Bela Krajina is situated among the Kočevski Rog and the Gorjanci mountain ranges and the flow of the Kolpa River, where karst limestone meets the edges of the fertile plains of the Pannonian Basin. The region conceals various stories of the past that are just waiting to be discovered.
Mesolithicum
The history of the destination dates back to the first half of the 5th millennium BC, when the first agriculturalists and livestock breeders settled in the Bela krajina Landscape. They settled the fertile and safe bends of the larger rivers of Bela krajina, where they arranged their simple dwellings. Veliki Zjot near Seče selo, Dolenjski zdenc near Dolenjci, Grdanji Skedenj above Doblicka gora and a number of other caves offered safety from the harsh weather and the nature of deep pristine forests, marshy banks of rivers, full of life. These people were mainly gatherers of forest and river fruits, but also hunted game and fish to a lesser extent.
Neolithicum
By burning and clearing forests, the earliest settlers began to change the environment, creating increasingly large pastures for domesticated cattle and cattle, as well as the conditions for the earliest simple agriculture. Near those agricultural areas, modest residences were arranged. Agriculture and craft, together with the growing number of inhabitants, slowly caused the settlement of broader territory, especially the areas around the Lahinja, Kolpa and Krupa rivers. Among the earlier villages of today’s Bela Krajina, which belong to the Copper Age, were the settlements in Pusti Gradec, Kamenice pri Gradcu, Griblje and other agriculturally suitable and protected places near water.
Eneolithicum
Roughly 3000 years ago, settlements were established on naturally protected locations, which offered security and allowed control of broad area, while at the same time ensuring proximity to water, pastures and fields where food was grown. During that long period, a number of earliest settlements were created in the vicinity of today’s Kučar, Črnomelj, Vinica, Metlika, Semič and Dragatuš, which together with even smaller hamlets formed a network of the earliest villages. They were built in well-secured places because of the danger from other communities, various groups of warriors and predators who kidnapped people, looted small things and cattle. Villages were formed by lineage or family, competed and cooperated with each other, and knew how to protect themselves from potential enemies. Kučar nad Podzemljem was the center of the eastern and central part of Bela krajina and the most important settlement in the country. The leading class of people from Kučar and other settlements in Bela krajina maintained earliest trade contacts, near and far.
Iron Age and Antiquity
Within the vastness of Roman Empire, the Bela krajina was but a tiny area somewhere on or along the border of Roman provinces of Pannonia and Dalmatia. It was a part of the countryside, where the majority of the population was made up of older tribes and communities, which gradually accepted Roman culture and Latin language. After the conquest began the romanization, which brought the population of Bela Krajina even closer to the culture of the empire. Older settlements, such as Črnomelj, Šlemine and Kučar, were remodeled and reorganized by the Romans; smaller settlements, villages, began to live as part of the vast Roman countryside. Bela krajina is bounded in the south and east by the river Kolpa, an important river along which communication, traffic and the transport of people and various goods of the Roman Empire took place. Along this river Christianity came to Bela Krajina sometime in the beginning of the 4th century.
Late Antiquity
From 4th century onwards extraordinary changes transformed the Bela Krajina, its population, economy and religion. Late antique Črnomelj developed as an important center in the broader outer system of Italy’s defenses (claustra Alpium Iuliarum). The settlement was protected by high and strong walls with towers, an early Christian church with a mosaic and residential buildings were built. Another late antique settlement was Kučar nad Podzemljem, where an early Christian center with two churches and a large residential building, also protected by walls and towers, was built. It most probably represented the natural center of this part of the Bela krajina region. For unknown reasons, Kučar was abandoned at the beginning of the 6th century, and late antique Črnomelj was destroyed by the Avars at the end of the 6th century, heralding the end of antiquity in Bela krajina.
Middle Ages
During the Early Middle Ages, the Slavs settled places with obvious remains of ancient centers, which were usually called Gradac, Cerkvišče or Gradišče. At that time, Bela krajina was called Metlica, which stems from “metlicsah”, a Slavic word meaning “border area”. It was part of medieval Slavonia, which in the 11th century fell under the rule of the ancestors of today’s Hungarians. Under the Hungarian rule, Bela krajina was ecclesiastically subordinated to the diocese of Zagreb.
In the 12th century, the oldest medieval churches of Bela krajina were built in Črnomelj, Semič, Vinica, Rosalnice and Podzemlje near Krasinec. Medieval political instability and chaos engulfed the land in the second half of the 12th century, culminating in the invasion of the knights and servants of Count Albert von Weichselburg (Višnjegorski), who occupied entire Bela Krajina sometimes between the years 1196 and 1204. Bela krajina then began to develop within the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation, within which it remained for more than six centuries, until 1806.
Within the Holy Empire, a characteristic feudal landscape began to develop. The first act of this process is the establishment of the parish of Črnomelj in October 1228. Črnomelj began to rapidly develop as a market town and attracted the population from other urban settlements in the Dolenjska region, as well as from the other side of Kolpa river. At the beginning of the 13th century, the oldest castle in the region was built in Črnomelj, followed by castles in Metlika and Gradec around the year 1300. Bela krajina got its castles, nobles and market towns, a civilization and culture with typical feudal Central European characteristics gradually developed. Yet the countryside of the 13th and 14th centuries was still marked by ancestral villages of the older Slavic population. With the establishment of the Novi trg settlement in Metlika, today’s town of Metlika, around 1300, a new center of the region developed.
