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; in practice the consent of the crown is purely formal, and the ban is appointed by the Hungarian premier, who can dismiss him at any moment. The provincial government is subject to the ban, and comprises three ministries—the interior, justice, and religion and education,—for whose working the ban is responsible to the Hungarian premier, and to the national assembly of Croatia-Slavonia (Narodna Skupština). This body consists of a single chamber, composed partly of elected deputies, partly of privileged members, whose numbers cannot exceed half those of the deputies. There are 69 constituencies, besides the 21 royal free cities which also return deputies. Electors must belong to certain professions or pay a small tax. The privileged members are the heads of the nobility, with the highest ecclesiastics and officials. As a rule, they represent the “Magyarist” section of society, which sympathizes with Hungarian policy. The chamber deals with religion, education, justice and certain strictly provincial affairs, but even within this limited sphere all its important enactments must be countersigned by the minister for Croatia-Slavonia, a member, without portfolio, of the Hungarian cabinet. At the polls, all votes are given orally, a system which facilitates corruption; the officials who control the elections depend for their livelihood on the ban, usually a Magyarist; and thus, even apart from the privileged members, a majority favourable to Hungary can usually be secured. The constitutional relations between Hungary and Croatia-Slavonia are regulated by the agreement, or nagoda, of 1868. This instrument determines the functions of the ban; the control of common interests, such as railways, posts, telegraphs, telephones, commerce, industry, agriculture or forests; and the choice of delegates by the chamber, to sit in the Hungarian parliament. See also below, under History.
For administrative purposes Croatia-Slavonia is divided into 8 rural counties, already enumerated; besides the 4 urban counties, or municipalities of Agram, Semlin, Warasdin and Esseg. These are subdivided into rural and urban communes, Local administration. each with its representative council. The affairs of each rural county are managed by an assembly chosen for 6 years, which comprises not only elected members, but delegates from all the cities except Agram and Esseg, with certain high ecclesiastics and officials.
The highest judicial authority is the supreme court or Septemviral Table, which sits at Agram, and ranks above the royal Justice. courts of appeal, the county courts of first instance, and the district courts or magistracies.
Fully four-fifths of the population belong to the Roman Catholic Church, which has an archbishop at Agram and bishops at Zengg and Djakovo. There are about 12,000 Greek Catholics, with a bishop at Kreuz (Križevac). The Serb congregations, Religion. who had previously been classed as Orthodox Greek, were officially recognized as members of the Orthodox Church of Servia after 1883. Their episcopal sees of Karlowitz and Pakrac depend upon the metropolitanate of Belgrade; but from 1830 to 1838 Karlowitz was itself the headquarters of the Servian Church.
During the 19th century strenuous efforts to better the state of education were made by Bishop Strossmayer (1815-1905) and other reformers; but, although some success was achieved, only one-third Education. of the population could read and write in 1900. Foremost among the educational institutions is the South Slavonic Academy of Sciences and Arts (Jugoslavenska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti), founded by Strossmayer and others in 1867, as an improvement on a learned society which had existed since 1836. The academy is the headquarters of the nationalist propaganda. Its numerous publications, though sometimes biased by political passion, throw much light on Serbo-Croatian history, law, philology and kindred topics. Agram University, founded in 1874, possesses three faculties—theology, philosophy and law; but, unlike other Hungarian universities, it lacks a faculty of medicine. Its average number of students varies from 300 to 350. In 1900 there were also 19 real-gymnasia, teaching science, art and modern languages, as well as classics and mathematics; 1400 elementary schools; and a few special institutions, such as the naval and military academies of Fiume, ecclesiastical seminaries and commercial colleges. In almost every case the language of instruction is Serbo-Croatian. The development of higher education, without a corresponding advance of technical education, has created an intellectual class, comprising many men of letters, and several painters, musicians and sculptors, though none of great eminence; it also tends to produce many aspirants to official or professional careers, who find employment difficult to obtain. 