Antiquity to the High Middle Ages
The area of Croatia inhabited by Illyrians and Celtic Skordis people became 35 BC. BC Roman and belonged to the provinces of Pannonia and Illyria. After the East Gothic, Longobard, Byzantine and Avar rule, South Slavic tribes (Croats) immigrated into the inland in the 7th century, while the Romanized population stayed on the coast; In 641–800 the southern areas belonged to the Byzantine Empire again. Christianization, which began in the 7th century, took place in the south through Byzantium and in the north from Aquileia. From 806, initially under Frankish rule (including adoption of the Latin script), an independent principality of Croatia emerged in the fight against the Franks and Byzantium (from 877); Duke Trpimir is considered the founder of the ruling dynasty(about 845–865), who had numerous cities laid out in Istria. Prince Tomislav (910–928) held the title of king from 925 onwards. He and his successors succeeded in conquering Slavonia and northern Dalmatia (creation of the “Croatian-Dalmatian culture”). In 1075 Demetrius Zvonimir (1074–89) recognized Pope Gregory VII. as feudal lord and was crowned king by the papal legate in Solin (now part of Split). After the royal family died out (1091) and the Hungarian conquests, a personal union between the aristocratic state of Croatia and Hungary was decided in 1102 in a repeatedly controversial treaty (“Pacta conventa”, possibly a forgery from the 14th century) (“Regnum tripartium”: Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, which existed in varying forms until 1918). The King of Hungary was represented by a banus installed in Zagreb (split into two banships in 1260). The special position of Croatia was emphasized by a separate state parliament (Sabor) and separate elections for kings. Before the 20th century, the historical sub-areas formed a political unit only for a short time.
Croatia under Ottoman and Habsburg rule
From 1202 onwards, large parts of Dalmatia and in 1409/20 all of Dalmatia were lost to the Republic of Venice (until the end of the 18th century; except for Ragusa / Dubrovnik). Since the battle on the Amselfeld (1389), v. a. since the end of the 15th century, the number of Turkish invasions increased (1493 devastating defeat of the Croatian nobility on the Krbavsko polje [today Udbina]); After the Battle of Mohács (1526), north-western Croatia around Agram (Zagreb) and the coastal areas became Habsburg, the rest of Croatia (Slavonia) – after 1541 – Ottoman with Hungary. In the hope of support against the Turks, the Croatian and Hungarian nobility chose the Habsburg Ferdinand (as Ferdinand I. from 1531 Roman King) to King of Hungary-Croatia (coronation 1527). In the 16th and 17th centuries, Croatia, which had been reduced in size by the Turkish conquests, largely carried the burden of defending against the Turks, especially since the establishment of the Croatian-Slavonian military border (1578 by the inner-Austrian estates; also known as “military Croatia “). In 1670, the conspiracy of Banus P. Zrínyi was unsuccessful against centralist tendencies in Vienna. After the expulsion of the Turks in the “Great Turkish War”, with the Peace of Karlowitz (1699), the parts of Croatia north of the Una became Habsburg again, while the southern parts remained with the Ottoman Empire (or Bosnia) as “Turkish Croatia” (until 1878). Since 1702 the area between Drava and Save belonged to Croatia as the Kingdom of Slavonia, the coastal area was separated from 1717–76. Serbs (“military Croatia”) and Germans (southern Danube basin; “Danube Swabians”) were settled in the abandoned areas in the 18th century. 1809-14 Croatia belonged south of the Save to the Illyrian provinces of Napoleon I. From 1790 and 1814 respectively, Croatia and Slavonia were treated as subsidiary countries (partes adnexae) of the Hungarian crown; In 1848/49 the Croatians fought with Serbs under the Banus Josip Jelačić on the Austrian side against the rebellious Hungarians. Nevertheless, ideas of a Croatian rebirth (Illyrism) arose, and after 1850 also a South Slav unification (especially Bishop J. Strossmayer). The Austrian crown land of Croatia (Slavonia, the coastal region and Fiume), created with a certain internal autonomy with the Austrian March Constitution of 1849, was reunited with Hungary in the Austro-Hungarian Compromise in 1867 and placed under the Hungarian government (regulated in the Croatian-Hungarian Compromise in 1868); Dalmatia came to the Austrian half of Austria-Hungary, Fiume came directly to Hungary in 1870. After the military border was abolished, finally from 1881, “military Croatia” was (again) united with “civil (provincial, banal) Croatia” (Croatia and Slavonia).
