Before the arrival of the Slav peoples in the Balkans in the 6th and 7th centuries CE, the area now known as Montenegro was inhabited principally by people known as Illyrians. Little is known of their origins or language, but they are claimed today as ancestors by the modern Albanians. Along the seaboard of the Adriatic, the movement of peoples that was typical of the ancient Mediterranean world ensured the settlement of a mixture of colonists, traders, and those in search of territorial conquest. Substantial Greek colonies were established on the coast during the 6th and 7th centuries BCE, and Celts are known to have settled there in the 4th century BCE. During the 3rd century BCE an indigenous Illyrian kingdom emerged with its capital at Skadar (modern Shkodër, Alb.). The Romans mounted several punitive expeditions against local pirates and finally conquered this kingdom in 9 CE, annexing it to the province of Illyricum.

The division of the Roman Empire between Roman and Byzantine rule—and subsequently between the Latin and Greek churches—was marked by a line that ran northward from Skadar through modern Montenegro, symbolizing the status of this region as a perpetual marginal zone between the economic, cultural, and political worlds of the Mediterranean peoples and the Slavs. As Roman power declined, this part of the Dalmatian coast suffered from intermittent ravages by various seminomadic invaders, especially the Goths in the late 5th century and the Avars during the 6th century. These soon were supplanted by the Slavs, who became widely established in Dalmatia by the middle of the 7th century. Because the terrain was extremely rugged and lacked any major sources of wealth such as mineral riches, the area that is now Montenegro became a haven for residual groups of earlier settlers, including some tribes who had escaped Romanization.

Medieval South Slav kingdoms

The South Slav peoples of the region were the ancestors of today’s Serbs and Montenegrins, though the degree of differentiation between those two groups remains controversial. The peoples were organized along tribal lines, each headed by a župan (chieftain). In this part of the Adriatic littoral, from the time of the arrival of the Slavs up to the 10th century, these local magnates often were brought into unstable and shifting alliances with other larger states, particularly with Bulgaria, Venice, and Byzantium. Between 931 and 960 one such župan, Česlav, operating from the županija of Zeta in the hinterland of the Gulf of Kotor, succeeded in unifying a number of neighbouring Serb tribes and extended his control as far north as the Sava River and eastward to the Ibar. Zeta and its neighbouring županija of Raška (roughly modern Kosovo) then provided the territorial nucleus for a succession of Serb kingdoms that in the 13th century were consolidated under the Nemanjić dynasty. (See also Serbia: Medieval Serbia.)

Although the Serbs have come to be identified closely with the Eastern Orthodox tradition of Christianity, it is an important indication of the continuing marginality of Zeta that Mihiajlo of Duklja, the first of its rulers to claim the title of king, had this honour bestowed on him in 1077 by Pope Gregory VII, head of the Western, or Roman Catholic, church. It was only under the later Nemanjić rulers that the ecclesiastical allegiance of the Serbs to Constantinople, and thus to Eastern Orthodoxy, was finally confirmed. On the death of Stefan Dušan in 1355, the Nemanjić empire began to crumble, and its holdings were divided among the knez (prince) Lazar Hrebeljanović, the short-lived Bosnian state of Tvrtko I (reigned 1353–91), and a semi-independent chiefdom of Zeta under the house of Balša, with its capital at Skadar. Serb disunity coincided fatefully with the arrival in the Balkans of the armies of the Ottoman Empire, and in 1389 Lazar fell to the forces of Sultan Murad I at the Battle of Kosovo.

Montenegro in the two Yugoslavias

In view of the dominant place of the Serb-Croat conflict in Yugoslav politics, almost no attention has been given by historians to the development of Montenegro between the two World Wars. Economic development—including foreign investment—followed the lines of political patronage, and therefore little of it filtered into Montenegro. No new railroad building took place, no new mineral extraction was initiated, and there was little road construction. Having few large estates to expropriate, it was almost untouched by agrarian reform. Port development in the Gulf of Kotor was largely confined to military facilities; in the words of one historian, Bar in 1938 was “of very little importance.” By almost all indicators of economic well-being, the Zetska banovina, the administrative district in post-1929 Yugoslavia that roughly corresponded to Montenegro, vied for the lowest level of economic development with the banovina of Vardarska, which comprised parts of Macedonia. Montenegro’s most important export in this period was probably emigrants.

It is difficult to determine whether this neglect had a lasting effect on the Montenegrins, as Yugoslav politics was centralized and multiparty politics was proscribed under the royal dictatorship after 1929. It is perhaps indicative that the Communist Party drew support as much in such marginalized areas as Montenegro as it did in the large industrial centres of Zagreb (Croatia) and Belgrade (Serbia).

During World War II, after Yugoslavia was invaded and partitioned by the Axis powers in April 1941, Montenegro was occupied by the Italians under a nominally autonomous administration. Spontaneous armed resistance began within a few months; it was divided in its aims and loyalties between communists and their sympathizers and noncommunist bjelaši (advocates of union with Serbia). At the same time, many Montenegrin nationalists (zelenaši), disappointed by the experience of Yugoslav unification, supported the Italian administration. Notwithstanding this local conflict, which was soon entangled within the wider Yugoslav struggle, the local strength of the Communist Party gave the communists an effective base in Montenegro. In addition, the area’s remoteness and difficult terrain made it an important refuge for Josip Broz Tito’s communist Partisan forces during the most difficult stage of their struggle, and it became a relatively safe haven after the fall of Italy.

The Montenegrins’ traditional Pan-Slavism made them natural allies of the communist plan to reunify Yugoslavia. Consequently, after the war many Montenegrins found themselves in high positions within the military, political, and economic administration—in contrast to their former marginality. That same devotion to the Communist Party and to Soviet leadership, bolstered by Montenegro’s pro-Russian tradition, helps to explain why a large number of Montenegrins sided with Joseph Stalin in the 1948 dispute between the Soviet-backed agency of international communism, Cominform, and the Yugoslav leadership. Many of those people who backed Stalin were victims of subsequent Yugoslav purges.

Nevertheless, Montenegro’s elevation to the status of a republic—part of the communist strategy of unifying Yugoslavia through a federal structure—ultimately secured Montenegrin loyalty to the Yugoslav regime. Montenegro later became a regular recipient of the large sums of federal aid disbursed to less-developed regions, which enabled it to embark for the first time on a process of industrialization. In spite of an attempt to develop the Nikšić area as a centre of both bauxite mining and steel production, economic progress was constantly hampered by the republic’s marginality to the communication networks of the Yugoslav federation. The Montenegrin coast did not emerge as an important tourist area until the 1980s.

Federation with Serbia

The breakup of the Yugoslav federation after 1989 left Montenegro in a precarious position. The first multiparty elections in 1990 returned the reformed League of Communists to power, confirming Montenegrin support for the disintegrating federation. The republic therefore joined Serbia in fighting the secession of Slovenia and Croatia, and in 1992 it joined Slobodan Milošević’s “third Yugoslavia,” a federal republic comprising only Montenegro and Serbia. Still, in 1989 the remains of King Nicholas I and other members of the former royal family had been returned to Montenegro to be reinterred with great ceremony in Cetinje. This sign of the continuing sense of distinctive Montenegrin identity was matched by lively criticism of the Serb conduct of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (see Bosnian conflict). In addition, the United Nations’ sanctions against Yugoslavia seriously harmed Montenegro, especially by undermining its lucrative tourist trade; their impact, however, was somewhat softened by the opportunities created for smuggling, in collaboration with coastal networks in Albania.