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The first inhabitants of Yugoslavia were the Illyrians, who were followed by the Celts in the 4th century BC and the Romans 100 years later. In the middle of the 6th century AD, Slavic tribes crossed the Danube and occupied much of the Balkan Peninsula. In 1217 the Serbian Kingdom - which included a lot of Albania and northern Greece - asserted its independence from Byzantium, but in 1389 the Ottoman Empire cut that little party short, invading Serbia and settling in for the next 500 years. Throughout the 19th century the Serbs started pushing back, and by 1878 they'd regained their independence.

No sooner had they got their autonomy than the Serbian Kingdom started stirring up trouble. In the First Balkan War (1912) they joined forces with Greece and Bulgaria to liberate Macedonia from Turkey. In the Second Balkan War (1913) they tried to take Macedonia from Bulgaria. In league with Western Europe, they also took Kosovo from Albania. In 1914 Austria-Hungary invaded Serbia and triggered WWI. When the dust cleared, Croatia, Slovenia, Vojvodina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia joined forces to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. As this didn't fit across the bottom of an envelope, the name was changed to Yugoslavia.

In 1941 Yugoslavia signed up with the fascist Tripartite Alliance, lured by Germany's promise of a chunk of Greece. The Yugoslav people weren't impressed - they overthrew the reigning regent and pulled out of the alliance. Hitler was even less impressed and invaded, slicing the defeated country up and handing out shares to Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria. Hundreds of thousands of Serbs and Jews were massacred by the newly-installed Croatian puppet regime.

Yugoslavia kept its independence after WWII, thanks to the immense wartime efforts of its partisans, and in 1945 the Communist Party, under Josip Tito, came to power. Bosnia-Hercegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia were granted republic status, the monarchy was abolished and Yugoslavia became a federal republic. During his presidency, Tito walked a fine line between the superpowers, remaining unaligned with the West or the Stalinist Soviet Union. When he died in 1980, the presidency became a collective post rotated between nine elected members - not the most effective of leadership styles. In 1986 Slobodan Milosevic - who had risen to power on the back of anti-Albanian Serb nationalist rhetoric - got his turn in the hotseat. His vision of a 'Greater Serbia', untainted by foreign blood, horrified residents of Slovenia and Croatia, who declared themselves independent in June 1991.

Milosevic would brook no dissent: the federal army was sent into Slovenia, while the EC rapidly introduced sanctions in an effort to head off civil war. Within a month the troops were out of Slovenia, but fighting had picked up pace in Croatia, where thousands died before a UN-brokered cease fire in January 1992. The EC recognised Croatian and Slovenian independence, whereupon Macedonia and Bosnia-Hercegovina also demanded recognition.

On 27 April 1992, Serbia and Montenegro dubbed themselves Yugoslavia, largely to escape blame for the bloodshed in Bosnia (which had been brought about by federal, rather than Yugoslav, forces). Although all Yugoslavian troops were withdrawn from Bosnia, the 80% Bosnian Serb component of the federal army stayed on, and the war continued. In May 1992 the UN Security Council passed a sweeping package of sanctions against Yugoslavia and warships were sent to the Adriatic to make sure the embargo was pulled off. By the end of 1996, a Yugoslav-Croat peace treaty had been signed, Bosnia had been divided between Serbs and Croat-Muslims, and Milosevic's dream of a greater Serbia was fulfilled. Tens of thousands were dead, the country's beautiful landscape and historic towns were torn to shreds, and Yugoslavia's tourist industry was all but destroyed.

In March 1998, trouble flared again in Kosovo. The province's Albanian majority began agitating for independence and Yugoslavia responded to what it described as Albanian terrorism with its old standby: ethnic cleansing. Villages were terrorised, hundreds of ethnic Albanians killed and thousands more forced to flee. Fearful of 'another Bosnia', the Contact Group (USA, Britain, Russia, Germany, France and Italy), introduced a new arms embargo on Yugoslavia, but to little avail - Serbian repression continued, the Kosovo Liberation Army responded, and in early 1999 NATO bombs started falling. By June 1999, a peace deal had been brokered between Yugoslavia and NATO; however, peacekeepers struggled to contain sporadic outbursts of violence.

In July 2000 Milosevic changed the rules for presidential elections, expecting the people (rather than the parliament) to vote him in for another four years. But he got the shock of his dictatorial life when victory in the election on 24 September was claimed by the opposition alliance with 55% of the vote. The country's one-eyed electoral commission refused to accept the result and called for a second ballot, sparking huge protests in Belgrade and strikes across Serbia. The final straw for Yugoslav citizens came on 4 October, when the election results were annulled and a new election slated for 2001. The next day, people from all over the republic converged on Belgrade demanding Milosevic's resignation - battles were fought between police and protestors, parliament was stormed, and finally, after only 12 hours of mass protests, Vojislav Kostunica addressed half a million people from the balcony of Belgrade City Hall as Yugoslavia's new president.

Since the changing of the guard, Yugoslavia has been re-admitted to the UN, made war crimes investigations a priority, and attempted to settle an old border dispute with Macedonia. The problems aren't entirely over though - an advisor to Kosovo's Albanian leader was recently murdered, Milosevic still lurks behind the scenes and Montenegro has announced it no longer sees itself as part of the Yugoslavian republic (though this is yet to be made official) - so Kostunica has his work cut out for him.