Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the context of "Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand"

Bosnia and Herzegovina, often referred to as Bosnia-Herzegovina or short as Bosnia, is a country in Southeast Europe. Situated on the Balkan Peninsula, it borders Serbia to the east, Montenegro to the southeast, and Croatia to the north and southwest, with a 20-kilometre-long (12-mile) coast on the Adriatic Sea in the south. Bosnia has a moderate continental climate with hot summers and cold, snowy winters. Its geography is largely mountainous, particularly in the central and eastern regions, which are dominated by the Dinaric Alps. Herzegovina, the smaller, southern region, has a Mediterranean climate and is mostly mountainous. Sarajevo is the capital and the largest city.

The area has been inhabited since at least the Upper Palaeolithic, with permanent human settlement traced to the Neolithic cultures of Butmir, Kakanj, and Vučedol. After the arrival of the first Indo-Europeans, the area was populated by several Illyrian and Celtic civilisations. Most of modern Bosnia was incorporated into the Roman province of Dalmatia by the mid-first century BCE. The ancestors of the modern South Slavic peoples arrived between the sixth and ninth centuries. In the 12th century, the Banate of Bosnia was established as the first independent Bosnian polity. It gradually evolved and expanded into the Kingdom of Bosnia, which became the most powerful state in the western Balkans by the 14th century. The Ottoman Empire annexed the region in 1463 and introduced Islam. From the late 19th century until World War I, the country was annexed into the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. In the interwar period, Bosnia and Herzegovina was part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. After World War II, it was granted full republic status in the newly formed Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In 1992, following the breakup of Yugoslavia, the republic proclaimed independence. This was followed by the Bosnian War, which lasted until late 1995 and ended with the signing of the Dayton Agreement.

Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Dual Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military and diplomatic alliance, it consisted of two sovereign states with a single monarch who was titled both the Emperor of Austria and the King of Hungary. Austria-Hungary constituted the last phase in the constitutional evolution of the Habsburg monarchy: it was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 in the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War, following wars of independence by Hungary (primarily Rákóczi's War of Independence of 1703–1711 and the Hungarian Revolution of 1848–1849) in opposition to Habsburg rule. It was dissolved shortly after Hungary terminated the union with Austria in 1918 at the end of World War I.

Austria-Hungary was one of Europe's major powers, and was the second-largest country in Europe in area (after Russia) and the third-most populous (after Russia and the German Empire), while being among the 10 most populous countries worldwide. The Empire built up the fourth-largest machine-building industry in the world. With the exception of the territory of the Bosnian Condominium, the Empire of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary were separate sovereign countries in international law.

The Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Croatian: Hrvati Bosne i Hercegovine), often referred to as Bosnian Croats (bosanski Hrvati) or Herzegovinian Croats (hercegovački Hrvati), are native to Bosnia and Herzegovina and constitute the third most populous ethnic group, after Bosniaks and Serbs. They are one of the three constitutive nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina have made significant contributions to the culture of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Most Croats identify themselves as Catholics and speak Croatian language.

Croats have been present in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the Slavic migrations to the Balkans. The Kingdom of Croatia under native rulers and later in personal union with Hungary encompassed large parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the west until the 16th century. The Croats also lived under the Kingdom of Bosnia until it fell to the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the 15th century. Between the 15th and 19th centuries, Catholics in Ottoman Bosnia and Herzegovina were often persecuted by the Ottomans, prompting many to flee the area, especially during the Great Turkish War and the Morean War in the second half of the 17th century, when their numbers were reduced to 30,000. At the end of the 17th century and in the early 18th century, the number of Catholics began to increase, with many of those who had fled returning. In the second half of the 19th century, especially during the Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Croats became active political subjects, participating in Croatian national revival. The 20th century brought political turmoil, and poor economic conditions led to increased emigration. Ethnic cleansing within Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s saw Croats forced to go to different parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite having lived in numerous regions before the Bosnian War. The 2013 population census in Bosnia and Herzegovina recorded 544,780 residents registering as of Croat ethnicity.

The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 (German: Ausgleich, Hungarian: Kiegyezés) established the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, which was a military and diplomatic alliance of two sovereign states. The Compromise only partially re-established the former pre-1848 sovereignty and status of the Kingdom of Hungary, being separate from, and no longer subject to, the Austrian Empire. The compromise put an end to the 18-year-long military dictatorship and absolutist rule over Hungary which Emperor Franz Joseph had instituted after the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. The territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Hungary was restored. The agreement also restored the old historic constitution of the Kingdom of Hungary.

Hungarian political leaders had two main goals during the negotiations. One was to regain the traditional status (both legal and political) of the Hungarian state, which had been lost after the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. The other was to restore the series of reform laws (the so-called April Laws) of the revolutionary parliament of 1848, which were based on the 12 points that established modern civil and political rights and economic and societal reforms in Hungary. The April Laws of the Hungarian revolutionary parliament (with the exception of the laws based on the 9th and 10th points) were restored by Franz Joseph.

Gavrilo Princip (Serbian Cyrillic: Гаврило Принцип, pronounced [ɡǎʋrilo prǐnt͡sip]; 25 July 1894 – 28 April 1918) was a Bosnian Serb student who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie, Duchess von Hohenberg, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. The assassination set off the July Crisis, a series of events that within one month led to the outbreak of World War I.

Princip was born in western Bosnia to a poor Serb family. Aged 13, he was sent to Sarajevo, the capital of Austrian-occupied Bosnia, to study at the Merchants' School. He later transferred to the gymnasium, where he became politically aware. In 1911, he joined Young Bosnia, a secret local society aiming to free Bosnia from Austrian rule and achieve the unification of the South Slavs. After attending anti-Austrian demonstrations in Sarajevo, he was expelled from school and walked to Belgrade, Serbia, to continue his education. During the First Balkan War, Princip traveled to Southern Serbia to volunteer with the Serbian army's irregular forces fighting against the Ottoman Empire but was rejected for being too small and weak. He also suffered from tuberculosis which was untreatable at the time and might have played a role in his motivation for the assassination.

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.

The Bosnian Crisis, also known as the Annexation Crisis (German: Bosnische Annexionskrise, Turkish: Bosna Krizi; Serbo-Croatian: Aneksiona kriza, Анексиона криза) or the First Balkan Crisis, erupted on 5 October 1908 when Austria-Hungary announced the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, territories formerly within the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire but under Austro-Hungarian administration since 1878.

This unilateral action – timed to coincide with Bulgaria's declaration of independence from the Ottoman Empire on 5 October – sparked protestations from all the Great Powers and Austria-Hungary's Balkan neighbors, Serbia and Montenegro. In April 1909, the Treaty of Berlin was amended to reflect the fait accompli and bring the crisis to an end. Although the crisis ended with what appeared to be a total Austro-Hungarian diplomatic victory, it permanently damaged relations between Austria-Hungary and its neighbors, especially Serbia, Italy and Russia, and in the long term helped lay the grounds for World War I. Austro-Serbian relations – harmed by the annexation's inflaming of Serbian nationalists – continued to be strained to the point of declaring war on each other in 1914.