I havent spent a lot of hours studying Kosovo, particularly researching books, experts, primary sources...

>settle in Austro-Hungarian territories such as Vojvodina
Look up when Austria-Hungary got created and feel free to feel like a fucking retard afterwards.

Serbian lies again. What do the Croats have to do with Kosovo? Pure serbian mythomania and playing the victim despite being in control of the whole army and politics at that time, show proofs of your absurd claims or gtfo.

look, serb with yet another conspiracy theory, how ORIGINAL

True. Habsburg Monarchy would've been a much more appropriate term as AH was not formed like 100 years later after the great migration had ended. Thanks for pointing that out.

This is very one sided, there is now doubt that the bulk of Kosovo's history is some serbian churches and a battle. Albania never held Kosovo, Serbia did, in our living memory. The question is not who has more historical claim, because Serbia definitely does (inb4 ancient illyrians), the question is whether the Albanians were justified to declare independance solely based on the contemporary demographics

Do you have a source on this?
I know of the secret convention, Austro–Serbian Alliance of 1881. Where Austria promised Serbia free reign in the south if Serbia stopped influencing Bosnia and other Serb populated territories. Among other things, free trade agreement, shady railway construction deal and support for the ruling house in the Serbian version of "cold war of the roses".
I read somewhere that Austria was trying to use Serbia as a proxy (much like Russia tried with Bulgaria), and push Serbian borders to the Aegean.

you know what's funny. serbia laying claim on croatian soil PURELY on the fact that a lot of them live in some parts of croatia, but at the same time denying kosovo that SAME EXACT claim. OH BOY HOW FUNNY

This, serbs always had a double standard

Honestly the history of Kosovo is just one sided in general. I went into it open minded and couldn't find myself agreeing with almost any Serbian positions, except for the ones that Serbs should be granted autonomy and Kosovo and allowed to resettle. I'm not saying this from a position of spite when I say that nearly all Serbian arguments I read were just full of inconsistencies and illogical attitudes.

>Albania never held Kosovo

Well, they did for a short time in WW2.

That's how a croatian colleague explained it to me. Im not an expert myself, but according to him, Croats were also really the ones who developed the yugoslavian idea in a sort of self-defense against serbian aggression. Serbs really like to say that albanians "breed like rats" but in reality they are the ones who outbread everyone whereever they went. Pretty big parts of todays croatia used to be serbian settled 200 years ago, because their population their grew much faster than the croats'. Basically, they immigrated in 300-400 years ago and became the majority 200 years ago. Since Serbia had a big powerful ally named Russia, Croatians really shat their pants that they are going to lose a lot of land. So basically they started fucking with the serbs psychologically and manipulated them into following stupid ideas like yugoslavia or kosovo until croatia consolidated its lands.

The serbs have all these crazy theories who is holding them down, when it was the eternal hrvat playing them all the time.

As in the modern state of Albania, that's why I said
>in our living memory
Not to mention that they didn't even hold the North

Shut up, you don't know anything, don't post

please continue, i love nothing more than to read some good fiction before going to bed

Its true, though. The hrvatis played the serbian gypsies like a fiddle, and the gypsies didnt even realize it. Its really sad if you think about it. To this day, they dont realize it.

I think you have a few things mixed up, or the Croat is lying to you.
Yes, while Serbs adopted the idea of Yugoslavia more, Croats developed the idea as a way of using Serbs to get independence from Austria.
And Serbs didn't outbreed Croats in the military frontier, it was mostly a depopulated warzone.
The migration happened during the Great Turkish war.

The migration part is true but the birth rates were always similar, croats were still a majority in croatia at that time and would remain so. The serbs who lived there were mostly pacified and didn't want the break up of croatia nor the break up of austria to live in a third world ottoman ravaged country like the kingdom of serbia was.

This is pure demonizing of croats since they had very little political power in serbia and austria, how could they have influenced the whole serbian population pure lies and demonizing, the guy who told u this is historically illiterate.

The serbian demands for croatian lands were put only after the defeat of austria in ww1 before that they claimed nothing.