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). At the time of their conquest by the Romans (35 B.C.) both these divisions were occupied by the Pannonians, who in Slavonia had displaced an older population, the Scordisci; and both were included in the Roman province of Pannonia Inferior, although Slavonia had the distinctive name of Pannonia Savia (see [Pannonia]). When the Roman dominions were broken up in A.D. 395, Croatia-Slavonia remained part of the Western empire. The Ostrogoths overran it in 489; in 535 it was annexed by Justinian; in 568 it was conquered by the Avars. These were in turn expelled from Croatia by the Croats, a Slavonic people from the western Carpathians, who, according to some authorities, had occupied the territories of the Marcomanni in Bohemia, and been driven thence in the 6th century by the Czechs. The main body of the Croats, whose tribal and racial names respectively are perpetuated in the names of Croatia and Slavonia, entered Croatia between 634 and 638, and were encouraged by the emperor Heraclius to attack the Avars. Smaller bodies had led the way southwards since 548. The Croats formed the western division of the great migratory horde of Serbo-Croats which colonized the lands between Bulgaria and the Adriatic. Contemporary chroniclers called them Chrobati, Belochrobati (“White Croats”), Chrovati, Horvati, or by some similar Latin or Byzantine variant of the Slavonic Khrvaty. The Croats occupied most of the region now known as Croatia-Slavonia, Dalmatia, and north-western Bosnia, displacing or absorbing the earlier inhabitants everywhere except along the Dalmatian littoral, where the Italian city-states usually maintained their independence, and in certain districts of Slavonia, where, out of a mixed population of Slavonic immigrants, Avars and Pannonians, the Slavs, and especially the Serbo-Croats, gradually became predominant. The Croats brought with them their primitive tribal institutions, organized on a basis partly military, partly patriarchal, and identical with the Zhupanates of the Serbs (see [Servia]); agriculture, war and hunting were their chief pursuits. Although they at first acknowledged no alien sovereign, they passed gradually under Italian influence in the extreme west, and under Byzantine influence in the south and south-east. In 806 the northern and north-eastern districts were added to the empire of the Franks, and thus won for the Western Church. Frankish predominance was long commemorated by the name Francochorion, given by the Byzantines to Syrmia; it is still commemorated by the name Fruška Gora, “Mountains of the Franks,” in that province.
The Croatian Kingdom: c. 910-1091.—In 877 the Croats were temporarily subdued by the Byzantine emperor, but after successive insurrections which tended to centralize their loosely knit tribal organization, and to place all power in the hands of a military chief, they regained their independence and founded a national kingdom about 910. It is probable that Tomislav or Timislav, who had led their armies to victory, assumed the title of king in that year. Some authorities, however, state that Tomislav only bore the title of veliki župan or “paramount chief,” and was only one in a long line of princes which can be traced without interruption back to 818. On this view, Držislav (c. 978-1000) was the first king properly so called. But Tomislav, whatever his official style, was certainly the first of a series of independent national rulers which lasted for nearly two centuries. The records of this period, regarded by many Croats as the golden age of their country, are often scanty, and its chronology is still unsettled. Little is known of Trpimir, who preceded Držislav, or of Stephen I. (1035-1058), but a few of the kings gained a more lasting fame by their success in war and diplomacy. Among these were Krešimir I. (c. 940—946), his successor Miroslav, and especially Krešimir II., surnamed the Great (c. 1000-1035), who harried the Bulgarians, at that time a powerful nation, and conquered a large part of Dalmatia, including some of the Italian cities. Already, under his predecessors, the Croats had built a fleet, which they used first for piracy and afterwards for trade. Their skill in maritime affairs, exemplified first in the 9th century by the pagan corsairs of the Narenta (see [Dalmatia]: History), and later by the numerous Dalmatian and Croatian sailors who served in the navies of Venice and Austria, is remarkable in a Slavonic people, and one which had so recently migrated from central Europe. At the end of the 10th century they even for a short period exacted tribute from Venice, but their power was temporarily destroyed in 1000, when the Venetians captured and sacked Biograd or Belgrade, the Italian Zaravecchia. This Dalmatian port was not only the Croatian arsenal, but the seat of the kings, who here sought to enhance their dignity by borrowing the grandiose titles and elaborate procedure of the Byzantine court. Krešimir II. and Krešimir Peter (c. 1058-1073), the hero of many national legends and lays, restored the naval power of the Croats. After the death of Krešimir Peter, Slavic or Slaviža reigned until 1076, when he was succeeded by Zvonimir (Svinimir or Zvoinimir) Demetrius. Zvonimir was crowned by the legate of Pope Gregory VII, and appears to have been regarded as a vassal of the papacy. Both he and Stephen II., a nephew of Krešimir II., died in 1089.
