In the land grab that followed the decay of the Ottoman Empire, the Serbian Kingdom started flexing its considerable muscle in the region. In the First Balkan War (1912) they joined the Balkan League, which also included Greece, Bulgaria and Montenegro, to liberate Macedonia from Turkey. With Macedonia carved up among the league members, quarrelling began and Bulgaria took on Serbian and Greek forces in Macedonia in the Second Balkan War (1913). It lost and the resulting treaty saw the Serbs gain a large piece of north and central Macedonia as well as the Kosovo region, while Albania became an independent state.

The assassination of Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo by a Serb nationalist was the trigger for the 1914 Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia and the outbreak of WWI. By the time the dust had cleared, Serbia had won high praise by the League of Nations members, while Croatia and Slovenia were in danger of losing land to the Italians after siding with the Austrians. Opting for the least-worst scenario, Croatia and Slovenia joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918. The kingdom included Montenegro, Bosnia and Hercegovina and the regions of Vojvodina and Macedonia. Its name was changed to Yugoslavia in 1929, but the appearance of a united front hid brewing ethnic tensions.

In 1941 Yugoslavia signed up with the fascists. The people overthrew the reigning regent and pulled out of the alliance. Hitler invaded, slicing the defeated country up and handing out shares to Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria. Hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Albanians and Roma (gypsies) were massacred by the infamous Ustaša under the newly-installed Croatian puppet regime.

Yugoslavia kept its independence after WWII, thanks to the immense wartime efforts of its partisans, and in 1945 the Communist Party, under Josip Broz Tito, came to power. Bosnia and Hercegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia were granted republic status, the monarchy was abolished and Yugoslavia became a federal republic. During his presidency, Tito remained unaligned with the West or the Stalinist Soviet Union. When he died in 1980 the presidency became a rotating position. In 1987 Slobodan Milosevic - who had risen to power on the back of Serbian nationalist rhetoric - got his turn in the hot seat. His vision of a 'Greater Serbia' was the last straw for Slovenes and Croats, who sensed the time was right and voted in free elections to declare their independence in June 1991.

Milosevic would brook no dissent: the federal army was sent in to Slovenia, while the EC rapidly introduced sanctions in an effort to head off civil war. Within a month Yugoslav troops declared Slovenia a lost cause, but Belgrade was not prepared to give up Croatia so easily. Centuries-old grudges spewed to the surface in atrocious fashion, leaving mass carnage, a path of destruction and thousands dead before a UN-brokered cease fire came into effect in January 1992. The EC recognised Croatian and Slovenian independence, whereupon Macedonia and Bosnia-Hercegovina also demanded recognition.

Following this, on 27 April 1992, Yugoslavia was downsized even further, with only Montenegro electing to remain alongside Serbia in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Although all Yugoslav troops were withdrawn from Bosnia, the 80% Bosnian Serb component of the federal army stayed on, and the war continued. In May 1992 the UN Security Council enforced sanctions by dispatching warships to the Adriatic. By the end of 1996, a Yugoslav-Croat peace treaty had been signed and Bosnia-Hercegovina had been divided between Serbs and Croat-Muslims. Tens of thousands were dead, the country's beautiful landscape and historic towns were torn to shreds, and the region's tourist industry was all but destroyed.

The Yugoslav entity was itself also on the brink of extinction, with trouble flaring in the autonomous province of Kosovo in 1998. The province's Albanian majority began agitating for independence after Milosevic revoked autonomy. The federal army responded brutally: hundreds were killed on both sides and tens of thousands more forced to flee forever. Fearful of 'another Bosnia', the USA, Britain, Russia, Germany, France and Italy introduced a new arms embargo on Yugoslavia, but to little avail - Serbian repression continued, the Kosovo Liberation Army responded violently, and in early 1999 NATO bombs started falling in Belgrade. By June 1999, a fragile peace deal had been brokered between Yugoslavia and NATO.

In July 2000 Milosevic changed the rules for presidential elections, expecting the people (rather than the parliament) to vote him in for another four years. But victory in the election on 24 September was claimed by the opposition alliance with 55% of the vote. The country's electoral commission refused to accept the result and called for a second ballot, sparking huge protests in Belgrade and strikes across Serbia. The election was annulled on 4 October and a new election slated for 2001.

On 5 October 2000, people from all over Serbia converged on Belgrade demanding Milosevic's resignation. Battles were fought with police, parliament was stormed, and finally, after 12 hours of mass protests, Vojislav Kostunica addressed half a million people outside Belgrade City Hall as the new president.

Yugoslavia was re-admitted to the UN, war crimes investigations were launched and atrocities in Kosovo acknowledged. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was dissolved on 4 February 2003 and the state of Serbia and Montenegro was established, with a vote on Montenegrin independence to take place in 2006.

The future of the new union was thrown into turmoil when the Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindic was assassinated in March 2003. Organised crime syndicates linked to Milosevic were blamed and arrested in the aftermath. Political instability continued to dog the Montenegrin republic. In March 2004, Serbia's first war crimes tribunal began trying six Serbs in relation to a 1991 mass killing in Vukovar. In June of the same year, Boris Tadic, leader of the Democratic Party, assumed the presidency of the union following elections, with promises to commit Serbia to eventual membership of the EU.

In the 2006 referendum on Montenegrin independence voters favoured leaving the union and it was subsequently dissolved.

September 2006 saw Serbia introduce a new draft constitution, approved by Parliament and stressing that Kosovo remains an integral part of Serbia. Uncertainty lingers however as a national referendum still needs to be held to ratify the new constitution.