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Yugoslavia The Croats and Their Territories
Most historians believe that the Croats are a purely Slavic
people who probably migrated to the Balkans from the present-day
Ukraine. A newer theory, however, holds that the original Croats
were nomadic Sarmatians who roamed Central Asia, migrated onto
the steppes around 200 B.C., and rode into Europe near the end of
the fourth century A.D., possibly together with the Huns. The
Sarmatian Croats, the theory holds, conquered the Slavs of
northern Bohemia and southern Poland and formed a small state
called White Croatia near today's Kraków. The Croats then
supposedly mingled with their more numerous Slavic subjects and
adopted the Slavic language, while the subjects assumed the
tribal name "Croat."
A tenth-century Byzantine source reports that in the seventh
century Emperor Heraclius enlisted the Croats to expel the Avars
from Byzantine lands. The Croats overran the Avars and Slavs in
Dalmatia around 630 and then drove the Avars from today's
Slovenia and other areas. In the eighth century, the Croats lived
under loose Byzantine rule, and Christianity and Latin culture
recovered in the coastal cities. The Franks subjugated most of
the Croats in the eighth century and sent missionaries to baptize
them in the Latin rite, but the Byzantine Empire continued to
rule Dalmatia.
Croatia emerged as an independent nation in 924. Tomislav
(910-c. 928), a tribal leader, established himself as the first
king of Croatia, ruling a domain that stretched eastward to the
Danube. Croatia and Venice struggled to dominate Dalmatia as the
power of Byzantium faded, and for a time the Dalmatians paid the
Croats tribute to assure safe passage for their galleys through
the Adriatic. After the Great Schism of 1054 split the Roman and
Byzantine churches, Normans (probably with papal support)
besieged Byzantine cities in Dalmatia. In 1075 a papal legate
crowned Dmitrije Zvonimir (1076-89) king of Croatia.
A faction of nobles contesting the succession after the death
of Zvonimir offered the Croatian throne to King László I of
Hungary. In 1091 Laszlo accepted, and in 1094 he founded the
Zagreb bishopric, which later became the ecclestictical center of
Croatia. Another Hungarian king, Kálmán, crushed opposition after
the death of Laszlo and won the crown of Dalmatia and Croatia in
1102. The crowning of Kálmán forged a link between the Croatian
and Hungarian crowns that lasted until the end of World War I.
Croats have maintained for centuries that Croatia remained a
sovereign state despite the voluntary union of the two crowns,
but Hungarians claim that Hungary annexed Croatia outright in
1102. In either case, Hungarian culture permeated Croatia, the
Croatian-Hungarian border shifted often, and at times Hungary
treated Croatia as a vassal state. Croatia, however, had its own
local governor, or ban; a privileged landowning nobility;
and an assembly of nobles, the Sabor.
The joining of the Croatian and Hungarian crowns
automatically made Hungary and Venice rivals for domination of
Dalmatia. Hungary sought access to the sea, while Venice wished
to secure its trade routes to the eastern Mediterranean and to
use Dalmatian timber for shipbuilding. Between 1115 and 1420, the
two powers waged twenty-one wars for control of the region and
Dalmatian cities changed hands repeatedly. Serbia and Bosnia also
competed for Dalmatia. Serbia seized the coast south of the Gulf
of Kotor on the southern Adriatic coast around 1196 and held it
for 150 years; Bosnia dominated central Dalmatia during the late
fourteenth century. Dalmatian cities struggled to remain
autonomous by playing one power against the others. Most
successful in this strategy was Dubrovnik, whose riches and
influence at times rivaled those of Venice. In the fourteenth
century, Dubrovnik became the first Christian power to establish
treaty relations with the Ottoman Empire, which was then
advancing across the Balkans. Dubrovnik prospered by mediating
between Europe and the new Ottoman provinces in Europe, and by
exporting precious metals, raw materials, agricultural goods, and
slaves. After centuries as the only free South Slav political
entity, the city waned in power following a severe earthquake in
1667.
In 1409 Ladislas of Naples, a claimant to the throne of
Hungary, sold Venice his rights to Dalmatia. By 1420 Venice
controlled virtually all of Dalmatia except Dubrovnik. The
Venetians made Dalmatia their poorest, most backward province:
they reduced Dalmatian local autonomy, cut the forests, and
stifled industry. Venice also restricted education, so that
Zadar, the administrative center of Dalmatia, lacked even a
printing press until 1796. Despite centuries of struggle for
dominance of the region and exploitation by Venice, Dalmatia
produced several first-rate artists and intellectuals, including
the sculptor Radovan, Juraj Dalmatinac, an architect and
sculptor, writer Ivan Gundulic, and scientist Rudjer Boskovic.
