Great migration of Serbs

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

The First Great Migration occurred during the Great Turkish War, under Serbian 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 Great Migration took place in 1737–1739 under the Serbian Patriarch 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 masses of earlier migrations from Serbian Lands are considered ethnically Serb, while those of the First Great Migration also as nationally Serb, since the migration brought with it the definitive indicator of Serbianness, with its religious organization and political aspirations directed towards national liberation from Ottoman rule.

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.

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