WEBVTT 00:00:00.114 --> 00:00:04.507 Understanding the ethnic and religious commonalities and differences 00:00:04.538 --> 00:00:08.256 in the state or the region that used to be Yugoslavia can be quite confusing. 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. 00:00:11.318 --> 00:00:14.528 It's really key to understanding some of the triggers of World War I 00:00:14.528 --> 00:00:19.205 and to, obviously, understand the breakup of Yugoslavia, which was quite ugly 00:00:19.226 --> 00:00:24.528 during the fall of communism in the late 80s and early 90s. 00:00:24.528 --> 00:00:26.704 So, first of all, it's a good idea to understand 00:00:26.704 --> 00:00:30.443 where the word Yugoslavia comes from. 00:00:30.443 --> 00:00:33.867 It's literally referring to the southern Slavic states 00:00:33.867 --> 00:00:35.971 So, "Yugo" is referring to southern 00:00:35.971 --> 00:00:38.635 and "slavia" is talking about the Slavic states. 00:00:38.635 --> 00:00:41.278 When people talk about Slavic languages, they're talking about 00:00:41.278 --> 00:00:43.612 the languages that are spoken in this region, but also 00:00:43.612 --> 00:00:48.781 much of eastern Europe and what is now Russia. 00:00:48.781 --> 00:00:54.302 Now, what we have here in blue is we have shaded in where 00:00:54.302 --> 00:00:58.984 Serbo-Croation is spoken. 00:00:58.984 --> 00:01:05.305 Which is the dominant Slavic language in this region. 00:01:05.305 --> 00:01:08.156 And, there are multiple dialects, some people will say 00:01:08.156 --> 00:01:12.308 "that's croation, or montenegran, or serbian" or whatever it might be. 00:01:12.308 --> 00:01:15.311 But, most linguists say they're pretty close to each other. 00:01:15.311 --> 00:01:17.823 And you can kind of categorize them as one language, 00:01:17.823 --> 00:01:20.823 as Serbo-Croation. 00:01:20.823 --> 00:01:22.977 And you see that it's now spoken in modern day 00:01:22.977 --> 00:01:28.156 Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro. 00:01:28.156 --> 00:01:33.648 That is the commonality here, the thing that ties together this region. 00:01:33.648 --> 00:01:37.489 Now on top of that, the slovenian language is also Slavic 00:01:37.489 --> 00:01:40.757 it's closely related to Serbo-Croation. 00:01:40.757 --> 00:01:43.225 In Macedonia they also speak a Slavic language. 00:01:43.225 --> 00:01:46.313 It's closer to Bulgarian, but it has some close ties, 00:01:46.313 --> 00:01:48.896 it's not completely different than Serbo-Croation. 00:01:48.896 --> 00:01:52.429 So you have this linguistic connection throughout this area. 00:01:52.429 --> 00:01:57.822 Now, what divides this area is really religion and history. 00:01:57.822 --> 00:02:00.419 So, this area, if you go back hundreds of years, 00:02:00.419 --> 00:02:03.561 it was under the control of various empires. 00:02:03.561 --> 00:02:06.089 The Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire. 00:02:06.089 --> 00:02:09.397 With the Austro-Hungarian Empire, you're talking about 00:02:09.397 --> 00:02:10.564 a Roman Catholic Empire. 00:02:10.564 --> 00:02:12.219 When you're talking about the Ottomans, 00:02:12.219 --> 00:02:13.477 you're dealing with a Muslim Empire. 00:02:13.477 --> 00:02:17.895 And they held different parts of this territory for hundreds of years. 00:02:17.895 --> 00:02:22.293 And so what ends up is really a mix of religions, 00:02:22.293 --> 00:02:27.762 and that often gets tied to what people percieve as their ethnicity. 00:02:27.762 --> 00:02:32.308 And so what I have here is kind of a religious breakdown 00:02:32.308 --> 00:02:36.219 of the former state of Yugoslavia. 00:02:36.219 --> 00:02:39.490 So, in this pinkish color right over here, I have the areas that are 00:02:39.490 --> 00:02:41.478 predominantly Roman Catholic. 00:02:41.478 --> 00:02:43.154 And I say predominantly because it really is 00:02:43.154 --> 00:02:44.971 all mixed together. 00:02:44.971 --> 00:02:47.821 So, Slovenia, Croatia, primarily Roman Catholic. 00:02:47.821 --> 00:02:53.645 If you look at Serbia, and Montenegro, primarily Eastern Orthodox. 00:02:53.645 --> 00:03:00.489 In Kosovo, you have a strong Muslim majority, right over there. 00:03:00.489 --> 00:03:05.021 And Kosovo, before its breakup was kind of part of 00:03:05.021 --> 00:03:10.355 Serbia and Montenegro, despite it having this very different religious makeup. 