The larger region of Bosnia occupies the northern and central parts of the country, and Herzegovina occupies the south and southwest. The Serbs and the Croats settled Bosnia in the 17th century. Later, the country became part of the Roman Empire. In 1908, it was annexed by Austria-Hungary. After the WWI, the country was incorporated into Three of NATO's members are nuclear weapons states: France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. NATO has 12 original founding member states. Three more members joined between 1952 and 1955, and a fourth joined in 1982. After the end of the Cold War, NATO added 15 more members from 1999 to 2023. [2] Calling code. +387. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a republic of the western Balkans Peninsula of Southern Europe that is home to three ethnic constituent peoples: Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats. Croatia borders the country on the north, west, and south, Serbia and Montenegro on the east and southeast, and the Adriatic Sea on the southwest. In a country of just over 3 million inhabitants, there are two federal entities, the Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina; some 14 levels of governance; more than 100 Serbia - Consolidation, Ottoman, Balkan: Throughout the 19th century the new Serbian state lay at the periphery of European industrial development, but it was not untouched by economic growth and change. The country developed as a centre for the export of primary products, mainly agricultural goods. With the departure of the Ottomans, land distribution changed, and a huge number of peasant which introduced Islam to Bosnia, Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1908.2 After the end of the First World War in 1918, the Treaty of Versailles and the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Yugoslavia started its birth as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and in 1929 the name Yugoslavia3 was applied Finally, the assassination of the Austrian heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 triggered off the First World War. The occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary can be interpreted as an attempt to colonize an area that from the Habsburg point of view lay on the very edge of Europe. Sarajevo attack. Matthias von Hellfeld / dc. 10/17/2012. The attack by Serbian extremists on the heirs to the Austrian throne on June 28, 1914 sparked what was called the "July Crisis" in Europe YJ9fmxH.