Ottoman armies overran all of eastern and southern Croatia
south of the Sava River in the early sixteenth century, and
slaughtered a weak Hungarian force at the Battle of Mohács
(Hungary) in 1526. Buda was captured in 1541, then Turkish
marauders advanced toward Austria. After Mohács, Hungarian and
Croatian nobles elected the Habsburg Ferdinand I of Austria king
of Hungary and Croatia. To tighten its grip on Croatia and
solidify its defenses, Austria restricted the powers of the
Sabor, established a military border across Croatia, and
recruited Germans, Hungarians, Serbs, and other Slavs to serve as
peasant border guards. This practice was the basis for the ethnic
patchwork that survives today in Croatia, Slavonia, and
Vojvodina. Austria assumed ownership and direct control of the
border lands, and gave local independence and land to families
who agreed to settle and guard those lands. Orthodox border
families also won freedom of worship, which drew stiff opposition
from the Roman Catholic Church.
Turkish inroads in Croatia and Austria also triggered price
increases for agricultural goods, and opportunistic landowners
began demanding payment in kind, rather than cash, from serfs.
Rural discontent exploded in 1573 when Matija Gubec led an
organized peasant rebellion that spread quickly before panic-
stricken nobles were able to quell it.
Religious ferment in Europe affected Croatian culture in the
sixteenth century. Many Croatian and Dalmatian nobles embraced
the Protestant Reformation in the mid-sixteenth century, and in
1562 Stipan Konzul and Anton Dalmatin published the first
Croatian Bible. The Counterreformation began in Croatia and
Dalmatia in the early seventeenth century, and the most powerful
Protestant noblemen soon reconverted. In 1609 the Sabor voted to
allow only the Catholic faith in Croatia. The Counterreformation
enhanced the cultural development of Croatia. Jesuits founded
schools and published grammars, a dictionary, and religious books
that helped shape the Croatian literary language. Franciscans
preached the Counterreformation in Ottoman-held regions.
Western forces routed a Turkish army besieging Vienna in 1683
and then began driving the Turks from Europe. In the 1699 Treaty
of Karlowitz, the Turks ceded most of Hungary, Croatia, and
Slavonia to Austria, and by 1718 they no longer threatened
Dalmatia. During the Western advance, Austria expanded its
military border, and thousands of Serbs fleeing Turkish
oppression settled as border guards in Slavonia and southern
Hungary
(see
fig. 2). As the Turkish threat waned, Croatian
nobles demanded reincorporation of the military border into
Croatia. Austria, which used the guards as an inexpensive
standing military force, rejected these demands, and the guards
themselves opposed abrogation of their special privileges.
From 1780 to 1790, Joseph II of Austria introduced reforms
that exposed ethnic and linguistic rivalries. Among other things,
Joseph brought the empire under strict central control and
decreed that German replace Latin as the official language of the
empire. This decree enraged the Hungarians, who rejected
Germanization and fought to make their language, Magyar, the
official language of Hungary. The Croats, fearing both
Germanization and Magyarization, defended Latin. In 1790, when
Joseph died, Hungary was on the verge of rebellion. Joseph's
successor, Leopold II, abandoned centralization and Germanization
when he signed laws ensuring Hungary's status as an independent
kingdom under an Austrian king. The next Austrian emperor,
Francis I, stifled Hungarian political development for almost
four decades, during which Magyarization was not an issue.
Venice repulsed Ottoman attacks on Dalmatia for several
centuries after the Battle of Mohács, and it helped to push the
Turks from the coastal area after 1693. But by the late
eighteenth century, trade routes had shifted, Venice had
declined, and Dalmatian ships stood idle. Napoleon ended the
Venetian Republic and defeated Austria; he then incorporated
Dalmatia, Dubrovnik, and western Croatia as the French Illyrian
Provinces. France stimulated agriculture and commerce in the
provinces, fought piracy, enhanced the status of the Orthodox
population, and stirred a Croatian national awakening. In 1814
the military border and Dalmatia returned to Austria when
Napoleon was defeated; Hungary regained Croatia and Slavonia. In
1816 Austria transformed most of the Illyrian Provinces into the
Kingdom of Illyria, an administrative unit designed to
counterbalance radical Hungarian nationalism and coopt nascent
movements for union of the South Slavs. Austria kept Dalmatia for
itself and reduced the privileges of the Dalmatian nobles.
