Serbia’s northern province still means a duke’s domain
Vojvodina, Serbia’s northern autonomous province on the Pannonian plain, takes its name from voivodeship—a duchy under a voivode. A short-lived Serbian Vojvodina once declared autonomy inside the Austrian Empire, foreshadowing today’s multi-lingual province of Bačka, Banat, and Syrmia landscapes.
The Neolithic Starčevo and Vinča cultures flourished on this plain, and Indo-European newcomers arrived around 3200 BCE, followed by Bronze and Iron Age peoples. Before Rome conquered the area in the first century BC, Illyrian, Thracian and Celtic groups lived here. The earliest states were the Celtic Scordisci, whose capital Singidunum is modern Belgrade, from the third century BC, and the Dacian kingdom of Burebista in the first century BC. The province’s official name is written in six languages, Pannonian Rusyn among them.
Under Rome, Sirmium, today’s Sremska Mitrovica, ranked as one of the empire’s four capitals, and six emperors were born in or near it. It also served as a capital for Pannonia Inferior and later Pannonia Secunda, for the wider Pannonian diocese and for the prefecture of Illyricum. Banat belonged to the province of Dacia and Syrmia to Pannonia, while Bačka stayed outside the empire under the Sarmatian Iazyges.
After Roman rule ended in the fifth century, Goths, Sarmatians, Huns, Gepids and Avars followed one another; the most important was a Gepid state ruled from Sirmium. According to the seventh-century Miracles of Saint Demetrius, the Avars handed Syrmia to a Bulgar leader named Kuber around 680, and his people later moved south to Macedonia.
Slavs settled the region in the sixth and seventh centuries, shortly before some crossed the Sava and Danube into the Balkans; tribes here included the Obotrites, Severians, Braničevci and Timočani. Much later a short-lived Serbian Vojvodina declared autonomy within the Austrian Empire, lending the present province its name, which means the domain of a voivode, or duke.
Source: Vojvodina
