:49,496 --> 00:05:53,767 And, in different forms, it stayed unified until the fall of Communism. 98 00:05:53,767 --> 00:05:57,507 And, even though it was a socialist state, a communist state, 99 00:05:57,507 --> 00:06:01,588 during the Cold War, it actually always had a strange, 100 00:06:01,588 --> 00:06:04,435 and distant relationship with the Soviet Union. 101 00:06:04,435 --> 00:06:07,699 But, after the fall of Communism, that was kind of holding it together, 102 00:06:07,699 --> 00:06:10,366 especially these religious differences, 103 00:06:10,366 --> 00:06:14,976 and these ethnic and religious differences broke it apart.