Croatia as part of Yugoslavia
Against the policy of Magyarization, v. a. since the 1880s, Greater Croatian and federal programs turned; the emerging Croatian parties (including the Croatian People’s and Peasants’ Party under S. Radić, late 1904) strove to break away from Austria-Hungary in their majority since 1907. In 1915/17 Croatian forces (A. Trumbić) took part in the efforts to form a South Slavic state. On 5th / 6th 10. In 1918 the Agram (Zagreb) “National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs” was constituted, to which the Croatian Landtag (Sabor) transferred the supreme executive power after the constitutional separation from Austria-Hungary on October 29th. Radić rejected the decision of the National Council to unite with Serbia (November 24th), as the final form of the state structure (federation or central state) was still unclear. After the unification of Croatia with Serbia, Montenegro and Slovenia to form the “Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes” (SHS state), later Yugoslavia (on December 1, 1918), strong historical and cultural self-confidence brought the Croats into opposition to the Greater Serbian Centralism. The regulations in the west in Istria (Adriatic question) and in the east in Baranya, connected with the Paris suburb agreements of 1919/20, changed the territory of Croatia, as did the various reorganizations of the administrative areas by the Serbian central power (Yugoslavia, Story). The opening of a Croatian parliament in Zagreb (1928) contributed significantly to the establishment of the “royal dictatorship” in Yugoslavia (1929). Croatia was divided into the Sava and Coast Banks. The Croatian national movement should be crushed; thereby gained strength in the 1930s, the fascist Ustasha. On August 26, 1939, the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party, Vladko Maček (* 1879, † 1964), negotiated the establishment of an autonomous Croatia (Banschaft Croatia) within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the »Sporazum« (understanding). With the collapse of Yugoslavia in World War II (April 17, 1941) the leader of the Ustaše, A. Pavelić, established, based on the Axis Powers, on April 10th an »Independent State of Croatia« (Croatian abbreviation NDH; 1941–45), which also included Eastern Sirmia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the territory occupied by German and Italian troops. There was a bloody “Croatian policy” and “ethnic cleansing” (until 1944 also against the protest of the “Plenipotentiary General” E. Glaise von Horstenau); The terror was particularly directed against the Serbs living in the country (a total of 500,000 victims in Croatia), but also against Jews, Roma and Croats (including Jasenovac concentration camp). Ustasche, Tito partisans and monarchist Četnici fought each other with cruel harshness. In the spring of 1945 the Titoist partisans took bloody revenge on the Ustasche (including the Bleiburg massacre of members of the Croatian national army, famine and expiation marches, internment camps). The German population (»Donauschwaben«), v. a. in Slavonia, was expelled from 1945-48 except for a few remnants; as a result, Serbs settled there. New mixed ethnic areas had emerged. Most of Istria, Italianized after 1923, returned to Croatia, confirmed in the Peace of Paris (1947).
According to Abbreviationfinder, the communist Yugoslav state (since 1945) sought to resolve the tensions between the ethnic groups through federal constitutional orders, but also through violence (e.g. the suppression of the “Croatian Spring” in December 1971). The anti-communist resistance was to be broken with show trials (including against Archbishop A. Stepinac, October 1946). However, in the republic of Croatia, which was united with Slavonia and Dalmatia in 1946, nationalist currents and aspirations for independence could not be suppressed in the long term. The economic reforms of 1964/65 strengthened Croatia.