Serbian nationalism in the 90s is a whole other story and the more exact reason for croat demonizing and the kosovo crisis.

Dont underestimate the power of the croat. They are two things they are really good at, that is sports that involve a ball, and playing serbs like a fiddle.

oh, see now that you said "it's true" makes it true. like boy do they have a lot of them

Might I ask where are you from?

half-lebanese, half-belgian, raised in france. why?

Ok, please don't speak so surely about history of a place you aren't native to, especially if your knowledge is based on internet forums and gastarbaiter stories.

Because you have a big mouth for a clueless mongrel

Veeky Forums is for shitposting man lighten up. and my croatian colleague actually explained it to me this way. he really hates serbs btw he says they are like gypsies.

Be polite please to our belgian lebanese friend who was clearly misguided

Like I said gastarbeiters. Losers of Balkan countries who work in the West and go show off with their kinimal wage here.

He doesn't seem to misguided with his use of the word gypsy, in fact, it looks like he's guiding himself

That was a really good read OP. Here’s a bump from someone who’s not a butthurt balkanite, doing god’s work here

A Serb called Ilija Garašanin, then the Minister of Interior of Serbia wrote the programme called Načertanije in 1844 based on the contours of the Serbian kingdom under car Dušan. This was the basis for the Greater Serbia claims. Kosovo was to be a part of a greater Serbian state, it carried an important symbolism because Dušan established the Patriarchate of Peć (Kosovo), thus the religious center of Serbian Orthodoxy. The legend of the great exodus of Serbs from Kosovo was very much alive in folk memory. Claiming that the irredentist politics in regards to Kosovo are a Croat hoax is deluded and completely uninformed.

Sorry but all etymology in kosovo is slavic, the few that are not slavic are Turkish(like Ferizaj) there isnt a single stone in kosovo built by albanians, and there isnt a single river or mountain named by albanians.

Those are the facts, everything else is myths and nationalist propaganda.

Slavic yes, but not serbian. Most of those names are of bulgarian origin. Kosovo itself is a bulgarian name. Kosovo doesnt even make sense in serbian language. You have to say "Kosovo Polje" for it to be a name that makes sense in serbian. But thats not its name, the place is called Kosovo, which only makes sense in bulgarian.

Also, everything in Vojvodina has hungarian and german names.

I'm curious what your argument is based on. Kos means blackbird in Serbian (and Czech and Slovene and Bulgarian etc.). And it's very common in all south Slavic lands that toponyms with the suffix -ovo, -ova simplified and the noun following it fell out of use or in some cases were not there at all - a possesive adjective works like that when in the function of a name. For example Velesovo in NW Slovenia, is that a Bulgarian name or can we agree it's South Slavic in origin?

the etymology is slavic, it makes sense in both serbian and bulgarian, but bulgarians dont really claim kosovo, pic related is the "disputed area" between Serbia and Bulgaria back in 1912, by default Serbs recognized all lands south as Bulgarian and Bulgarians all lands north of it as Serbian

I mean territories that were part of the ottoman empire then, the area around nish is arguable

Well, the most obvious hint is that it was controlled by Bulgarians first and for ~400 years before it fell to the serbs, where it remained for ~200 years, so it would be obvious to think the bulgarians named it. For example, they also named "Belgrade", and serbs simply carried that name on because it made sense in their language.

Wasn't Kosovo a part of the Serbian Principality, Raška, since the 8th century? What exactly is your timeline here? I'm not Serbian, I'm not invested in this dispute at all. This is my high scool education speaking, I might be wrong.

No, it wasnt. Raska layed to the northwest of todays kosovo. In the 12the century, the place was documented by byzantine chroniclars to be bulgarian inhabited with an albanian minority. It was serbanized in the 13th and 14th century.

Who gives a shit? Serbian Turks fighting more Turkish Albanian Turks.

tldr: op is an assblasted monkey.

Good post.
This is what we need in his.

