South-eastern Europe as an area of migration: the Serbian colonization of the Habsburg Empire until the 18th century/ Sudosteuropa als migrationsraum am beispiel der serbischen besiedlung des habsburgerreichs bis zum 18. Jahrhundert

South-Eastern Europe's ethnic shape was highly influenced by migration throughout its history, which can be defined as a "migration history". Probably the most important of them is the Serbian immigration to Southern Hungary, which was later to become Ottoman territory and--as a result of the Ottomans being defeated by Austria--part of the Habsburg Monarchy thereafter. Of outstanding importance is the Serbian Migration organized by patriarch Arsenije III. Carnojevic from 1690, also known as "The Great Migration" (Velika Seoba). With the Serbs also settling in Banat, this multiethnic region became an object of retroactive, ethnicity-based claims in modern Serbian and Romanian historiography. They both reproject ethnic differences and identities upon a population that was ethnically diverse, but not yet nationally differentiated according to contemporary criteria.