Croatia

“ 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. ”

“ 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 lands that today comprise Croatia were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the close of World War I. In 1918, the Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes formed a kingdom known after 1929 as Yugoslavia. Following World War II, Yugoslavia became a federal independent Communist state under the strong hand of Marshal TITO. Although Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, it took four years of sporadic, but often bitter, fighting before occupying Serb armies were mostly cleared from Croatian lands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Its advance at the expense of the southern branch of that race, and of the other Slavonic lands which owed more or less of allegiance to the Eastern Empire, was still more marked. ♦Hungary and Croatia.♦ All these lands at one time or another gave royal titles to the King of Hungary, King also of Croatia, of Dalmatia, of Rama, even of Bulgaria. But in most of these lands the Hungarian kingship was temporary or nominal; in Croatia alone, though the frontier has often shifted, Hungarian rule has been abiding. Croatia has never formed an independent state since the first Hungarian conquest ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Before the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the Republic of Croatia, after Slovenia, was the most prosperous and industrialized area, with a per capita output perhaps one-third above the Yugoslav average. Croatia faces considerable economic problems stemming from: the legacy of longtime communist mismanagement of the economy ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the Slovenes are left behind—as the train hurries along the willowed valley of the Save we find ourselves among a population less European in its dress, and soon arrive at Agram, the capital of Croatia, where we discover a fair hotel in the High Street. The aspect of the town at once strikes the stranger as other than German. What are these long, low, rectangular houses but slightly enlarged reproductions of the Sclavonic cottage? ”

“ In the old kingdom of Serbia, with much the greater part of the land in peasant possession, it may be said that there is no agrarian problem.... Those enemies of Yugoslavia, by the way, who have hoped that the particularism of Croatia would be something altogether different from what it is, should have mingled with the crowd at Zagreb on the evening of Prince Alexander's arrival in July 1920. ”

“ Aug. 6.—Next day, having heard that there was to be a large market at Karlovac, [156] about twenty-five miles south-west of Agram, towards the Bosnian frontier of Croatia, we hurried thither by rail, through fine oak forests and maize-covered champaign. On arriving we found the whole town swarming with country-folk, and the streets lined with varied booths. Several new features appeared in the costumes, and, above all, the greater propinquity to the Dalmatian frontier asserted itself in brilliant fezzes, such as are worn by the Morlachs and Uskoks of the Adriatic coastlands. ”

“ Three years after his disappearance from the scene Bosnia shared the fate of Croatia and Dalmatia, and fell into the hands of Manuel Comnenos. But upon the death of that powerful Emperor in 1180 the fabric which he had laboriously erected collapsed; the Balkan peoples had nothing more to fear from the Byzantine Empire, and Bosnia under her famous ban Kulin attained to greater freedom and prosperity than she had yet enjoyed. ”

“ Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Croatia, Slavonia, Montenegro, Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria and Southern Hungary are these broken strings, which it is necessary to repair. Let the people in these lands, he said, forget their religious differences and remember that they are the children of one mother. Let them write the same language. Gaj thus aimed at bringing Vuk's reforms to bear upon the Latin characters with which the Serbo-Croat language is written in Croatia. ”

“ Where amendments to the original Treaties have been agreed by the representatives of the governments of the Member States pursuant to Article 48 (4) of the TEU after the ratification of the Treaty of Accession by Croatia and where those amendments have not entered into force by the date of accession, Croatia shall ratify those amendments in accordance with its constitutional requirements.
Article 3 1. Croatia accedes to the decisions and agreements of the Heads of State or Government of the Member States meeting within the European Council. ”

“ In both countries rural society was based on the old-fashioned household community, or zadruga, which still survives in the territories that formed the Military Frontier, though everywhere tending to disappear and be replaced by individual ownership. The Croatian peasantry are least prosperous in the riverside districts, where marsh-fevers prevail, and especially beside the Save. ”

