Croat people

“ Croatia and Slavonia, preponderatingly Roman Catholic, were lands of the Hungarian crown, and though they had a provincial pseudo-autonomous diet at Agram, the capital of Croatia, they sent deputies to the Hungarian parliament at Budapest. Thus what had in the Middle Ages been known as the triune kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia, with a total Serbo-Croat population of three millions, was divided between Austria and Hungary. ”

“ The want of a strong native middle class may partly be traced to this tendency.
History.
Medieval historians did not use the terms Croatia and Slavonia in their present sense. The Croatia of the middle ages comprised north-western Bosnia, Turkish Croatia, and the region now known as Upper Croatia. The whole country between the Drave and Save, thus including a large part of modern Croatia, was called in Latin Slavonia, in German Windisches Land, and in Hungarian Tótország, to distinguish it from the territories in which the Croats were racially supreme (Horvátország) . ”

“ More than 75% of the inhabitants are Croats, the bulk of the remainder being Serbs, who predominate in eastern Slavonia. Outside Croatia-Slavonia, the Croats occupy the greater part of Dalmatia and northern Bosnia. There are large Croatian settlements in the south of Hungary, and smaller colonies in Austria. The numbers of the whole nation may be estimated at 3,500,000 or 4,000,000. The distinction between Croats and Serbs is religious, and, to a less extent, linguistic. Croats and Serbs together constitute a single branch of the Slavonic race, frequently called the Serbo-Croatian branch. ”

“ The Croats, whose last traces of independence had been wiped out by the Magyars, rallied round Colonel Joseph Jellačić. In the resounding and statesmanlike phrases of his proclamation on March 11, Jellačić had declared that a grand purpose was before them. "It is to attain," said he, "the renascence of our people! Alone I can do nothing, if among the sons of one same mother there is not peace and understanding and fraternity."
"We are," exclaimed Gaj at a sitting of the Diet—"we are one nation! There are no more Serbs nor Croats!" ”

“ They are a powerful and a proud race, as the following story from Fortis shows, and will without doubt leave their mark on European history when their culture equals their physical powers; but the present race-animosity between Croat and Italian is deplorable. ”

“ Careless of the applause and the antagonism which he excited, the serene orator pointed out that the conflict between Serbs and Croats was based on their different psychology. Croatia had had her independent life and must be considered as a factor in Yugoslavia; but having come in, like Montenegro, of her own accord, she had not wished to be a separate factor. Traditions should not be so lightly set aside; and while there was perhaps no people more homogeneous than the Yugoslavs it should be remembered that none was more ready to resist the application of force. ”

“ The new state included a part of Dalmatia (the rest went to Italy) , the region of Srem and the entirety of Bosnia Herzegovina. It was the closest Croatia ever got to re- creating Great Croatia of a millennium ago. Fearful of Croat encroachment, the Slovenes hurried to discuss the declaration of their own state modelled after the NDH - only to discover that their country was split between Italy and Germany. In Zagreb, the enthusiasm was great. The 200 nor so returning Ustashe were greeted back even by their political rivals. ”

“ Those who are openly sailing in Radić's boat are for the most part the hard-headed peasants. Yet a number of the intelligentsia are coming on board—some of them, no doubt, with a view to their own advancement, but others on account of their convictions. And a still [244] greater number of the Croat intelligentsia look on him with sympathy—municipal officials, barristers, doctors, merchants, schoolmasters and military officers. ”

“ All attempts at union between the peoples of Croatia and Bosnia were fruitless: never in the history of Europe has a nation lived for so many centuries in such terrible political impotence and disunion as the Serbo-Croat and Slovene nation. Italy at the time of the Renaissance, and Germany before the liberation, were, in comparison with the Southern Slavs, in a well-organized and healthy condition. ”

“ Taken as a whole, the face is wanting in the power and massiveness of the Teutonic. Contrasted with the Serbs, the Croats are neither so tall nor so finely proportioned; their countenance is less open, beauty rarer. ”

