Gallery of the Nations
Croatia
Croatia lost its independence in 1102 and regained it 889 years later
on June 25, 1991
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Croatia and other small Slavic states in central Europe were dominated by the two great empires that
sandwiched them, the Roman Catholic Frankish Empire to the west and the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire
to the east of them.
Illyrians were the earliest inhabitants of Croatia. They were first conquered by Rome, followed by the
nomadic Avars in the 6th century AD. As the Illyrians declined, Slavic tribes migrating from surrounding
areas settled in; they became known as Croats. Charlemagne, king of the Franks conquered the Slavs and the Avars between 791 and 795 and forced them to pay him tribute. Charlemagne did not prevent the emergence of
small Slavic states along the eastern borders of his empire. Instead he used them as buffer between him and
the Byzantine empire. After Charlemagne's death in 814 his empire disintegrated and was divided among
his three sons. This allowed the independent development of the Slavic states.
By the time Tomislav became king of Croatia in 910, the country was an independent expanded kingdom that
included Pannonia and Dalmatia, and Bosnia. But by 1102 Croatia had lost its independence having been, in
that year, absorbed into the Hungarian Kingdom. For the next 816 years the king of Hungary was also the king
of Croatia. As Hungarian fortunes plummeted, so did Croatia. The Italian city-state of Venice took control of
Dalmatia in 1420. In 1526 Croatia came under Ottoman rule for 150 years when the latter defeated Hungary at
the Battle of Mohács. In 1699 the Habsburgs drove out the Ottomans from Hungary, and Croatia came under
Habsburg rule.
Croatia will not know true independence again until June 25, 1991. For the time being the country would
remain divided among other European powers. Dalmatia and Istria stayed under Venetian rule until French
emperor Napoleon I abolished the Venetian Republic in 1797 and in 1815 when they were joined to the Habsburg
Empire Dalmatia and Istria became parts of Austria.
At the end of the First World War in 1918 the victorious allies agreed with the people of the central
European region to create an independent Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes out of the disintegrated
Austro-Hungarian empire. The new state, ruled by Serbian royalty, was full of unrest. In 1928, after a
Montenegrin member of parliament assassinated Stjepan Radic a Croatian leader, King Aleksandar I renamed the
country Yugoslavia (Land of the South Slavs) and instituted royal dictatorship. Croatian and Macedonian
nationalists murdered Aleksandar in 1934. Just before World War II an autonomous Croatian province called
Banovina was created and it included parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In April 1941 Germany and the Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia and created their own puppet Independent State
of Croatia ruled by Fascist Croats who sought to exterminate the 2 million Serbs within the enclave in Nazi
holocaust style.
Josip Broz Tito, head of the Yugoslav Communist Party, organized and led a resistance movement, the
Partisans, against Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia. The Nazis were defeated in 1945 and Tito recreated
Yugoslavia as a federal state of semi-autonomous six republics, including Croatia.
Tito died in 1980 and Yugoslavia began to fall apart. Croatia and Slovenia seceded on June 25, 1991. A
vicious war ensued which did not end until December 1995 after the signing of the Dayton Peace Accord by the
president of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman; the Serbian president, Slobodan Miloševic; and Bosnian president Alija
Izetbegovic.
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