Slavic settlement of the area dates to Slavic migrations of the sixth and seventh centuries. From 1389 and the Serbian defeat at Kosovo until 1516, Montenegro was nominally an independent principality. Montenegro was the last Balkan area to be subjugated by the Ottomans in the late fifteenth Century and the first "liberated" when control passed to the Cetinje monastery and the hereditary prince-bishops around 1700, but it was never fully subjugated. Researchers note considerable variation from source to source in these dates, the degree of subjugation, and centers of political power. Montenegro was an independent kingdom for a brief time in the early 1900s before joining the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918. Since the end of World War II it has been part of modern-day Yugoslavia.
Montenegrins have traditionally sided with the Serbs, with whom they share many cultural and historical links. This has remained true in the current conflict with Croatia Beginning in 1991; during this conflict Montenegrins have supported Serbian guerrilla insurgencies in southern Croatia. At the national level Montenegro supported Serbian attempts to block Croatian ascendancy to the national presidency in the spring of 1991.