Austrian and French Supremacy: 1718-1814.—Austrian influence predominated throughout Croatia-Slavonia during most of the 18th century, although Slavonia was constitutionally regarded as belonging to Hungary. Despite Magyar protests the misleading name “Croatia” was popularly and even in official documents applied to the whole country, including the purely Slavonian provinces of Virovitica, Požega and Syrmia. From 1767 to 1777 Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia were collectively named Illyria, and governed from Vienna, but each of these divisions was subsequently declared a separate kingdom, with a separate administration, while the military frontier remained under military rule. 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. These territories received the name of the Illyrian Provinces, and remained under French rule until 1813. All the Croats capable of service were enrolled under the French flag; their country was divided for administrative purposes into Croatie civile and Croatie militaire. In 1814 Dalmatia was incorporated in Austria, while Istria, Carinthia, Carniola, Görz and Gradisca became the Illyrian kingdom of Austria, and retained their united government until 1849. Croatia and Slavonia were declared appanages of the Hungarian crown—partes adnexae, or subject provinces, according to the Magyars; regna socia, or allied kingdoms, according to their own view. Each phrase afterwards became the watchword of a political party: neither is accurate. 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. Ljudevit Gaj, the leading Croatian publicist, strongly supported the movement. The elections of 1842 were marked by a series of sanguinary conflicts between Illyrists and Magyarists, but not until 1848 were the Illyrists returned to office. One of their leaders, Baron Josef Jellachich, was appointed ban in 1848. He strongly advocated the union of Croatia with Carinthia, Carniola and Styria, but found his policy thwarted as much by the apathy of the Slovenes as by the hostility of the Magyars. A Croatian deputation was received at Innsbruck by Ferdinand V., but before its arrival the Hungarians had obtained a royal manifesto hostile to Illyrism. But failure only increased the agitation among the southern Slavs; all attempts at mediation proved unsuccessful, and on the 31st of August the Croats claimed to have convinced the king that justice was on their side. On the 11th of September the advance-guard of their army crossed the Drave under the command of Jellachich. On the 29th they were driven back from Pákozd by the Hungarians, and retired towards Vienna; they subsequently aided the Austrian army against the Hungarian revolutionaries (see [Jellachich, Josef], and [Hungary]: History). The constitution of 1849 proclaimed Croatia and Slavonia separated from Hungary and united as a single Austrian crownland, to which was annexed the Croatian littoral, including Fiume. Austrian supremacy lasted until 1867; no ban was appointed, and owing to the suspension of local autonomy from 1850 to 1860 this period is known as “the ten years of reaction.” It was ended by the celebrated “October Diploma” of the 20th of October 1860, which promised the restoration of constitutional liberty. But the so-called “Constitution of February” (21st February 1861) placed all practical power in the hands of an executive controlled by the government at Vienna. The newly elected diet was soon dissolved for its advocacy of a great South Slavonic confederation under imperial rule, and no other was elected until 1865.
From 1865 to 1867 Strossmayer and the nationalists endeavoured to secure the formation of a subordinate Austrian kingdom comprising Dalmatia, Croatia-Slavonia and the islands of the Quarnero. The Magyars had, however, resolved to subject Croatia-Slavonia to the crown of St Stephen, and in 1867 had secured control of the finances and electoral machinery. The office of ban was revived, and its holder, Baron Levin Rauch, was an ardent Magyarist. At the elections of December 1867 a majority of Hungarian partisans was easily obtained, and on the 29th of January the diet passed a resolution in favour of reunion with Hungary. The whole Opposition refused to take any part in the proceedings, as a protest against the alleged illegality of the elections; but by the 25th of June the Croatian commissioners and the Hungarian government had framed a new constitution, which was ratified in September. Besides substituting Hungarian for Austrian sovereignty, it provided that the diet and the ban should control local affairs, subject to the Croatian minister in the Hungarian cabinet, and that Croatia-Slavonia should pay 55% of its revenue to Hungary for mutual and imperial expenses, but should be represented in the Hungarian parliament by thirty-six delegates, and should continue to use Serbo-Croatian as the official language. Hungary guaranteed that the 45% retained by the territorial government should be not less than two and a half million gulden (£250,000). In May 1870 Fiume was annexed to Hungary, but in 1873 the Croats received as compensation an increase of their guaranteed revenue to £350,000, an addition of seven to the number of their representatives at Budapest, and a promise that the military frontier should be incorporated in the existing civil provinces. In 1877 a convention with Hungary regulated the control of public estates in the military frontier, and on the 15th of July 1881 the frontier, including the district of Sichelburg claimed by Carniola, was handed over to the local administration.
