Bosnia and Herzegovina (in Bosnian and Croatian language, Bosna i Hercegovina, Serbian language, Босна и Херцеговина) is a European sovereign state with its capital in Sarajevo, located on the Balkan Peninsula, southeast of the continent, whose borders are delimited with Croatia, north, west and south, with Serbia to the east, Montenegro to the east and the Adriatic Sea to the south. In 1992 became independent as the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as one of the six federal units constituting Yugoslavia emerged at the end of the First World War, and was constituted as a federal republic under the terms of the Dayton accords, which provided administration mentored by a senior representative elected by the Council of the European Union. Its structure is decentralized and divided into two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska.

Densely populated during the Neolithic period, has been inhabited since the fourth century C. by the Illyrians. In the third century C., the Roman Empire included this territory as part of the province of Illyria. Slavicized from the seventh century, was part of the Byzantine Empire. The first time you used the name Bosnia was at 950, in a book called In administering the rule of Byzantine emperor Constantine VII in which it is consigned to Bosnia as part of the territory of the Kingdom of Croatia (the current territory of Bosnia and Croatia was known Red). In the twelfth century as a kingdom of Bosnia, which remains independent until 1463, when it is annexed to the Ottoman Empire by Mehmet II.

With the arrival of the Ottomans, the average age ends in Bosnia. Most people accept Islam as a new religion, which until today remains an important social factor in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Most of the cultural heritage of Bosnia, Mostar Bridge as come from that period.

It remained under Turkish rule until 1878, except in the period between 1718 and 1739, which was under Austrian control. In the nineteenth century increased the enmity between the Sultan and the people, encouraged by the triumph of nationalism in neighboring Serbia. Abdulhamit II repression of the riots of 1875 would provoke Russian intervention, that declared war on the Ottoman Empire in 1877. Finishing the conflict, the Berlin Congress in 1878 gave the administration of the country to Austria-Hungary.

In 1878 Bosnia happens to be administered by the Austro-Hungarian Empire that it would annex in 1908 as part of this until its dissolution in 1918, after the end of the First World War had begun with the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo (see Bombing of Sarajevo).

After completion of the contest become part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which in 1929 adopted the name Yugoslavia. During the Second World War the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed by the Croatian fascist state, between 1941 and 1944. Defeated the Axis, became part of Yugoslavia, under the name Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as one of six constituent republics of the Federal People's Republic. In 1992 it proclaimed its independence as the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, after a referendum on March 1, 1992.

The Bosnians and Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina supported independence but most of the Bosnian Serbs (30% of the population), supported by the rest of the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia and opposed the war in Bosnia began in an attempt creation of a Greater Serbia. In the early years of the war occupied 70% of Bosnian territory in a violent way - by the ethnic cleansing. The war ended with the Battle of Western Bosnia and the Bosnian Serb army's defeat immediately after that Slobodan Milošević agreed to sign on behalf of the Dayton accords on November 21, 1995. The price of war was huge: 250,000 dead and more than 2.5 million refugees.

Today Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country on track for its administrative unification but with large instabilities caused by ultra-nationalist Bosnian Serbs. For the time being remains a puzzle with different territorial police forces, judicial authorities and assemblies separate various nationalist parties which each of the ethnic communities still retain power, hampering their access to European Union (EU).