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5th-15th centuries (400s-1400s): Existence
of Byzantine Empire, which ruled over much of the
Balkans, Mediterranean, and Near East
6th-7th centuries (500s-600s): Arrival of the Slavic peoples
in the Balkans
c. 900: peak of the First Bulgarian Empire
c. 1050: peak of the medieval Croatian kingdom
1102: Croatian royal family dies out and Croatia joins
Hungary in a dynastic alliance
c. 1200: peak of the Second Bulgarian Empire
14th century (1300s): first conquests
of the Ottoman Turks in the Balkans
1350s: peak of medieval Serbian Empire
1389: Ottoman Turks win the Battle of Kosovo, which is later
interpreted as the end of the medieval
Serbian
kingdom
1453: Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (renamed Istanbul);
end of the Byzantine Empire
1526: Hungarians defeated by Turks at Battle of Mohacs;
Hungarian royal family dies out and as a result
Croatia and Hungary are both joined to the Austrian (Habsburg)
royal family in a dynastic union
1804: Beginning of Serbian wars of independence
1820s: Greece becomes independent of Ottoman Empire
1870s: Romania becomes independent of the Ottoman Empire
1908: Bulgaria becomes independent of the Ottoman Empire
1912-1913: bloody Balkan Wars between the newly independent
Balkan states (Balkan League) and
the
declining Ottoman Empire, and then among the Balkan League
members
1914-1918: World War I brings great destruction to the region
1941-1945: World War II in the area brings great destruction
but sees the establishment of new
(communist)
regimes which attempt in their own ways to solve the Balkans'
national problems
1989: Overthrow of communist governments in Romania and
Bulgaria
1991-2: Break-up of Yugoslavia
1991-5: Wars of Yugoslav succession
1999: United States leads NATO against Serbia to force a halt
to the "ethnic cleansing" of the Albanian
inhabitants of Kosovo
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