“ Farther to the westward lies the historic kingdom of Croatia, which has for eight hundred years been bound to Hungary by ties which no one could ever quite satisfactorily define, but which have often been compared to the connection between England and Ireland. In the last half century at least, Magyar-Croat relations have been even less serene and amicable than Anglo-Irish ones. It goes almost without saying that Croatia has now, of her own choice, united with Serbia and the Slovene lands of Austria to form the new state popularly called Yugo-Slavia. ”

“ And of all, the Croat costume seems to be the best representative of the old Serb—of the Sclavonic costume as it existed in the days of the great Czar, Stephen Dūshan. Almost everywhere else the men’s costume, at least, has suffered from Turkish influences. Here, far better than in free Serbia, is the description applied to the Serb laity in the old laws—the ‘dressers in white,’ still applicable to the Croat men. At Belgrade it would be a meaningless epithet; at Agram it is still true. ”

“ No Slavic race is more torn up territorially than the Serbo-Croatians. Although really one people by language and origin, they have divided themselves, or rather were subdivided by their political masters, into two national units. Their homelands include a large section of Istria and Dalmatia, together with the adjacent islands in the Adriatic, the whole of Croatia and Slavonia, a piece of southern Hungary, and all of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Besides this, there is, of course, the Serbian Kingdom and Montenegro. ”

“ The Austrian kingdom of CROATIA in our time, between Styria, Hungary, Slavonia, Bosnia, Dalmatia, and the Adriatic, is not the ancient Croatia of Constantine Porphyrogenitus. Together with the Croatian colonists in Hungary, and the inhabitants of the Turkish Sandshak Banialouka, it contains about 800,000 souls. Of these less than 200,000 belong to the Greek Church; the great majority are Catholics. ”

“ Croa`tia and Slavonia (2,201) , a Hungarian crownland, lying between the Drave and Save, tributaries of the Danube, and stretching westward to the Adriatic. It is half as large as Ireland, wooded and mountainous, with marshy districts along the river courses. The soil is fertile, growing cereals, fibres, tobacco, and grapes; silkworms and bees are a source of wealth; horses, cattle, and swine are raised in large numbers. The province is poor in minerals, and lacks a harbour. The people are Slavs, of Roman Catholic faith; backward in education, but showing signs of progress. ”

“ It is only within the last few years that a movement has taken place, the object of which is to reunite Serbs and Croats into one nation and eventually into one state. The movement originated in Serbia, the Serbs maintaining that they and the Croats are one people because they speak the same language, and that racial and linguistic unity outweighs religious divergence. ”

“ At the fall of the Empire came the Goths, then the Avars, who, for two centuries, burned and massacred, and turned the whole country into a desert. ... In 630 the Croats began to occupy the present Croatia, Slavonia, and the north of Bosnia, and in 640 the Servians, of the same race and language, exterminated the Avars and peopled Servia, Southern Bosnia, Montenegro and Dalmatia. The ethnic situation which exists to-day dates from this epoch. ”

“ One of those nations is Croatia, which I'm also visiting on my trip. Croatia is a very different place than it was just a decade ago. Since they attained their independence, the Croatian people have shown the world the potential of human freedom. They've overcome war and hardship to build peaceful relations with their neighbors, and they have built a maturing democracy on the rubble of a dictatorship. ”

“ In Croatia, too, and in the neighbouring regions, various forays went on upon both sides, and people, whether Turks or Christians, who were too venturesome and careless, were punished for their presumption. ”

“ Because, too, of the subordinate position of the Crown lands of Croatia and Slavonia within the Hungarian Kingdom, there is not the same interest centering around the Croatians, or the Slovaks for that matter, as around a people possessing a more pronounced national integrity. ”

“ So they asked that the Croatian language should be taught, as well as the Italian, in the local schools. "This was the first attempt," says Mr. Edoardo Susmel, [41] who is, I gather, a schoolmaster or an ex-schoolmaster at Rieka. "But the people of Rieka," he says, "always with admirable tenacity resisted the brute force with which the Croats wanted to impose on the Italian city the rights of him who is strongest. The city arose as one man against this first attack and the schools remained Italian." ”

