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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.