Meanwhile the events of 1875-1878 in the Balkans, culminating in the Austrian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, revived the agitation for a “Great Croatia.” A party separate from the regular Opposition, and known as the “Party of the Right,” was formed to oppose the Magyarists. Its activity resulted in the riots of 1883, which were with difficulty quelled; in 1885 its leader, N. Starčević, was condemned to imprisonment for the violence of his speeches against the ban, Count Khuen-Héderváry. In 1888 the moderate Opposition also lost its leader, Bishop Strossmayer, who was censured by the king on account of his famous Panslavist telegram to the Russian Church (see [Strossmayer]). In 1889 the financial agreement with Hungary was revised and the contribution of Croatia-Slavonia to the expenses shared with Hungary or common to the whole of the Dual Monarchy was raised by 1%. This added burden combined with bad harvests, a fall in the revenue and a deficit in the budget to heighten popular discontent. Count Khuen-Héderváry was responsible for several administrative improvements, but the prosperity of the country declined from year to year. The government was accused of illegal interference with the elections, with the use of the Hungarian arms and language in official documents, and with undue harshness in the censorship of the press. In May 1903 there were outbreaks of rioting in Agram, Sissek and other towns, besides serious agrarian disturbances directed against the Magyarist landowners; in a debate in the Reichsrath (18th May) an Austrian deputy named Bianchini unsuccessfully attempted to induce the imperial government to intervene. At the end of June Count Khuen-Héderváry was made Hungarian prime minister; Count T. Pejačević succeeded him as ban, and restored quiet by promising freedom of assembly and greater liberty of the press. Since 1898 the financial agreement had only been renewed from year to year. But the estimates for 1904 revealed another heavy deficit; and this was only paid by Hungary on condition that the agreement should be renewed until the 31st of December 1913, and the contribution of 56% maintained.
The constitutional crisis of 1905 in Hungary stimulated the nationalist agitation. A congress of Croatian and Dalmatian deputies met at Spalato to advocate Serbo-Croatian unity, and in 1906 the municipality of Agram endeavoured to petition the king in favour of union with Bosnia and Herzegovina. This propaganda was severely discouraged. Baron Rauch, appointed ban in 1908, refused to summon the diet, in which he could not command a single vote, and much excitement was caused in 1909 by the trial of 57 nationalist leaders for high treason. The policy of the nationalists, who now aimed at the political union, under the king-emperor, of all Serbo-Croats in Austria-Hungary—upwards of 4,500,000—was less visionary than the older Illyrism, and less aggressively Panslavist. It no longer sought to include Carinthia, Carniola and Styria in the proposed “Great Croatia.” It was opposed by Austria as tending to create a new and formidable Slavonic nation within the Dual Monarchy, and by Hungary as a menace to Magyar predominance in Transleithania.
Language and Literature.
For the place of the Croatian dialects among Slavonic languages generally, see [Slavs]. The Croatian dialects, like the Servian, have gradually developed from the Old Slavonic, which survives in medieval liturgies and biblical or apocryphal writings. The course of this development was similar in both cases, except that the Croats, owing to their dependence on Austria-Hungary, were not so deeply influenced as the Serbs by Byzantine culture in the middle ages, and by Russian linguistic forms and Russian ideas in modern times. The Orthodox Serbs, moreover, use a modified form of the Cyrillic alphabet, while the Roman Catholic Croats use Latin characters, except in a few liturgical books which are written in the ancient Glagolitic script. As the literary language of both nations is now practically the same, and is, indeed, commonly known as “Serbo-Croatian,” the reader may be referred to the article [Servia]: Language and Literature, for an account of its history, of its chief literary monuments up to the 19th century and inclusive of Dalmatian literature, and of the principal differences between the dialects spoken in Servia and Croatia-Slavonia.
The three most important Croatian dialects are known as the Čakavci, Čakavština or, in Servian, Chakavski, spoken along the Adriatic littoral; the Štokavci (Štokavština, Shtokavski), spoken in Servia and elsewhere in the north-west of the Balkan Peninsula; and the Kajkavci (Kajkavština, Kaykavski), spoken by the partly Slovene population of the districts of Agram, Warasdin and Kreuz. This classification is based on the form, varying in different localities, of the pronoun ča, što, or kaj, meaning “what.”
The Cakavci literature includes most of the works of the Dalmatian writers of the 15th and 16th centuries—the golden age of Serbo-Croatian literature. Its history is indissolubly interwoven with that of the Štokavci, which ultimately superseded it, and became the literary language of all the Serbo-Croats, as it had long been the language of the best national ballads and legends.
Kajkavci had from about 1550 to 1830 a distinctive literature, consisting of chronicles and histories, poems of a religious or educational character, fables and moral tales. These writings possess more philological interest than literary merit, and are hardly known outside Croatia-Slavonia and the Slovene districts of Austria.