Serbia

Serbia, officially the Republic of Serbia, is a landlocked country in Southeast and Central Europe. Located in the Balkans, it is bordered by Hungary in the north, Romania in the northeast, Bulgaria in the southeast, North Macedonia in the south, Croatia in the northwest, Bosnia and Herzegovina in the west, and Montenegro in the southwest. Serbia also claims to share a border with Albania through the disputed territory of Kosovo. Serbia has about 6.6 million inhabitants, excluding Kosovo. Belgrade, Serbia's capital, is also its largest city.

Continuously inhabited since the Paleolithic age, the territory of modern-day Serbia, then part of Roman Empire Illyria, Dacia, Moesia, Praevalitana, Dardania, and Pannonia, faced Slavic migrations in the 6th century. Several regional states were founded in the Early Middle Ages and were at times recognised as tributaries to the Byzantine, Frankish and Hungarian kingdoms. The Serbian Kingdom obtained recognition by the Holy See and Constantinople in 1217, reaching its territorial apex in 1346 as the Serbian Empire. By the mid-16th century, the Ottoman Empire annexed the entirety of modern-day Serbia; their rule was at times interrupted by the Habsburg Empire, which began expanding towards Central Serbia from the end of the 17th century while maintaining a foothold in Vojvodina. In the early 19th century, the Serbian Revolution established the nation-state as the region's first constitutional monarchy, which subsequently expanded its territory.