Montenegro (Crna Gora, the “Black Mountain”), a small country of karst plateaus, deep canyons and a short Adriatic coast, lies between Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo and Albania. It takes in the Bay of Kotor, the Zeta plain around Podgorica and Lake Skadar, the high country of Old Montenegro around Cetinje and the Durmitor and Prokletije mountains of the north. Neanderthal hunters used the rock shelter of Crvena Stijena near Nikšić, a chieftain was buried with a gold dagger in the tumulus of Mala Gruda near Tivat about 2800 BCE, and in antiquity the Illyrian Ardiaei and Labeates, under Agron, Queen Teuta and Gentius, ruled from Scodra (Shkodër) and Rhizon (Risan) until Rome defeated Gentius in 168 BCE. Rome made the land part of Dalmatia and later of the province of Praevalitana, with towns such as Doclea near today’s Podgorica; in 535 Justinian placed its bishops under the Archbishopric of Justiniana Prima, before Avar and Slav invasions ended Roman urban life.

Slavs settled the land from the 7th century and the principality of Duklja (Zeta) took shape between Byzantium and Rome: Jovan Vladimir ruled as a vassal of Tsar Samuel until his murder in 1016, Stefan Vojislav threw off Byzantine rule and destroyed an imperial army near Bar in 1042, his son Mihailo was addressed by Pope Gregory VII as king in 1077, the Archdiocese of Bar was created in 1089 and Konstantin Bodin ruled the wider Serbian lands until about 1101. Stefan Nemanja, born at Ribnica (Podgorica), annexed Duklja about 1186, and Zeta became a Nemanjić land and later the domain of the Balšić lords. Venice took Kotor in 1420, Ivan Crnojević founded Cetinje in 1482, and the Crnojević press printed the Oktoih in 1494, regarded as the first Cyrillic book printed among the South Slavs. The Ottomans conquered Zeta in 1496–1499 and created a Sanjak of Montenegro in 1514; the highland clans kept wide self-government under the metropolitans of Cetinje, while Venice held Kotor and the Bay until 1797.

From 1697 the Petrović-Njegoš family of Njeguši gave Montenegro its prince-bishops. Danilo I allied with Russia in 1711, Petar I won the battles of Martinići and Krusi in 1796 and united the Brda tribes with Old Montenegro, a first law code followed in 1798, and Petar II Petrović-Njegoš (1830–1851), ruler and poet, founded the Senate and a press at Cetinje and published The Mountain Wreath in 1847. Danilo I made himself a secular prince in 1852, and under Nicholas I (1860–1918) Montenegro won at Grahovac in 1858, went to war in 1876–1878, was recognised as independent at the Congress of Berlin on 13 July 1878, reached the sea at Bar, received a constitution in 1905 and became a kingdom in 1910. It fought Austria-Hungary in the First World War, held the line at Mojkovac in January 1916 and was occupied after the fall of Lovćen and Cetinje, while Nicholas went into exile. On 26 November 1918 an assembly at Podgorica voted to depose the dynasty and unite Montenegro with Serbia. Its supporters, the “Whites”, saw this as the will of the people and the fulfilment of unity; its opponents, the “Greens”, saw an annexation carried out by irregular elections under Serbian troops; the Parliament of Montenegro annulled its decisions in 2018, an act that is itself disputed. The Christmas Uprising of 1919 and a guerrilla war of the Greens followed.

Montenegro was a province of the Yugoslav kingdom, the Zeta Banovina from 1929, and was occupied by Italy in 1941 and by Germany from September 1943. The uprising of 13 July 1941 was one of the first mass revolts in occupied Europe, and it was followed by a civil war between Partisans and Chetniks that made Montenegro one of the bloodiest theatres of the war in Yugoslavia. As a republic of Tito’s Yugoslavia from 1945 it gained a new capital, Titograd (Podgorica), the port of Bar, the railway to Belgrade, an aluminium plant and coastal tourism, and it was shaken by the earthquake of 1979 and by the “anti-bureaucratic revolution” of January 1989, which brought Momir Bulatović and Milo Đukanović to power. In the 1990s Montenegro joined Serbia in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia after a referendum in 1992 that the opposition boycotted, took part in the Yugoslav army’s attack on Dubrovnik in 1991, suffered sanctions and hyperinflation, and from 1997 under Đukanović broke with Milošević, adopted the Deutsche Mark in 1999 and the euro in 2002 and entered a State Union with Serbia in 2003. In the referendum of 21 May 2006, 55.5 per cent voted for independence under a threshold of 55 per cent set with the European Union, and Montenegro declared independence on 3 June. The constitution of 2007 made Montenegrin the official language, a provision disputed by those who call their language Serbian; the census of 2023 counted 623,633 residents, 41.1 per cent declaring themselves Montenegrins and 32.9 per cent Serbs. Montenegro joined NATO in 2017, a dispute over the status of the Serbian Orthodox Church ended the rule of Đukanović’s party in 2020 after three decades, and accession talks with the European Union, opened in 2012, are the country’s main political goal. Explore the eleven ages below through selected events from the timeline.