Bjelovar-Bilogora County
Habsburg Military Frontier buffer zone from 1756, colonized by Czech farmers whose dairy traditions persist. Population halved since peak as agricultural economics fail to retain workers.
Bjelovar-Bilogora County exists because the Habsburgs needed a buffer. When Ottoman armies pushed into Central Europe during the 16th century, the land between the Drava and Sava rivers became a depopulated wasteland—constantly changing hands, its villages abandoned, its people scattered into forest refuges. The Habsburgs responded by creating the Croatian Military Frontier, a permanent defensive zone staffed not by professional soldiers but by farmer-warriors who received land in exchange for military service. Bjelovar itself was purpose-built in 1756 as the administrative center of the Varaždin Generalate, a planned fortress town constructed under Baron Philipp Lewin von Beck.
The county takes its name from Bilogora, Croatia's lowest but largest mountain range—a series of gentle hills running northwest to southeast between the two great rivers. The name likely derives from the white marl soil exposed on its slopes: 'bijela gora' meaning 'white mountain.' This unassuming ridge became the spine of a new agricultural economy when the Habsburgs resettled Protestant Czech farmers here in the 19th century, seeking both loyal subjects and productive cultivators for the frontier lands. Today, Czechs still comprise 5% of the population, maintaining bilingual schools and cultural institutions in municipalities like Velika Trnovitica—a founder effect that persists two centuries after colonization.
The Military Frontier dissolved in 1881, but the agricultural character it established endures. Bjelovar-Bilogora remains one of Croatia's most productive dairy regions, with companies like Zdenka producing cheeses that became Yugoslav-era household staples. The county's forests—among Croatia's richest—supply a wood processing industry that employs significant numbers. Yet this agricultural heartland is hemorrhaging people: population dropped from 119,764 in 2011 to under 99,000 by 2024, as younger workers migrate to Zagreb or Germany seeking higher wages. The county's purchasing power stands at just 267 PPS, tied for Croatia's lowest.
By 2026, Bjelovar-Bilogora's future depends on whether EU rural development funds and agricultural modernization can reverse a demographic decline that began when the frontier closed and the military purpose that created this place disappeared.