>One of the most prevailing is that Kosovo was the cradle of Serbian civilization. This is only half true - the Serbian Empire (which was more of a loose confederation that only lasted about 25 years anyway) had two capitals, and Emperor Dusan was crowned in modern day Skopje.
Serbian Empire was one of the most centralized countries of the 14th century. However, Serbian Empire happened in the 14th century, while Serbian states (if we can call them that way) existed for centuries until that point. Various localities of the country were centers before: Župan Vukašin's base of attacks was the town of Zvečan, for example.

In any case, the very notion of permanent capital was unknown in medieval Serbia. The only medieval ruler that is confirmed to have a permanent capital (although he didn't spend much time in it) was King/Emperor Stephen (known colloquially as "Dušan").

But in any case, one can easily see that the vast majority of medieval charters were written in Kosovo and Metohija (now "Republic of Kosovo") or were pertaining to it.

>Serbs claim that a plethora of monasteries built in Kosovo cement their claim to the region, but I find this to be a very poor argument. By this line of reasoning, the state of Greece could claim disproportionate amounts of Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria that were still under Byzantine dominion around this time and thus witnessed the construction of Byzantine heritage such as numerous basilicas dotted around these nations. Furthermore, what exactly is the logical conclusion of this argument? How far back are we willing to go before drawing an arbitrary line as to which people own which territory?
That is a misinterpretation. The Serbs point to the fact that the number of monasteries bears witness to the predominant culture in medieval and early modern Kosovo and Metohija. Greece is also not the sole heir of "Byzantium".

>Albanians might claim that, by this argument, Kosovo was theirs even earlier claiming descent to the old inhabitants of the region in the classical era.
Yes, if we ignore that the proper connection of the Albanians and the Illyrians was never established and that the whole thing is the product of imagination of 19th century Albanians, starting from Sami Frasheri (the Serbs had similar myths pertaining to Alexander the Great during 16th-17th centuries).

>Serbian historiography greatly over-exaggerates the amount of time Kosovo spent as a Serbian territory. Kosovo swapped hands numerous times before it was ever a Serbian dominion, spending around 150 years under the various Bulgarian Empires, then nearly 2 hundred under the Byzantines after reconquest, and later being a battleground until Serbian conquest in 1183. Not long after the dissolution of the Serbian empire, Kosovo once again found itself under the jurisdiction of various nobility. Kosovo was ruled by Serbs for about 250 years before being conquered for the Ottomans for almost double that time.

That is, however, not true. Serbian rulers have been holding parts of Kosovo and Metohija since the mid 12th century, provided that the rulers of Diocleia (Duklja) didn't rule over them before. Even after the Serbian Empire fell, Kosovo and Metohija were ruled by the Serbs (originally split among the Mrnjavčevićs and Vuk Branković). They remained such until the Ottoman conquest. However, it doesn't matter who ruled Kosovo and Metohija, but who inhabited it: all the sources written in late medieval Kosovo and Metohija were written in Serbian language.

>The Ottomans surely built more heritage in Kosovo than the Serbs did (that was eventually demolished) and held it for far longer - does Turkey claim Kosovo? Does Greece? Does Bulgaria? See the issue here?
I'll just say that the biggest Ottoman monument, the Sinan Pasha's Mosque in Prizren, was built out of the material of Emperor Stephen Dušan's monastery

Why do slav subhumans always use people of antiquity to claim shit when their subhuman ass wasn't even related to them?

>During the reign of the Ottomans in Kosovo is where we see the demographic reality start to shift. Over a several hundred years Serbs gradually migrated out Kosovo choosing to settle in Austro-Hungarian territories such as Vojvodina to escape higher taxes and growing Muslim numbers in Kosovo. The funny part here is that Serbs eventually became the majority in Vojvodina via migration and higher reproduction than the Hungarians and now feel that Vojvodina is a legitimate Serbian territory - which I agree with. However, this creates severe cognitive dissonance with the reality in Kosovo. Serb migrations meant higher proliferation of the now Islamic Albanians who grew in numbers in the increasingly depopulated territory. Other than Albanians, the Bosniaks, Turks, and even some Croats found homes in the province over this period.
Now that part is a mystification of Serbian historiography. Most of the Serbs that migrated towards west and north (not necessarily to the Habsburg Monarchy) moved from the parts near the Sava, the Cetina and the Homolje Mts. A good part of them was moved by force (in such manner Matthias Corvinus boasted to have taken away 200k Serbs to Hungary; of course, that's an inflated number). The "demographic shifts" of the so-called "Great Migration" of 1690 were pretty much canceled 20 years later, with emigration to the Ottoman Empire fueled by the Rakoczi's Revolt.

