Venice’s “Black Mountain” calque still names a NATO Balkan state
Montenegro covers 13,883 square kilometres and about 633,158 people across twenty-five municipalities on the Balkan Peninsula. Its English name is a translation of a Venetian rendering of Crna Gora, meaning Black Mountain, after the dense evergreen forests that once darkened Mount Lovćen, and the country now belongs to NATO.
Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania and Croatia surround the country, which fronts the Adriatic on the southwest. Podgorica is the capital, while Cetinje keeps the title of old royal seat. Crna Gora first appears in edicts of Stefan Uroš I to the Zeta bishopric on Vranjina island in Lake Skadar, and by the 15th century it covered most of today’s territory. Montenegro has sought EU membership since 2012.
Illyrians lived here before Rome absorbed their kingdom into Illyricum, and Slavs arrived in the 6th and 7th centuries. Duklja broke from Byzantium in 1042 and peaked under Mihailo and Constantine Bodin; after 1186 it fell to Stefan Nemanja’s dynasty. The Balšić and then Crnojević families ruled Zeta, the last free Balkan monarchy until the Ottomans took it in 1496. Venice held Budva from 1392 and the Bay of Kotor until 1797.
From 1515 prince-bishops of the Metropolitanate governed as a theocracy, and clans met each 12 July in Cetinje. The Petrović-Njegoš house won semi-autonomy in 1696. On 1 May 1858 Mirko Petrović’s 7,500 troops beat about 15,000 Ottomans at Grahovac, and the Congress of Berlin recognised independence in 1878. The Danilo Code of 1855 was the first constitution, and Nicholas I, who reigned from 1860 to 1918, proclaimed a kingdom in 1910.
At Mojkovac in January 1916 Montenegrins won despite five-to-one odds, yet surrendered to Austria-Hungary that month while Nicholas fled to Bordeaux. The land became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1922 and of the Zeta Banate in 1929. Italy set up a puppet kingdom in 1941. The Federal State of Montenegro was founded on 15 November 1943, became the People’s Republic in 1945, and simply Montenegro from 2007, a year after independence.
Source: Montenegro
