Montenegro

A mountain country that stayed independent when its neighbours did not, then joined Serbia twice and left twice. Montenegro's karst highlands were too poor and too vertical to be worth garrisoning, so it maintained effective autonomy through the Ottoman centuries under prince-bishops of the Petrovic-Njegos family, who combined religious and political authority in a way found nowhere else in Europe - one of them, Njegos, wrote The Mountain Wreath, still the central text of Montenegrin and Serb literature and still controversial for what it celebrates. Independence was formally recognised in 1878 and the country became a kingdom in 1910, then disappeared into the South Slav state in 1918 by a contested assembly vote that split the population into supporters and opponents of union. It was a republic of Tito's federation and stayed with Serbia after 1992, the last to remain, before voting narrowly for independence in May 2006 - the threshold was set at fifty-five per cent and the result cleared it by about half a point. Montenegro uses the euro without being in the eurozone. It joined NATO in 2017 over Russian objection. Podgorica is the capital and Cetinje the historic one. The country has about six hundred thousand people. Its name means black mountain, from Venetian. The Bay of Kotor is a World Heritage site. Durmitor's canyon of the Tara is among the deepest in Europe. Montenegrin was declared a separate official language in 2007. Its prince-bishops passed the title from uncle to nephew, since they could not marry.

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