Long a center for competing imperial ambitions, Kosovo in the twentieth century endured a long and bloody process of transformation. Its history is one of subordination, ethnic conflict, and economic deprivation, which took on its early-twenty-first-century coloration when the majority Albanian population in 1910 revolted against the Ottoman Empire (1299–1922). These revolts led to the Balkan Wars of 1912, the military conquest of Kosovo by forces loyal to the Kingdom of Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria, and the formal annexation of Kosovo by Serbia and Montenegro in 1914.

Since both states viewed the non-Slav Albanian, Turkish, and Roma (gypsy) populations as alien and a threat, Montenegro and Serbia established administrations in Kosovo that encouraged Slav migration and settlement while eliminating indigenous communities and institutions. Such tactics, reminiscent of the United States' policies in its efforts to settle the West at the turn of the twentieth century, continued after the creation of the Yugoslav...