00:03:10.355 --> 00:03:14.287 And then Bosnia and Herzegovina is where it gets really really mixed up. 00:03:14.287 --> 00:03:19.156 Roughly half of the population, and it's been moving over the centuries, 00:03:19.156 --> 00:03:23.229 but the dominant religion there is Islam. 00:03:23.229 --> 00:03:25.419 And, in general this is where it can be confusing. 00:03:25.419 --> 00:03:30.888 When people talk about a Bosniak, they're talking about 00:03:30.888 --> 00:03:35.800 a Bosnian Muslim. 00:03:35.800 --> 00:03:40.574 But, Bosnia and Herzgovina also has significant fractions of 00:03:40.574 --> 00:03:44.368 Serbs, who are Eastern Orthodox, and that's why 00:03:44.368 --> 00:03:46.966 I put the brown here as well, it's about a third of the population 00:03:46.966 --> 00:03:50.117 and it also has a pretty sizeable Roman Catholic population 00:03:50.117 --> 00:03:53.300 or we can say Bosnian-Croats. 00:03:53.300 --> 00:03:55.899 So, just to be clear here - it can be very confusing, even when you hear 00:03:55.899 --> 00:03:58.236 a history of it, or you hear it on the news - I remember 00:03:58.236 --> 00:04:01.232 in the 90s, hearing the news and getting very confused. 00:04:01.232 --> 00:04:04.368 If someone is talking about a Bosnian Muslim, or a Bosniak, 00:04:04.368 --> 00:04:07.839 that's a Muslim living in Bosnia, that's what they tend 00:04:07.839 --> 00:04:10.172 to be referring to. If they say a 00:04:10.172 --> 00:04:19.171 Bosnian-Croat, this would be an ethnically Croat, who is 00:04:19.171 --> 00:04:24.235 living in Bosnia. And they would tend to be Roman Catholic. 00:04:24.235 --> 00:04:30.103 And then if you have a Bosnian Serb, this is someone who 00:04:30.103 --> 00:04:34.833 ethnically identifies themselves as a Serbian, or as a Serb, 00:04:34.833 --> 00:04:39.235 who lives in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but is probably 00:04:39.235 --> 00:04:42.173 going to be Eastern Orthodox. 00:04:42.173 --> 00:04:44.242 So, you can imagine, you have these strong linguistic 00:04:44.242 --> 00:04:50.830 and even ethnic ties, but at some point, because of the religion, 00:04:50.830 --> 00:04:53.983 and dialect changes, there's also a significant 00:04:53.983 --> 00:04:56.634 amount of differences here, especially when things got ugly, 00:04:56.634 --> 00:04:59.120 as you had the fall of Communism. 00:04:59.120 --> 00:05:01.366 So, hopefully this lays a groundwork of the commonalities 00:05:01.366 --> 00:05:03.166 and the differences here. 00:05:03.166 --> 00:05:06.298 And it will help us understand what got us into World War I, 00:05:06.298 --> 00:05:08.431 or what triggered World War I, and also some of the 00:05:08.431 --> 00:05:11.785 ugliness that was seen in the early 90s. 00:05:11.785 --> 00:05:14.901 And just to finish up, with just a little bit of context, 00:05:14.901 --> 00:05:19.633 this was not a unified state until World War I was, 00:05:19.633 --> 00:05:22.705 to some degree was precipitated by a desire to make this a unified state. 00:05:22.705 --> 00:05:28.914 This ethnic grouping, this linguistic grouping, tended to be 00:05:28.914 --> 00:05:31.923 broken up with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, 00:05:31.923 --> 00:05:34.699 entering into World War I you have this decline of the 00:05:34.699 --> 00:05:38.919 Ottoman Empire which started to allow these people to start 00:05:38.919 --> 00:05:43.700 to have more energy behind their desire to form a unified state. 00:05:43.700 --> 00:05:46.042 World War I was essentially the catalyst that allowed 00:05:46.042 --> 00:05:49.496 the state of Yugoslavia to unify. 00:05:49.496 --> 00:05:53.767 And, in different forms, it stayed unified until the fall of Communism. 00:05:53.767 --> 00:05:57.507 And, even though it was a socialist state, a communist state, 00:05:57.507 --> 00:06:01.588 during the Cold War, it actually always had a strange, 00:06:01.588 --> 00:06:04.435 and distant relationship with the Soviet Union. 00:06:04.435 --> 00:06:07.699 But, after the fall of Communism, that was kind of holding it together, 00:06:07.699 --> 00:06:10.366 especially these religious differences, 00:06:10.366 --> 00:06:14.976 and these ethnic and religious differences broke it apart.