>Serb migrations meant higher proliferation of the now Islamic Albanians who grew in numbers in the increasingly depopulated territory. Other than Albanians, the Bosniaks, Turks, and even some Croats found homes in the province over this period.
The proliferation of the Muslim population is noted only in urban areas of western Balkans, not to the countryside. Anyone who has spent 5 minutes on the region's history knows that there is no precise ethnographic data prior to the Interwar Period.

>albanians
>slavs

>Some time in the late 1800s, the Albanians became an absolute majority in Kosovo. This period coincided with the growth of Albanian consciousness, nationalism, and eventually the formation of a pro-autonomy and later pro-independence congress known as the League of Prizren in the 1870s. This organization eventually produced paramilitary groups that waged guerilla warfare against the newborn Serbian state on the ever-changing frontier of the dissolving Ottoman Empire in order to safeguard Albanian-majority territories. The Serbian state eventually took control of the ex-Kosovo vilayet in the aftermath of the Balkan wars, supported by the international community.

There is no demographic data concerning ethnicity in Ottoman Balkans. However, a great "population exchange" happened in 1878 between what's today Kosovo and Metohija and what's now southeastern Serbia. A great number of Albanians that migrated from SE Serbia to Kosovo and Metohija were among the organizers of the so-called League of Prizren.

>This included a large swathe of Albanian-inhabited territory who refused to accept Serbian rule. From this period (1910s) to as recently as the 1950s there were continued coordinated attempts by the Serbian state to expel Albanians and colonize the region with Serbs, culminating even in massacres in some cases. This had the opposite of the intended effect and enraged the Albanians and when the tables turned in WW2, the Albanians lashed out against the Serbian minority who was no longer state-supported with brutal expulsions and even somewhat of a genocide.
There were no coordinated attempts, due to two factors:
1. Serbian government lasted effectively a bit more than a year (1913-1914)
2. Yugoslav government was trying to influence Albania in order to diminish Italian influence (as Italy was the biggest opponent of Interwar Yugoslavia). The Kosovo-Metohijan Albanians were used as propaganda tools that served to promote Yugoslav-Albanian unification

>This included a large swathe of Albanian-inhabited territory who refused to accept Serbian rule. From this period (1910s) to as recently as the 1950s there were continued coordinated attempts by the Serbian state to expel Albanians and colonize the region with Serbs, culminating even in massacres in some cases. This had the opposite of the intended effect and enraged the Albanians and when the tables turned in WW2, the Albanians lashed out against the Serbian minority who was no longer state-supported with brutal expulsions and even somewhat of a genocide.
cont.

As for the massacres, the only bigger massacre happened in Ljuma (1912), when the Albanians attacked Serbian army in coordination with Austria-Hungary.

>As WW2 came to a close, Yugoslav partisans (including Albanian Yugoslavs) and Albanian partisans (from Albania proper) liberated the region from the remnants of Nazi control and Fascist Albanian collaborators. The first chairman of the autonomous region within Socialist Yugoslavia was an Albanian and generally the first 30 years saw an improvement in Kosovo for the Albanians as Tito awarded the region powers that made it nearly akin to a federal subject with its own government, parliament, presidential vote, and so forth. For some time the situation was decent, but rising nationalism on all sides and Albanian demands for republic status, the death of Tito, and a failing economy lead to the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the late 80s and 90s.
The Albanian army was transported to Yugoslav territory on Yugoslav demand, in order to show socialist unity.

