Dalmatia (Croatian: Dalmacija; Latin: Dalmatia) is a region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, situated mostly in modern Croatia and spreading between the island of Rab in the northwest and the Gulf of Kotor (Montenegro) in the southeast. The hinterland, Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers wide in the south. Bosnia has a few kilometers of seashore in southern Dalmatia.

Croatian Dalmatia is currently composed of four counties, the primary cities of which are Zadar, Šibenik, Split and Dubrovnik. Other large cities in Dalmatia include Biograd, Kaštela, Sinj, Solin, Omiš, Knin, Metković, Makarska, Trogir, Ploče, Trilj and Imotski.

The largest Dalmatian islands include Dugi Otok, Ugljan, Pašman, Brač, Hvar, Korčula, Vis, Lastovo and Mljet. The largest Dalmatian mountains are Dinara, Mosor, Svilaja, Biokovo, Moseć and Kozjak. The rivers are Zrmanja, Krka, Cetina and Neretva.

Because of the way sea currents and winds flow, the sea water of the Adriatic is, according to Croatian tourist authorities, cleaner and warmer on the Croatian side than it is on the Italian side. The Dalmatian concordant coastline also includes an immense number of coves, islands and channels. This makes it an attractive place for nautical races and nautical tourism in general. There is also a large number of marinas.

Dalmatia also includes several national parks that are tourist attractions: Paklenica karst river, Kornati archipelago, Krka river rapids and Mljet island.

Definitions

The historical region of Dalmatia was much larger than the present-day Dalmatia, stretching from Istria to historical Albania. Dalmatia signified not only a geographical unit, but it was an entity based on common culture and settlement types, a common narrow eastern Adriatic coastal belt, Mediterranean climate, sclerophyllous vegetation of the Illyrian province, Adriatic carbonate platform, and karst geomorphology.

Among other things, the ecclesiastical primatical territory today continues to be larger because of the history: it includes part of modern Montenegro (another former republic of Yugoslavia), notably around Bar (Antivari), the (honorary) Roman Catholic primas of Dalmatia, but an exempt archbishopric without suffragans while the archbishoprics of Split (also a historical primas of Dalmatia) have provincial authority over all Croatian dioceses except the exempt archbishopric of Zadar.

The southernmost transitional part of historical Dalmatia, the Gulf of Kotor, is not part of present-day Croatian Dalmatia, but part of Montenegro. The regional coherent geographical unit of historical Dalmatia, the coastal region between Istria and the Gulf of Kotor, includes the Orjen mountain whose peak at 1894 m is the highest point, even if it is part of Montenegro. If we take present-day Dalmatia only as a geographical unit, the highest peak would be Dinara (1913 m), which is not a coastal mountain. On the other hand, Biokovo (Sv. Jure 1762 m) and Velebit (Vaganjski vrh 1758 m) are coastal Dinaric mountains but not as high as Orjen. In the tectonical sense, Orjen is the highest mountain of Austro-Hungarian province Dalmatia, while Biokovo is the highest mountain of the administrative unit of Split-Dalmatia county.

History

History of Dalmatia

Dalmatae

Dalmatia (Roman province)

Pagania

Republic of Ragusa

Republic of Poljica

Illyrian provinces

Kingdom of Dalmatia

Littoral Banovina

Main article: History of Dalmatia

Classical antiquity

Main article: Dalmatia (Roman province)

Dalmatia's name is probably derived from the name of an Illyrian tribe called the Dalmatae which lived in the area of the eastern Adriatic coast in the 1st millennium BCE. It was part of the Illyrian kingdom between the 4th century BCE until the Illyrian Wars in the 220s BCE and 168 BCE when the Roman Republic established its protectorate south of the river Neretva. The area north of the Neretva was slowly incorporated into Roman possessions until the province of Illyricum was formally established c. 32-27 BCE.

Dalmatia then became part of the Roman province of Illyricum. In 9 CE the Dalmatians raised the last in a series of revolts together with the Pannonians, but it was finally crushed, and in 10 CE, Illyricum was split into two provinces, Pannonia and Dalmatia. The province of Dalmatia spread inland to cover all of the Dinaric Alps and most of the eastern Adriatic coast. Dalmatia was later the birthplace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian.