“ As in ornament so in general character, the Croatian dress resembles that of all the Southern Sclaves, including the Roumans of Transylvania and Wallachia, who, for ethnological purposes, may be looked on as a Latinized branch of the family. In parts, indeed, it has been Orientalized by the Turks; and it is noteworthy that just as the men’s costume in Croatia shows the Oriental influence in ornament, so in Serbia, Dalmatia, and the lands beyond the Save and Danube, it is the men’s costume that makes the chief advances towards the Turkish. ”

“ The Croats on the Save and its tributaries naturally expanded westward and aspired to closer connection with the sea where their struggle with the remnants of Roman civilization and a superior culture absorbed their energies. They developed out of their tribal state more quickly, while the Serbs, further inland and amid more difficult surroundings, developed more slowly. ”

“ We have so far spoken of the joint provinces as a whole, but in reality it is Slavonia that occupies the rather featureless interior plains and Croatia that includes the rich and varied scenery along the coast, where the mountains are probably as rich in minerals as those of Transylvania, were they properly worked. The Croatians have not shown themselves amenable to industrial work, they have hardly as yet got beyond the first stage in the history of a nation, when agriculture or the supply of man’s natural needs from the soil is the prime work. ”

“ Many of the inhabitants of this part of Slavonia are Croatians - people who are noted for their fondness of finery; and, as on this sunny Sunday morning we wheel through their villages, the crowds of peasantry who gather about us in all the bravery of their best clothes present, indeed, an appearance gay and picturesque beyond anything hitherto encountered. The garments of the men are covered with braid-work and silk embroidery wherever such ornamentation is thought to be an embellishment, and, to the Croatian mind, that means pretty much everywhere ”

“ The Servians, namely, were converted by the missionaries of Byzantium, the Croatians by those of Rome. It is this difference of confession, of which the double name of the language Serbo-Croatian is symbolic, that has always militated against the cultural and political unity of the nation, and formed the corner-stone of the power, first of Turkey and now of Austria, in that part of the Balkans. It is this difference between the teachings and traditions of the eastern and western churches that divides the Slavonic world in general and the Serbo-Croatian nationality in particular. ”

“ The Croats preserved their local autonomy, the use of their language for official purposes, their elected diet and other ancient institutions, but Hungarian control was represented by the ban.
The National Revival.—The Croats acquiesced in their position of inferiority until 1840, when the Magyars endeavoured to introduce Hungarian as the official language. A nationalist or “Illyrist” party was formed under Count Drašković and Bishop J. Strossmayer (q.v.) to combat Hungarian influence and promote the union of the “Illyrian” Slavs, i.e. the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. ”

“ Of political importance also is the steady immigration of Magyar peasants and workmen into Croatia-Slavonia, where they become rapidly absorbed into the Croat population. From the Transylvanian counties there is an emigration to Rumania and the Balkan territories of 4000 or 5000 persons yearly.
This great emigration movement is the more serious in view of the very slow increase of the population through excess of births over deaths. ”

“ Croats insist on the title Jugo-Slavia; Serbs are inclined to drop it and revert to the name Serbia. The Germans during the war are said to have promised the Croats to form the German counterpart of the Allies' idea of Jugo-Slavia, and had Germany and Austria won, a new constituent of Central Europe was to have been inaugurated with its capital of Zagreb. The name Jugo-Slavia was familiar to the Croats and popular with them before the Serbs adopted it. The Croats think that because they are more educated than the Serbs they should be the dominant party in the government of the new State. ”

“ As a rule our Croatian friends were never tired of assuring us that it was beyond the frontier that these gentry flourished; and the hilly country that rose to the south-west—the Kraina, as the promontory of Turkish territory is known, which acts as a thorn in the side of Austria—was pointed out as a regular asylum for wild characters, and in fact was long the only part of the frontier where the watch-service was still needed. At the present moment, however, even the Croats were fain to admit that Bosnia was free from robbers, while their own country was insecure ”