“ In modern times we must not forget the activity of the new Queen of the Adriatic, ‘la bella Trieste,’ the [25] Austrian successor of the great republic, nor the Italian seaport of Hungary, Fiume, connected now with the interior by rail as well as by the magnificent Louisa-way; so that, with the old Venetian influences, we have plenty to account for the presence of a considerable Italian ingredient in the population of Agram and Croatia generally. For anyone here unacquainted with Croatian, Italian, not German, is the best means of communication. ”

“ In 1776 the Croatian seaboard, which had previously been under the same administration as the rest of the Austrian coast, was annexed to Croatia, but three years later Fiume was declared an integral part of Hungary. These administrative changes, and especially the brief existence of united “Illyria,” stimulated the dormant nationalism of the Croats and their jealousy of the Magyars. In 1809 Austria was forced to surrender to Napoleon a large part of Croatia, with Dalmatia, Istria, Carinthia, Carniola, Görz and Gradisca. ”

“ Serbia, on the contrary, has a very small educated class and practically no wealthy class, it being said that there is not a millionaire in the country. Slovenia and Croatia each have their aristocracies, with titles and estates and traditions; Serbia's population is wholly composed of peasants, or of business and professional men who come from peasant stock. As a result of the large sums which were spent on public instruction in Croatia and Slovenia under Austrian rule, only a comparatively small proportion of the population is illiterate. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From this time the history of Croatia forms part of the history of the Hungarian kingdom. The history of Dalmatia becomes part of the long struggle of Venice for Hadriatic dominion. For five hundred years the cities and islands of the whole Hadriatic coast were lost and won over and over again in the strifes of the powers of the mainland. These were in Dalmatia the Hungarian and Bosnian Kings; more to the south they were the endless powers which rose and fell in Albania and northern Greece. In after times the Ottoman took the place of all. ”

“ The Roman Catholics of Bosnia have at different times during the last three centuries migrated in large numbers into Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia, where they found shelter among their co-religionists, and it appears that the Greek population to the South and East, who had less temptation to cross the borders of Latin Christendom, have largely colonized the country thus vacated. ”

“ Croatia shall take appropriate measures, where necessary, to adjust its position in relation to international organisations, and to those international agreements to which the Union or to which other Member States are also parties, to the rights and obligations arising from Croatia's accession to the Union. ”

“ Roman Dalmatia included the whole coast from Istria to the Drina, part of Albania, all Montenegro, Herzegovina, Croatia, Servia, almost all Bosnia, and some of the islands of the Quarnero. The legions for the most part remained near the coast, which gradually increased in commercial prosperity and civilisation; broad and safe roads were made to the interior uniting the Save and the Danube on one side, and the Drina on the other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We welcome the fact that our allies are now able to satisfy their national and political ambitions. We rejoice at the establishment of Independent Croatia, with which we hope we shall be able to entertain friendship and mutual faith throughout the future. ”

“ Croatian nationalists also maintain that official figures are systematically altered in the Hungarian interest.
Constitution and Government.—By the fundamental law of the 21st of December 1867 Austria-Hungary was divided, for purposes of internal government, into Cisleithania, or the Austrian empire, and Transleithania, or the kingdoms of Hungary and Croatia-Slavonia. In theory the viceroy, or ban of Croatia-Slavonia is nominated by the crown, and enjoys almost unlimited authority over local affairs ”

“ This Dalmatian coast and the territory contiguous to it to the east—Istria, Croatia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina—are not populated by Italians to any considerable extent. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of the people are Slavs, and it is this country which many people believe and hope will eventually become Jugoslavia. There is no doubt whatsoever that Italy will get all her unredeemed territory, but whether or not she will get much more than that on the continent of Europe is doubtful in the minds of many, including her well-wishers. ”

“ Croatia, where the movement in favour of what was called Illyrian nationality originated fifteen or sixteen years ago, and where it was fostered, curiously enough, by the patronage of two imperial governments—Croatia does not appear to have any reason to complain of Hungarian oppression. The Croats had their own provincial assembly or diet, which regulated the internal affairs of the province, their own county assemblies, their own Ban or governor, they elected their own county and municipal officers ”