The Croatian-Hungarian language conflict reemerged in the
1830s, as Hungarian reformers grew more critical of Austrian
domination. French-educated Croatian leaders, fearing Hungarian
linguistic and political domination, began promoting the Croatian
language and formation of a Slavic kingdom within the Austrian
Empire. In 1832, for the first time in centuries, a Croatian
noble addressed the Sabor in Croatian. With tacit Austrian
approval, Ljudevit Gaj, a journalist and linguist, promoted a
South Slavic literary language, devised a Latin-based script, and
in 1836 founded an anti-Hungarian journal that called for
Illyrian cultural and political unity. Hungary feared the
Illyrian movement and banned even public utterance of the word
"Illyria." In 1843 the Hungarian assembly voted to make Magyar
the official language of Hungary and Slavonia, and eventually to
make it the official language of Hungarian-Croatian relations.
Croats called the law an infringement on their autonomy,
saturated Vienna with petitions for separation from Hungary, and
returned to Budapest all documents sent them in Hungarian.
Hungary rose against Austria during the revolution that swept
Europe in 1848. The Croats, rightly fearing Hungarian chauvinism
and expecting union of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia, sided
with Austria. Ban Josip Jelacic led an army that attacked the
Hungarian revolutionary forces. His units soon withdrew, but
Russian troops invaded Hungary to crush the revolution. Despite
their loyalty to Austria, the Croats received only the abolition
of serfdom. Rather than uniting the Slavic regions as promised,
the emperor suspended the constitution and introduced absolutist
rule and Germanization.
Austria ended absolutist rule in 1860, and a military defeat
in 1866 brought the empire to the brink of collapse. In 1867
Emperor Franz Joseph entered the Dual Monarchy with Hungary,
uniting the two states under a single crown. Conflicting
interests kept Austria-Hungary from uniting the South Slavs:
Croatia and Slavonia fell under Hungarian control, while Austria
retained Dalmatia. In 1868 a Sabor dominated by pro-Hungarian
deputies adopted the Nagodba, or compromise, which affirmed that
Hungary and Croatia comprised distinct political units within the
empire. Croatia obtained autonomy in internal matters, but
finance and other Croatian-Hungarian or Austro-Hungarian concerns
required approval from Budapest and Vienna. Hungarian leaders
considered that the Nagodba provided ample home rule for Croatia,
but Croatia opposed it strongly. A subsequent election law
guaranteed pro-Hungarian landowners and officials a majority in
the Sabor and increased Croatian hatred for Hungarian domination.
Croatian members of the Hungarian assembly then resorted to
obstructionism to enhance their meager influence.
After 1868 the Croatian leadership was divided between
advocates of a South Slav union and nationalists favoring a
Greater Croatia; a bitter rivalry developed between the Croats
and Serbs. Bishop Josip Strossmayer dominated the Croatian South
Slav movement and supported liturgical concessions to help reduce
the religious differences dividing Croats and Serbs. In pursuit
of a South Slav cultural union, he founded the Yugoslav Academy
of Arts and Sciences in 1867 and the University of Zagreb in
1874. Ante Starcevic opposed Strossmayer, pressed for a Greater
Croatia, and founded an extreme nationalist party. In 1881
Austria-Hungary reincorporated the military border into Croatia,
increasing the number of ethnic Serbs in Croatia to about 25
percent of its 2.6 million population. The change raised ethnic
tensions. The Croats' ill will toward Hungary and ethnic Serbs
deepened under Ban Karoly Khuen-Héderváry (1883-1903), who
ignored the Nagodba and exploited the Croatian-Serbian
rivalry to promote Magyarization. In 1903 Hungary rejected
Croatian demands for financial independence, quelled
demonstrations, and suppressed the Croatian press. After 1903
moderate Croats and ethnic Serbs found common ground, and by 1908
a Croatian-Serbian coalition won a Sabor majority and condemned
Austria's annexation of Bosnia-Hercegovina. A new ban, hoping to
split the coalition, brought bogus treason charges against ethnic
Serbian leaders in Croatia; the subsequent trials scandalized
Europe and strengthened the tenuous Croatian-Serbian coalition.
Data as of December 1990
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