The beginning of the 15th century was marked by the first incursion of Ottoman raiders, who in October 1408 invaded the land, threatened the town of Metlika, nad plundered its immediate surroundings. Until the last quarter of the 15th century, the land more or less enjoyed peace, but in the six decades between 1469 and 1529, it suffered the worst forms of Ottoman looting, burning, kidnapping and overall destruction. Bela krajina then lost a large number of its original inhabitants and some villages were completely abandoned; the town of Metlika and its suburbs were severely affected, and the same applies to Črnomelj.
By the beginning of the 16th century, the border with the Ottoman Empire was established only twenty kilometers from Kolpa, the Bela krajina became the bulwark of the Empire. This period is marked by the presence of various cavalry and early rifle divisions of the provincial Carniolian and princely, Habsburg, armies. The maintenance of this army offered good income and military jobs to the bourgeoisie of Metlika, Črnomelj and a number of noble families of Bela Krajina.
Modern period
The Ottoman incursions during the 15th century were done by large military units, even several thousand or more horsemen, but the tactics changed after 1530, when Bela Krajina was regulary plundered by smaller units of the Ottoman haramia, hajduks, martolos and other lightly armed troops. The last major raids recorded in 1575 and 1579 affected the town of Metlika and the surrounding area, but not the rest of Bela Krajina. The construction of the Karlovac fortress in 1579 successfully prevented further invasions and secured the territory of Bela Krajina, Kočevsko and Dolenjska, and then until the end of the 16th century, defensive towers were erected along the Kolpa River. A new defense system secured the land, and through the 17th century, Ottoman horsemen are no longer found in Bela krajina. The country began to heal and recover after two centuries of warfare and destruction.
To protect against Ottoman horsemen and predators, the old medieval town walls of Metlika and Črnomelj were rebuilt from the last quarter of the 15th century onwards. Fortified settlements, so called tabor complexes, were set up in Vinica, Semič and some other villages in order to protect the rural population. Region was well fortified and in the middle of the 16th century, the Uskoki or Wallachi – the orthodox population retreating from the central Balkans before the Ottoman overlords and their oppresion – were settled in the villages near the Kolpa river. Their first communities came to Bela Krajina and Žumberk after 1530 and all throughout the 16th century. In addition to the generally Orthodox Uskoks, Catholic Croats also fled to the safety of Bela Krajina. The population of the land, its language and culture were thoroughly changed.
It was precisely because of these migrations that the Carniolan polyhistorian Johann Weichard Valvasor in the 17th century described the Bela Krajina as a land where the Carniolians (Slovenians), Croats and Uskoks (Serbs) live together, mentioning the courage of the Uskoks fighters, and the large Croatian villages in the south of the land. The great religious upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries – the appearance of the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent religious discord and war – also touched the area of today’s Bela Krajina, but only for a relatively short period.
With the support of the nobility of Bela krajina, Protestant preachers spread their new Christian truth with great zeal and promised that with the spread of Protestant books deep into the Ottoman Empire, peace would finally reign, the Ottoman Sultan would see the reality of the reformed religion and even convert. Until the last decades of the 16th century, both Metlika and Črnomelj became completely Protestant. The decline of the Reformation followed after 1598, when the Protestant preachers were expelled. Protestantism was defeated, and the last Protestants of Bela krajina were presented with an ultimatum in 1617, to convert or be expelled from the country.
The beginning of the 19th century was marked by the arrival of the French Imperial army, which during the time of Napoleon occupied the area of Carniola, southern Croatia and Dalmatia. The occupied territories formed the so-called Illyrian provinces with the center in Ljubljana. French rule changed the provincial administration, but did not abolish the strongly hated feudalism. It existed only until 1813, when the French army withdrew and the Illyrian provinces ceased to exist with it. The administration of the Austrian Empire was restored. The old order lasted until September 1848, when feudalism was finally abolished. Thus, the old feudal lordships, which had characterized the life and economy of the entire empire for half a millennium, including Bela krajina, ceased to exist. Castles and nobles lost their subjects.
Črnomelj became the new administrative center of the region. The era of modernization began, the first industrial plant of the Bela Krajina was set up in Gradec, an iron foundry owned by Franz Ritter von Fridau, where ammunition and a variety of useful metal objects were produced. A coal mine was also built in Kanižarica near Črnomelj for the needs of the ironworks. The country has embarked on the path of industrial development.
In the middle of the 19th century, the population of Bela Krajina grew to more than 32,000 people, which is more than today (around 26,000), and the land could barely support its own population. At the end of the 19th century, Bela krajina was still distinctly rural, out of a population of almost 30,000, the town of Metlika had 1,438 inhabitants, and Črnomelj had 1,055 inhabitants. The bourgeois population was less than ten percent, and it did not differ significantly from other peripheral parts of the Carniola region.
Throughout the 19th century, Slovenian national thought spread in Bela krajina, and the rich heritage of its diverse population began to be studied and researched. The »reading rooms« (čitalnice) in Metlika and Črnomelj spread the Slovene language and literature, and at the same time there were various associations that spread useful knowledge as well as political thought and cultural and folklore involvement.