14 ATLASES
History of Serbia in maps
Serbia as it appears in 14 interactive history atlases, from 264 BC to 2015: Moesia, Serbia, Yugoslavia. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.
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What was Serbia before it was Serbia? The sections below follow this land through every era covered by the Maps of History atlases: who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed. Each line links to the dated map. Modern borders serve as an approximation, as each atlas says on the map itself.
Moesia (mod. Serbia) · Ancient Rome
For centuries legions guarded the Danube through Moesia and the surrounding corridor, a military backbone of the empire. The region also produced many emperors, among them Danubian figures such as Aurelian and Diocletian and Constantine’s family. Goths and Huns crossed this frontier in later centuries. The river was a line of Roman defense, but it was also a route into the empire.
| 264 BC | Tribal peoples & confederations — the opening position |
| Roman territory |
ANCIENT ROME: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Serbia · Norse and Aztecs
| Other peoples and states — the opening position |
NORSE AND AZTECS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Serbia · Crusades
| Byzantium (and Latin Constantinople 1204–61) — the opening position |
CRUSADES: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Serbia · Mongol Empire
| Other settled powers (Jin China, Christendom, Delhi) — the opening position |
MONGOL EMPIRE: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Serbia · Industrial Revolution
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Serbia · Age of Revolutions
| Neutral / uncommitted — the opening position |
AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Yugoslavia (Serbia) · Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia
| Non-aligned or stateless — the opening position |
MEIJI JAPAN AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Serbia · WWI
Serbia was where the war began, and where its losses were proportionally worst. It repelled three Austrian invasions in 1914, then was crushed by three empires in 1915. Rather than surrender, its army retreated through Albania’s mountains (Ch. 6), returning via Salonika to liberate Belgrade in 1918. Perhaps one in six Serbs died, the highest national share of the war. Yugoslavia, its reward, contained the next wars within it.
Yugoslavia (Serbia) · Stalin’s Soviet Union
Tito’s partisans fought German occupiers and their local allies from 1941 and took power in 1945 with little help from the Red Army. Yugoslavia had liberated itself, which helps explain why Tito could defy Moscow. He was initially more radical than Stalin wished, yet refused to take orders. Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform in June 1948. It survived Soviet pressure, accepted Western aid and built its own non-aligned communism, opening the first crack in the Soviet bloc.
| Nazi Germany & its allies — the opening position | |
| Nazi Germany & its allies | |
| Satellites & communist allies | |
| Other states |
STALIN’S SOVIET UNION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Serbia · Road to WW2
| Neutral & unaligned — the opening position | |
| Occupied — held by force |
ROAD TO WW2: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Serbia · WW2
Serbia lay at the center of Yugoslavia, invaded and dismembered in 1941 after a defiant coup. Several wars overlapped there: occupation, the struggle of Tito’s partisans, the royalist Chetniks and the genocidal Croatian Ustaše state. Tito’s victory created communist Yugoslavia, the East European regime the Red Army did not install.
| Axis-occupied — the opening position | |
| Axis-occupied | |
| Soviet Union |
Serbia · Cold War
Serbia was the center of Tito’s Yugoslavia. In 1948 Yugoslavia became the first communist state to defy Stalin and survive. Thereafter, shown in charcoal on this map, it was non-aligned, Western-financed, self-managed, and armed against both blocs. The federation lasted as long as the Cold War that defined it, then tore itself apart in wars already beginning on the 1991 map.
| Soviet-aligned states — the opening position | |
| Communist, outside Moscow’s bloc | |
| In upheaval / changing sides | |
| Communist, outside Moscow’s bloc | |
| In upheaval / changing sides |
COLD WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Yugoslavia (Serbia) · Feminism and the Tunisian Revolution
| Refused: women excluded; ERA never ratified — the opening position | |
| Right won in law | |
| Partial or unequal; treaty signed only; transition | |
| No reform yet / outside this story | |
| Right won in law |
FEMINISM AND THE TUNISIAN REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Yugoslavia (Serbia) · Refugee crises
| Soviet-occupied or communist — the opening position |
REFUGEE CRISES: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
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