Bosnian Confederacy (Napoleon's World)

The Bosnian Confederacy was a Balkan state formed following the Treaty of Athens that ended the Black Sea War and unsuccessfully attempted to gut Turkey of its European territories. From 1960-1964, the territory encompassing the Bosnian Confederacy was under the control of the Serbian Confederacy. There was significant infighting in Bosnia between the majority Bosniaks and Turks, who were Muslim, and the minority Serbs and Croats, who were Orthodox Christian with a Roman Catholic minority within that group. After the expulsion of the Serbs from their territory, the Bosnians broke away into the Bosnian Confederacy, alternatively called the Bosniak Confederacy, in November of 1964. The weak Serbian state could not enforce their rule, and Turkey and the United States recognized the fledgling Bosniak state.

The Bosnian Confederacy was extremely unstable and ethnic and religious violence was prevalent. In 1967, the Islamic Army of Bosnia began engaging in a policy of ethnic cleansing against Christian Serbs, resulting in as many as 60,000 deaths in what came to be known as the Bosnian Civil War, which coincided with the timeframe of the Albanian independence movement and the Serbian Civil War to the east. Many refugees from Serbia, primarily Albanian Muslims, fled into Bosnia, and many Serbian Christians fled to Serbia between 1967-69, despite neither nation being particularly stable.

Despite alignment with Turkey and the 1970 electoral victory of a Turkish-majority Muslim government, many Bosnians favored independence, especially Croats in the north who dreamed of economic opportunity through a closer relationship with France. When Albania was reabsorbed into Turkey in 1970, however, many Bosnians realized that becoming a state within Turkey was an inevitability. After Turkey invaded and occupied Serbia in 1972, the French 10th Army responded likewise with a sudden and surprise attack against Bosnia, resulting in the brief French-Bosnian War in the fall of 1972 and the ensuing 27-month occupation by the French. By January of 1975, with the French Emperor Sebastien ailing and the Turkish and CIA-funded insurgency in Bosnia having taken its toll on the French government, the French soldiers withdrew back into Dalmatia and Bosnia was the final Balkan state to be reabsorbed in May 1975, despite a strong desire amongst even some Muslim Bosniaks to remain independent.