The historian Theodore Mommsen wrote (in his The Provinces of the Roman Empire) that all Dalmatia was fully romanized and Latin-speaking by the fourth century. After the Western Roman Empire collapsed in 476, with the beginning of the Migration Period, the region was ruled by the Goths up to 535, when Justinian I added all Dalmatia to the Byzantine Empire.

Middle Ages

The Avars invasions of the sixth century devastated all Dalmatia, and the decimated romanized Dalmatians survived only in the mountains, as shepherds called morlachs. The main city of the Roman Dalmatia, Salona, never recovered from the destruction. Some of these romanized Dalmatians took refuge in the Dalmatian islands, where they founded new small cities (as was done in Italy with Venice) and maintained a Romance language, called Dalmatian language, until the Renaissance. With the barbarian Avars came tribes of Slavs, who settled in the depopulated areas of Dalmatia under the orders of the Avar kings.

Arrival of the Slavs

The Slavs started organizing their domain into increasingly powerful states. The Croats controlled the northern and central part of Dalmatia at the time and by the 10th century became an independent kingdom which persisted until the turn of the 12th century. The southern sections of inland Dalmatia were more fragmented, with the Duchies of Pagania (Narenta or the Principality of Narentines), Zahumlje (Hum), Travunia and Doclea/Zeta being occasionally prominent, especially in the later periods. The Serbian state of Rascia expanded at the expense of Travunia and Pagania in the 10th century. Zahumlje became a vassal of the new Croatian Kingdom in the early 10th century, while the Paganians joined the Croats in statehood in 1050. After the fall of Serbia in the second half of the 10th century, Duklja took over the leadership in the eastern part of the region creating a large kingdom in 1077. The Croatian Kingdom had its capital cities in Dalmatia: Biaći, Nin, Biograd, Šibenik (founded as a port of the Croatian kingdom, while Byzantium controlled Trogir and Split) Knin, Split, Omiš, Klis, Solin. In 1166-1168 the Serbian Grand Duke Stefan Nemanja took rule over the southern Dalmatian duchies.Croatian dukes and the Kingdom of Croatia ruled much of Dalmatia for extended periods from the ninth through to the eleventh centuries.

Rivalry between Venice, Byzantium, Croatia and Hungary

The Romance population of Dalmatia started to develop coastal cities like Dubrovnik and Zadar, where the maritime commerce promoted a rich and powerful development.

The Republic of Venice made several attempts from the tenth century to attain control of the Dalmatian islands and city-states, while Byzantium also preserved an influence on them. This Byzantine influence faded towards the end of the eleventh century, by which time the Kingdom of Hungary also expanded its influence southwards when Croatia yielded to Hungarian rule resulting in the Pacta conventa agreement.

The 13th, 14th and 15th centuries were marked by a rivalry between Venice and the Hungarian kingdom, as the Byzantine influence had fully faded.

In 1346, Dalmatia was struck by the Black Death. The economic situation was also poor, and the cities became more and more dependent on Venice. During this period, Dalmatia was briefly ruled by Croatian magnates Šubić, the first Bosnian kings , and contested by the Angevins and Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor in the early 15th century, but the end result of this conflict was that the Venetians took control of most of Dalmatia by 1420.

Venetian Dalmatia, Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik), and Ottoman conquests

The Republic of Venice controlled most of Dalmatia from 1420 to 1797, the most southern parts being called Albania Veneta. Venetian was the commercial lingua franca in the Mediterranean at that time, and it heavily influenced Dalmatian and to a lesser degree coastal Croatian and Albanian.

The southern city of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) became de facto independent in 1358 through the treaty of Zadar when Venice relinquished its suzerainty over it to Louis I of Hungary.

In 1481, it switched allegiance to the Ottoman Empire. This gave its tradesmen advantages such as access to the Black Sea, and the Republic of Ragusa was one of fiercest competitors to Venice's merchants in the 15th and 16th century.

