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'Montenegro' (Serbian: Црна Гора or ''Crna Gora'', pronounced , ), officially the 'Republic of Montenegro' (Република Црна Гора or ''Republika Crna Gora''), is a country located in Southeastern Europe. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the south, and borders Croatia on the west, Bosnia and Herzegovina on the northwest, Serbia on the northeast and Albania on the southeast. Its de facto capital and largest city is Podgorica, while Cetinje is designated as ''Prijestonica'', the ''old royal capital'' or ''seat of the throne''.
De facto independent since the late Middle Ages, and an internationally recognised country from 1878 until 1918, Montenegro was later a part of various incarnations of Yugoslavia and the state union of Serbia and Montenegro. Based on the results of the referendum held on May 21 2006, Montenegro declared independence on June 3, 2006. On June 28, 2006, it became the 192nd member state^[3] of the United Nations, and on May 11, 2007, the 47th member state of the Council of Europe.^[4]

Contents

Name

History

Union with Serbia (1992–2006)

21st century independence

International recognition of Montenegro

Geography

Military

Government and politics

President

Parliament

Symbols

Municipalities

Economy

Demographics

Culture

Education

Sports

In popular culture

Montenegrin Holidays

Gallery

See also

References

Further reading

External links

Name

Montenegro's native name, ''Crna Gora'', is first mentioned in 11th century in Vatican documents and translates literally to "black mountain" or "black forest", a reference to the dark forests that once covered the slopes of the Dinaric Alps as seen from the Adriatic coast.^[5] The country's name in most Western European languages, including English, reflects an adoption of the Venetian term ''monte negro'', also meaning "black mountain", which probably dates back to the era of Venetian hegemony over the area in the Middle Ages. Other languages, particularly nearby ones, use their own direct translation of the term "black mountain" (e.g. Albanian: ''Mali i Zi'', Bulgarian: ''Черна гора'', Cherna gora, Czech: ''Černá Hora'', Greek: ''Μαυροβούνιο'', Mavrovoúnio, Italian: ''Montene(g)ro'', Polish: ''Czarnogóra'', Romanian: ''Muntenegru'', Slovene: ''Črna Gora'', Slovak: ''Čierna hora'', and Turkish: ''Karadağ''). Names from further afield include and (pinyin: "hēishān"^[6])
The ISO Alpha-2 code for Montenegro is ME and the Alpha-3 Code is MNE.^[7]

History

Main articles: History of Montenegro

The first settlers of Montenegro were the Illyrians.
Romans conquered these southern Illyrians in AD 9, annexing them to the Roman province of Illyricum. The historian Theodore Mommsen wrote (in his ''The Provinces of the Roman Empire'') that all Illyricum was fully Romanised and Latin speaking by the fourth century.
The division of the Roman Empire between Roman and Byzantine rule – and subsequently between the Latin and Greek churches – was marked by a line that ran northward from Skadar through modern Montenegro, symbolizing the status of this region as a perpetual marginal zone between the economic, cultural, and political worlds of the Mediterranean peoples and the Slavs. As Roman power declined in the fifth century, this part of the Adriatic coast suffered from intermittent ravages by various semi-nomadic invaders, especially the Goths in the late fifth century and the Avars during the sixth century. These soon were supplanted by the Slavs, who became widely established in the Balkans by the middle of the seventh century.
The Romanized Illyrians escaped to the mountains and survived mainly as shepherds, and were named morlachs (dark "vlachs"), and eventually losing their original Romance language by being assimilated with the Slavs. This extinct neo-Latin language can be found in the toponimy of many places of Montenegro, like the name of the mount Durmitor, that means "place where to sleep" in the language of those Vlachs.The last morlachs, called ''Vlasi Ridani'', moved from Durmitor area in the 15th century, escaping the Ottoman conquest, and found refuge in Dalmatia and Istria.
Slav tribes, mixed with the descendants of the romanized Illyrians, formed the semi-independent dukedom of Duklja by the tenth century. In 1077, Pope Gregory VII recognized Duklja as an independent state, acknowledging its King Mihailo (Michael) (of the Vojislavljević dynasty founded by nobleman Stefan Vojislav) as ''rex Docleae'' (King of Duklja).^[8][9] The kingdom, however, paid tribute to the Byzantine Empire and later to the Bulgarian Empire; it gave birth to the medieval kingdom of the Serbian Grand Prince () Stefan Nemanja, who was born in Ribnica, a settlement near Doclea.
The Principality of Zeta asserted its independence in the 1360s.^[10][11]The House of Balšić (1360s–1421) and the House of Crnojević (1421–1499) ruled Zeta. Although the Ottoman Empire controlled the lands to the south and east from the 15th century, it never fully conquered Zeta.
Most of the coast of Montenegro was controlled by the Republic of Venice from the 13th century to the Napoleon times(1420-1797) although Bar and Ulcinj were conquered by the Ottomans in the 1570s. The area was called ''Albania Veneta''.
During those centuries the Venetian language, from which the word "Montenegro" comes, was the ''lingua franca'' of the Adriatic coast of Montenegro. In the area of Bay of Kotor there were Venetian speaking populations until the first half of the 20th century. For example, in the Austrian census of 1880, Kotor had 930 ethnic Italians in a total population of 2910 people.

In 1516, the secular prince Đurađ Crnojević abdicated in favour of Archbishop Vavil, who then made Montenegro into a theocratic state^[12] under the rule of the prince-bishop (known as владика, ''vladika'') of Cetinje, a position held from 1697 by the Petrović-Njegoš family of the Riđani clan. Petar Petrović Njegoš, perhaps the most influential ''vladika'', reigned in the first half of the 19th century. In 1851, Danilo II Petrović Njegoš became ''vladika'', but in 1852 he married, left the priesthood, assumed the title of ''knjaz'' (Prince), and transformed his land into a secular principality. Montenegro officially confirmed its independence and became a principality in 1878. Later, it was transformed into a kingdom in 1910, under the rule of King Nicholas I. ^[13][14]
In 1910, Prince Nicholas I became King of Montenegro. Two years later, in October 1912, King Nicholas declared war on the Ottoman Empire, preceding the two Balkan Wars. The Montenegrin army attacked the Ottoman fortress city of Shkodër, and forced the empire to gather a large army in neighbouring Macedonia. This Ottoman army was then attacked by the forces of Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria which entered the war by pre-arrangement. This resulted in the redefinition of borders in the Balkans according to the Treaty of London in 1913.
Montenegro emerged from the Balkan Wars doubled in size, receiving half of the former Ottoman territory known as <a href="San