>Growing repression lead to the creation of an Albanian separatist group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army. Kosovo Serbs were agitated by Milosevic's nationalist rhetoric and were propagandized into believing they were at the mercy of expansionist Kosovo Albanians. Repression of Albanians continued and eventually violence erupted, and all Albanian institutions including parliament, Albanian language schools, and so forth were shut down. This is where massacres began on both sides and a brutal refugee crisis for both Albanians and Serbs.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_theft_in_Kosovo

>1. The Serbian state attempted again to colonize Kosovo with refugees from Serbian Krajina and Bosnia (this is now the 3rd attempt of colonization of Kosovo by Serbs in modern history)
Source?

>2. Indiscriminate expulsions of Albanian civilians to Albania in order to change the demographics of the region and leaked documents shown to support this by Bulgarian intelligence agencies
Members of the KLA weren't civilians.

>3. Breaking of a ceasefire and re-escalation of the conflict by committing a false flag known as the Panda Bar massacre
A false flag attack after the weapon smuggling chain has been broken?

>Ultimately, the Serbs again recognized themselves that Kosovo was really no longer their possession and attempted by force to change the demographic balance (Kosovo at this point was >80% Albanian).
How does War for Kosovo and Metohija mean "recognizing that Kosovo wasn't Serbian posession"?

>Kosovo declared independence in 2008 and in 2013 it was agreed that Serbian municipalities in Kosovo would be granted some autonomy.
The autonomy hasn't been granted and various compromise-seeking persons like Oliver Ivanović were murdered and/or arrested.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Ivanović

This is the most retarded thing that I've read today.

>its okay when Serbia breaks free from oppression thanks to foreign powers
>but not when Kosovo does

the -ovo (without additional adjective) suffix is very common in serbian language

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogojevo
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandrovo,_Nova_Crnja
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagremovo
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gakovo

Again, what matters is population, not the ruler

feel free to quote the sources

not op but do you realize how ridiculous
>Members of the KLA weren't civilians.
this sounds? are you saying a million people who became refugees in kosovo were KLA militants when they never numbered over 20-25k according to wiki?

Nonsensical analogy on two completely different scales irrelevant to the topic, fueled by emotional opinions, as expected.

>this sounds? are you saying a million people who became refugees in kosovo were KLA militants when they never numbered over 20-25k according to wiki?
1. >according to wiki
2. are you implying that kosovo had population bigger than croatia?

and additionally, i'm not sure that you're talking about the same documents as us

kosovo had a population of 2 million in 1995 and the war produced 600,000 outwards refugees and 400,000 internal refugees. all easily verifiable with a google search.

this is why arguing with serbs is stupid and fruitless because you deny statistics and reality every time because it doesn't suit your arguments, was a perfectly valid analogy from someone else and you basically brushed it off with no argument

so you are the op

anyways:

>kosovo had a population of 2 million in 1995 and the war produced 600,000 outwards refugees and 400,000 internal refugees. all easily verifiable with a google search.

let's see:

>The Yugoslav and Serb forces caused the displacement of between 1.2 million[72] to 1.45 million Kosovo Albanians.[73] After the end of the war in June 1999, numerous Albanian refugees started returning home from neighboring countries. By November 1999, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 848,100 out of 1,108,913 had returned.[231]

> According to the Human Rights Watch, 200,000 Serbs and thousands of Roma fled from Kosovo during and after the war.

I was the one who called his analogy nonsensical, not the person you replied to, first of all, refrain from making idiotic statements saying its futile to argue with a whole ethnic groups. Second of all, Serbian independence is incomparable to the Kosovo affair because, Serbia is not a 19th century empire, serbian laws did not mirror 19th century Ottoman laws, the small state of the 21st century is not comparable to a 19th century empire, Kosovo never had it's own national identity prior to the conflict and a historic pre world war event has nothing to do with current issues that vary on scale and character, but keep grabbing at strawman arguments and see where you might end up.

According to De Administrando Imperio of the 10th century Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII, the Serbian-populated lands lay to the north-west of Kosovo and the region was Bulgarian.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kosovo#Bulgarian_Period

Thanks OP, I learned something today

I didn't ask about the sources pertaining to the ruler, but pertaining to the population.

Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, Skadar, Dalmacija, Krajina, Slavonia, Bosnia, one day.