The Republic of Venice was also one of the powers most hostile to the Ottoman Empire's expansion, and participated in many wars against it. As the Turks took control of the hinterland, many Christians took refuge in the coastal cities of Dalmatia.

After the Great Turkish War, more peaceful times made Dalmatia experience a period of certain economic and cultural growth in the 18th century, with the re-establishment of trade and exchange with the hinterland.

Modern Times

Napoleonic France

This period was abruptly interrupted with the fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797. Napoleon's troops stormed the region and ended the independence of the Republic of Ragusa as well, but saving it from occupation by the Russian Empire and Montenegro. In 1805, Napoleon created his Kingdom of Italy around the Adriatic Sea, annexing to it the former Venetian Dalmatia from Istria to Cattaro (Kotor). In 1809 he removed the Venetian Dalmatia from his Kingdom of Italy and created the Illyrian Provinces, which were annexed to France, and created his marshal Nicolas Soult duke of Dalmatia.

Napoleon's rule in Dalmatia was marked with many wars, which caused many rebellions. On the other side, French rule contributed a lot to the Italian and Croatian national awakenings (the first newspaper in Italian and Croatian was issued then, the Il Regio Dalmata-Kraglski Dalmatin in Zara). French rule brought a lot of improvements in infrastructure; many roads were built or reconstructed. Napoleon himself blamed Marechal Marmont, the governor of Dalmatia, that too much money was spent on Dalmatia.

Austria-Hungary

At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Dalmatia was granted as a province to the Emperor of Austria. It was officially known as the Kingdom of Dalmatia.

In 1848, the Croatian Assembly (Sabor) published the People's Requests, in which they requested among other things the abolition of serfdom and the unification of Dalmatia and Croatia. The Dubrovnik Municipality was the most outspoken of all the Dalmatian communes in its support for unification with Croatia. A letter was sent from Dubrovnik to Zagreb with pledges to work for this idea. In 1849, Dubrovnik continued to lead the Dalmatian cities in the struggle for unification. A large-scale campaign was launched in the Dubrovnik paper L'Avvenire (The Future) based on a clearly formulated programme: the federal system for the Habsburg territories, the inclusion of Dalmatia into Croatia and the Slavic brotherhood. The president of the council of Kingdom of Dalmatia was the politician Baron Biagio Ghetaldi.

In the same year, the first issue of the Dubrovnik almanac appeared, Flower of the National Literature (Dubrovnik, cvijet narodnog književstva), in which Petar Preradović published his noted poem "To Dubrovnik". This and other literary and journalistic texts, which continued to be published, contributed to the awakening of the national consciousness reflected in efforts to introduce the Croatian language into schools and offices, and to promote Croatian books. The Emperor Franz Joseph brought the so-called Imposed Constitution which prohibited the unification of Dalmatia and Croatia and also any further political activity with this end in view. The political struggle of Dubrovnik to be united with Croatia, which was intense throughout 1848 and 1849, did not succeed at that time.

In 1861 was the meeting of the first Dalmatian Assembly, with representatives from Dubrovnik. Representatives of Kotor (the Venetian "Cattaro") came to Dubrovnik to join the struggle for unification with Croatia. The citizens of Dubrovnik gave them a festive welcome, flying Croatian flags from the ramparts and exhibiting the slogan: Ragusa with Cattaro (Kotor). The Kotorans elected a delegation to go to Vienna; Dubrovnik nominated Niko Pucić. Niko Pucic went to Vienna to demand not only the unification of Dalmatia with Croatia, but also the unification of all Croatian territories under one common Assembly.

In 1883 was the death of politician Niko Pucić (born 1820). He was a member of the Croatian Assembly and champion of the unification of Dalmatia (particularly Dubrovnik) with Croatia. He was the editor of the review Ragusa and founder of the review Slovinac. In the same year died Ivan August Kaznacić (born 1817), publicist and promoter of the Illyrian cause. He edited the review Zora dalmatinska (Dalmatian Dawn) and founded the Dubrovnik review L'Avvenire.

