Great Migrations of the Serbs

The Great Migrations of the Serbs (Serbian: Velike seobe Srba/Велике сеобе Срба), also known as the Great Exodus, refers mainly to two large migrations of Serbs from the Ottoman Empire to the Habsburg Monarchy.

The First Serbian Migration occurred during the Great Turkish War under Patriarch Arsenije III Čarnojević, and came as a result of the Habsburg retreat from Ottoman territories in the Balkans, which were temporarily held by the Habsburgs between 1689 and 1692. The Second Serbian Migration took place in 1737–1739 under the Patriarch of Peć, Arsenije IV Jovanović, also parallel with the Habsburg withdrawal from territories that they held in the Balkans, which between 1718 and 1739 were known as the Kingdom of Serbia and Banat of Temeswar. The earlier mass of the migrants are considered ethnically Serb, while those of the First Migration nationally Serbs as the migration brought with it the definitive indicator of Serbianness, the religion and the patriarch.

The influx of Serbs to the Habsburg Monarchy, constant since the fall of Serbian Despotate in the late 15th century, gained more momentum following the Statuta Valachorum act of 1630, by which the Habsburgs encouraged their settlement in the Military Krajina region.

During the Austro-Turkish war (1683–1699) relations between Muslims and Christians in the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire were extremely radicalized, resulting in calls by Muslim religious leaders for the persecution of local Christians and Jews. As a result of oppression, Serbian Christians and their church leaders, headed by Serbian Patriarch Arsenije III sided with the Austrians in 1689. In the following campaigns, Turkish forces conducted systematic atrocities against the Christian population in Serbian regions, resulting in the Great Migration of 1690.

...
Wikipedia