Hungarian Supremacy: 1091-c. 1526.—Amid the strife of rival claimants to the throne, Helena, the widow of Stephen, appealed for aid to her brother Ladislaus I., king of Hungary. Ladislaus took possession of the country in 1091. He founded the bishopric of Agram and introduced Hungarian law. His death in 1095 was the signal for a nationalist insurrection, but after two years the rebels were crushed by his successor Coloman. This monarch reorganized the administration on a system which has been maintained, with modifications in detail, by almost all subsequent rulers. He respected the existing institutions of the conquered territory so far as to leave its autonomy in domestic affairs intact; but delegated his own sovereignty, and especially the control of foreign affairs and war, to a governor known as the ban (q.v.). This office was sometimes held by princes of the royal house, often by Croatian nobles. Coloman also extended his authority over Dalmatia and the islands of the Quarnero, but the best modern authorities reject the tradition that in 1102 he was crowned king of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia. In 1127 Syrmia, which had been annexed to Bulgaria from about 700 to 1018, and to the Eastern empire from 1019, was united to Slavonia. The Hungarian government left much liberty to the Croatian nobles, a turbulent and fanatical class, ever ready for civil war, rebellion or a campaign against the Bosnian heretics. Their most powerful leaders were the counts of Zrin and Bribir (or Brebir), whose surname was Šubić. This family played an important part in local politics from the 13th century to 1670, when Peter Šubić was its last member to hold the office of ban. Paul Šubić (d. 1312) and Mladen Šubić (d. 1322) even for a short period united Croatia, Slavonia, Bosnia and part of Dalmatia under their own rule. From 1322 to 1326 the Croatian nobles successfully withstood the armies of Hungary and Bosnia; from 1337 to 1340, instigated by the Vatican, they carried on a crusade against the Bosnian Bogomils; and in the Krajina (Turkish Croatia) hostilities were resumed at intervals until the Turkish conquest.
The Turkish Occupation: c. 1526-1718.—Here, as elsewhere, the Ottoman invasion was facilitated by the feuds of the Christian sects. When King Matthias Corvinus undertook to defend Slavonia in 1490 it was too late; Matthias lost Syrmia and died in the same year. His successor Ladislaus of Poland (1490-1516) added Slavonia to the kingdoms named in the royal title, which now included the words “King of Dalmatia and Croatia and Slavonia” (Rex Dalmatiae et Croatiae et Slavoniae). But he failed to repel the Turks, who in 1526 destroyed the power of Hungary at the battle of Mohács. In 1527 the Croats were compelled to swear allegiance to Ferdinand I. of Austria, who had been elected king of Hungary. Ferdinand founded the generalcy of Karlstadt and thus laid the foundation of the military frontier. The provinces of Agram, Warasdin and Kreutz, previously included in Slavonia, were added to Croatia, to counterbalance the loss of territory in the Krajina. Throughout the century the Turks continued to extend their conquests until, in 1606, the emperor retained only western Croatia, with the cities of Agram, Karlstadt, Warasdin and Zengg. During the same period the doctrines of the Reformation had spread among the Croats; but they were forcibly suppressed in 1607-1610. The military occupation by the Turks left little permanent impression; colonization was never attempted; and the continuous wars by which the victors strove to secure or enlarge their dominions north of the Save left no time for the introduction of Moslem religion or civilization among the vanquished. Thus in the reconquest of Croatia-Slavonia there was none of the local opposition which afterwards hindered the Austrian occupation of Bosnia. The successes of Prince Eugene in 1697 led two years later to the peace of Carlowitz, by which the Turks ceded the greater part of Slavonia and Hungary to Austria; and the remainder was surrendered in 1718 by the treaty of Passarowitz. Only Turkish Croatia henceforth remained part of the Ottoman empire.