In 1893, the minister of the city, the Baron Francesco Ghetaldi-Gondola, opened the monument for Ivan Gundulić in Piazza Gundulic (Gondola).

At the same time, part of the population of the coastal cities identified themselves with Italian ethnicity and gave rise to irredentistic movements, especially around Zadar, called Zara in Italian.

After 1918

In the First World War, the Austrian Empire disintegrated, and Dalmatia was again split between the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) which controlled most of it, and the Kingdom of Italy which held small portions of northern Dalmatia around Zadar and the islands of Cres, Lošinj and Lastovo.

After 1918, nearly all the Italian population of Dalmatia incorporated into Yugoslavia took refuge in Zadar. In 1922, the Dalmatian region of Yugoslavia was divided into two provinces, the District of the City of Split (Splitska oblast), with capital in Split, and the District of the City of Dubrovnik (Dubrovačka oblast), with capital in Dubrovnik.

In 1929, the Maritime Banovina (Primorska Banovina), a province of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, was formed. Its capital was Split, and it included most of Dalmatia and parts of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina. Southern parts of Dalmatia were in Zeta Banovina, from the Gulf of Kotor to Pelješac peninsula including Dubrovnik.

In 1939, the Maritime Banovina was joined with Sava Banovina (and with smaller parts of other banovina's) to form a new province named the Banovina of Croatia. In 1939, ethnic Croatian areas of the Zeta Banovina from the Gulf of Kotor to Pelješac including Dubrovnik were merged with a new Banovina of Croatia.

During World War II, in 1941, Nazi Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria occupied Yugoslavia, redrawing their borders. A new Nazi puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), was formed, and the Kingdom of Italy was assigned some parts of the Dalmatian coast, notably around Zadar and Split, as well as many islands. The remaining parts of Dalmatia became part of the NDH. Many Croats moved away from the Italian Governatorato di Dalmazia (as the Italian Dalmatia was called) and took refuge in the Fascist state of Croatia, which became the fighting ground for a guerrilla war between the Axis and the Partisans.

After the surrender of Italy in September 1943, the Italian population concentrated in Zara was harassed for over a year by allied bombardments carried out at the request of Tito (Zara is nicknamed "The Italian Dresden") and finally was forced to escape en masse from Tito's partisans. There were more than 20,000 Italians in Zara before World War II, but only 80 Italians remained in this city after 1946.

After the defeat of Italy and NDH, Dalmatia was restored to Croatia, more precisely, to the People's Republic of Croatia, part of the Second Yugoslavia (then called the Federative People's Republic of Yugoslavia).

Dalmatia was divided between three federal republics of Yugoslavia - almost all of the territory went to Croatia, leaving the Gulf of Kotor to Montenegro and a small strip of coast at Neum to Bosnia and Herzegovina. When Yugoslavia dissolved in 1991, the republican borders became country borders as they are now.

Postage stamps

Italy issued special postage stamps for the part of northern Dalmatia it had occupied during World War I, necessitated by the locals' use of Austrian currency. The stamps were produced as surcharges of Italian stamps; the first appeared 1 May 1919, and consisted of the Italian one-lira overprinted "una / corona".

5c and 10c overprints were issued in 1921, reading "5[10] / centesimi / di corona", followed by an additional five values in 1922. Similar overprints were made for special delivery and postage due stamps.

Soon after, the annexed territories switched to Italian currency and stamps. As a result, usage was uncommon and validly-used stamps are today worth about 50-100% more than unused. They are easily confused with the Italian issues used in occupied Austria; the Dalmatian overprints are distinguished by their use of a sans serif typeface.

Gallery

Narodni Trg (Pjaca) in Split	Split Harbour	Šibenik	Panoramic view of Zadar
Roman Forum in Zadar	Summer on the street in Krapanj	Panoramic view of Hvar	Panoramic view of Bol

See also

• Kingdom of Dalmatia
• Dalmatian language
• Dalmatian Italians
• Illyria
• Morlachs

External links