The campaign to establish Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina lasted from 29 July to 20 October 1878 against the local resistance fighters, Muslims and Orthodox Serbs, supported unofficially by troops of the Ottoman Empire. The Austro-Hungarian Army entered the country in two large movements: one from the north into Bosnia, and another from the south into Herzegovina. A series of battles in August culminated in the fall of Sarajevo on the 19 August after a day of street-to-street fighting. In the hilly countryside a guerrilla campaign continued until the last rebel stronghold fell after their leader was captured.
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👉 Austro-Hungarian campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878 in the context of Congress of Berlin
At the Congress of Berlin (13 June – 13 July 1878), the major European powers revised the territorial and political terms imposed by the Russian Empire on the Ottoman Empire by the Treaty of San Stefano (March 1878), which had ended the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. The Congress was the result of escalating tensions; particularly British opposition to Russian hegemony over the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, through the creation of a Russian-aligned 'Greater Bulgaria'. To secure the European balance of power in favour of its splendid isolation achieved after the Crimean War, Britain stationed the Mediterranean Fleet near Constantinople to enforce British demands. To avoid war, Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of the newly formed German Empire, was asked to mediate a solution that would restore the Ottoman Empire's position as a counterbalance to Russian influence in the Mediterranean and the Balkans, in line with the principles of the 1856 Treaty of Paris.
Attended by delegates from Europe's then six great powers: Russia, Great Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Germany; the Ottomans as well as representatives of four Balkan states (Greece, Serbia, Romania and Montenegro), the Congress culminated in the Treaty of Berlin (13 July 1878). This agreement essentially dismantled the autonomous Greater Bulgarian State envisaged at San Stefano, and reorganised the borders of south-eastern Europe. The main results were the Austro-Hungarian forcible occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the British de facto annexation of Cyprus under false pretenses, and the formal recognition of the self-declared independence of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro; allies of Russia in the previous war. While the settlement averted war, it exacerbated nationalist grievances in the Balkans and deepened the rivalry between Britain and Russia (The Great Game), contributing to long-term regional instability that foreshadowed the Balkan Wars and World War I.
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Austro-Hungarian campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878 in the context of Bosnia Vilayet
The Bosnia Vilayet (Serbo-Croatian: Bosanski vilajet/Vilajet Bosna) was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire, mostly comprising the territory of the present-day state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with minor parts of modern Montenegro. It bordered Kosovo Vilayet to the south. Before the administrative reform in 1867, it was called the Bosnia Eyalet. In the late 19th century it reportedly had an area of 46,000 square kilometres (17,900 sq mi).
It effectively ceased to exist as an Ottoman province after the Austro-Hungarian campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, although it formally existed for thirty more years until 1908, despite being governed by Austria-Hungary. This excluded Old Herzegovina, which was ceded to the Principality of Montenegro in 1878. In 1908, during the Bosnian Crisis, Austria-Hungary formally annexed it into its own territory.