Montenegro

Montenegro is a small southern European nation situated in the Balkans along the Adriatic coast, named after the black basalt-tinged mountains that dominate its landscape. Montenegro has a unique historical identity. Unlike their neighbors in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, Serbia, and Kosovo, the Montenegrins were largely successful in thwarting substantial Ottoman influence from [Page 822]the 13th century onward, when the Ottomans began to advance on the Balkans. This has had the effect of uninterrupted Eastern Orthodox influence, to the point of the area having been ruled by the regional bishops of Cetinje for 300 years from 1516 to 1815 (while paying tribute to Istanbul) and by a secular government from 1815 to 1918. After World War I, Montenegro was a part of Yugoslavia in its multiple incarnations, ...