Montenegro
Two thousand years, eight chapters.
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0–500
Rome and the Illyrian coast
The coast and the mountains were already old when Rome arrived.
Illyrian tribes lived here, among them the Docleatae, who gave their name to the town of Doclea near today's Podgorica. Greek and Illyrian harbours dotted the Adriatic shore.
Rome defeated the Illyrian kingdom in 168 BC and, over the following generations, absorbed the region into the province of Dalmatia. Doclea grew into a Roman town with a forum and roads, and coastal settlements such as Risan and Kotor have roots in this age.
As the Western Empire weakened, the lands behind the coast lay open to Goths, Avars and the peoples who followed them.
Rome built roads. The mountains kept their own counsel.
500–1000
The Slavs arrive
New peoples came over the passes and stayed.
From the sixth and seventh centuries, Slavic groups settled across the Balkans. Together with the Avars they pushed past the old Roman frontiers, and Doclea faded as a town.
The walled cities of the coast, such as Kotor, Budva and Bar, kept their Latin and Byzantine traditions. According to tradition, Kotor acquired the relics of Saint Tryphon in 809, and he is still honoured as the city's patron.
Slowly the settlers organised themselves into small realms under Byzantine influence, and Christianity took root among them. Out of this mixture a new state would emerge: Duklja.
The old towns fell silent. New villages rose.
1000–1400
Duklja and Zeta
A kingdom is born, and then it is absorbed.
Duklja, named after Doclea, rose as a principality. Its ruler Jovan Vladimir, who died in 1016, came to be remembered as a saint. Stefan Vojislav defied the Byzantine emperor in the 1030s and 1040s and laid the ground for a dynasty.
His son Mihailo was recognised as king by the pope in 1077, and Constantine Bodin ruled as king until about 1101. The archbishopric of Bar was founded in 1067. In the late twelfth century Stefan Nemanja of Raška brought Duklja under his rule, and the land became known as Zeta.
From the 1360s the Balšić family governed Zeta, holding the area around Lake Skadar. Their rule ended in the early fifteenth century, and Venice expanded along the coast.
Crowned, conquered, and remembered.
1400–1600
The Crnojević years
Ottoman armies closed in, and a small court held on.
The Crnojević family led Zeta in the fifteenth century. Ivan Crnojević lost the lowland towns to the Ottomans and in 1482 founded a new court and monastery at Cetinje, high in the karst. Cetinje has been the old royal capital ever since.
His son Đurađ set up a printing press at Obod, near Lake Skadar, in the 1490s. Its Cyrillic books were among the earliest printed in the South Slavic lands.
The Ottomans organised the area as the Sanjak of Montenegro in 1514. Venice still held the Bay of Kotor and much of the coast, and the mountain clans kept a stubborn autonomy.
The plains were lost. The rock was not.
1600–1850
Mountain prince-bishops
Bishops who carried a rifle as well as a cross.
Without a ruling family, authority passed to the Metropolitan of Cetinje, the vladika. In 1697 Danilo Petrović Njegoš was chosen, beginning a line of prince-bishops from one clan that lasted into the nineteenth century.
Russia became a patron. Petar I Petrović Njegoš, who ruled from 1782 to 1830, led the clans to victory over Ottoman armies at Martinići and Krusi in 1796 and worked to bring the tribes under common law. He was later canonised.
Petar II Petrović Njegoš, who ruled from 1830 until his death in 1851, was also one of the great poets of the language. His epic The Mountain Wreath was published in 1847 and is still read across the region.
Mountains are an argument, and they won it.
1850–1918
A kingdom among the great powers
A principality becomes a kingdom, and then a memory.
In 1852 Prince Danilo made the rule secular and hereditary. His nephew Nikola I came to the throne in 1860 and reigned for fifty-eight years. After wars with the Ottomans in the 1870s, the Congress of Berlin in 1878 recognised Montenegro's independence and enlarged its territory, including an outlet to the sea.
Nikola declared himself king in 1910. Through the marriages of his daughters he was linked to the royal houses of Italy, Serbia and Russia, and was sometimes called the father-in-law of Europe.
Montenegro fought alongside Serbia in the Balkan Wars and the First World War. Austria-Hungary occupied the country in 1916, and the king went into exile. In late 1918 an assembly in Podgorica voted to unite with Serbia. Nikola never returned and died in France in 1921.
Small as a kingdom, loud as a name.
1918–1990
Yugoslavia
One country among many, and then a republic of its own.
In 1918 Montenegro became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, renamed Yugoslavia in 1929. During the Second World War the country was occupied, and a popular uprising began in July 1941.
After 1945 Montenegro was one of the six republics of socialist Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito. Its capital was renamed Titograd in 1946, and industry, roads and schools grew.
As Yugoslavia broke apart in the early 1990s, Montenegro stayed with Serbia in a smaller federation, which was renamed Serbia and Montenegro in 2003.
Seventy years inside a larger story.
1990–now
Independence
A small country chose its own flag.
On 21 May 2006 Montenegrins voted in a referendum on independence. Just over 55 percent said yes, clearing the threshold set for the vote. Independence was declared on 3 June 2006, and Montenegro joined the United Nations the same month.
Podgorica, once Titograd, is the capital. Montenegro has used the euro since 2002 and joined NATO in 2017. It became a candidate for European Union membership in 2010, and accession negotiations opened in 2012.
Today it is a country of about 620,000 people, with the Adriatic coast, the Bay of Kotor, Durmitor and Lake Skadar. Its name means Black Mountain.
Black Mountain. The story is still being written.
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