Dalmatia
Dalmatia is a historical region located in modern-day Croatia and Montenegro, on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea. It is a narrow land belt stretching from the island of Rab in the north to the Bay of Kotor in the south. The Dalmatian Hinterland ranges in width from 50 kilometres in the north, to just a few kilometres in the south; it is mostly covered by the rugged Dinaric Alps. Seventy-nine islands run parallel to the coast, the largest being Brač, Pag, and Hvar. The largest city is Split, followed by Zadar, Šibenik, and Dubrovnik.
The name of the region stems from an Illyrian tribe called the Dalmatae, who lived in the area in classical antiquity. With the expansion of Rome, the province of Illyricum was established, and in the early 1st century it was reorganised into the province of Dalmatia, which stretched over a vast territory. Consequently, a Romance culture emerged, and the indigenous Illyrian population became romanised. Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Migration Period, many different peoples passed through Dalmatia. While the local Illyro-Romans organized themselves around their city-states under Byzantine protection, the Croats arrived in the early 7th century and established the Duchy of Croatia, later becoming vassals of the Franks. With the Christianisation of the Croats, Slavic and Illyro-Roman elements began to intermingle in both language and culture. The Kingdom of Croatia was founded in 925, and it later incorporated the Theme of Dalmatia.
After Croatia entered into a personal union with Hungary in 1102, Dalmatian cities were frequently conquered or shifted their allegiances during the Middle Ages. The Republic of Venice controlled parts of Dalmatia from 1000 to 1358 and from 1420 to 1797, while the Republic of Ragusa existed from 1358 to 1808. The Ottoman Empire conquered much of the Croatian-Hungarian kingdom between the late 15th and late 17th century, reducing the territory that had been considered Dalmatia until then. Venice subsequently reconquered the Dalmatian Hinterland, shaping the borders of what is today considered Dalmatia. These borders were further consolidated during Napoleon’s Illyrian Provinces and the Austrian 19th-century Kingdom of Dalmatia. At the end of World War I in 1918, as a part of unified Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, Dalmatia became part of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. Its official name use was abolished in 1922, until a resurgence as Split-Dalmatia County in 1993 following Croatia’s independence.
Modern Dalmatia has inherited a layered historical and linguistic heritage, which has in turn shaped its distinct cultural identity, evident in the region’s music, cuisine, traditions and lifestyle. The Shtokavian dialect of the Croatian language is mainly spoken on the mainland and in the hinterland, while Chakavian dialect of Croatian language is spoken on the islands. While the number of native Italian and Venetian speakers has fallen over time, especially after the Istrian-Dalmatian exodus, these languages have left a deep and lasting impact on the vocabulary and prosody of Chakavian dialect.
Definition
In antiquity, the Roman province of Dalmatia was much larger than the present-day region of Dalmatia, stretching from Istria in the north to modern-day Albania in the south. Dalmatia signified not only a geographical unit, but was an entity based on common culture and settlement types, an eastern Adriatic coastal belt with a Mediterranean climate, sclerophyllous vegetation of the Illyrian province, and a carbonate platform.Modern area
Today, Dalmatia is a historical region only, not formally instituted in Croatian law. Its exact extent is therefore uncertain and subject to public perception. According to Lena Mirošević and Josip Faričić of the University of Zadar:...the modern perception of Dalmatia is mainly based on the territorial extent of the Austrian Kingdom of Dalmatia, with the exception of Rab, which is geographically related to the Kvarner area and functionally to the Littoral–Gorski Kotar area, and with the exception of the Bay of Kotor, which was annexed to another state after World War I. Simultaneously, the southern part of Lika and upper Pounje, which were not part of Austrian Dalmatia, became part of Zadar County. From the present-day administrative and territorial point of view, Dalmatia comprises the four Croatian littoral counties with seats in Zadar, Šibenik, Split, and Dubrovnik.
"Dalmatia" is therefore generally perceived to extend approximately to the borders of the Austrian-held Kingdom of Dalmatia, which inherited these borders from the preceding border treaties between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire, notably defined by the 'Linea Mocenigo' in the Treaty of Passarowitz. However, due to territorial and administrative changes over the past century, the perception can be seen to have altered somewhat with regard to certain areas, and sources conflict as to their being part of the region in modern times:
- The Bay of Kotor area in Montenegro. With the subdivision of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia into oblasts in 1922, the whole of the Bay of Kotor from Sutorina to Sutomore was granted to the Zeta Oblast, so that the border of Dalmatia was formed at that point by the southern border of the former Republic of Ragusa. The Encyclopædia Britannica defines Dalmatia as extending "to the narrows of Kotor". Other sources, however, such as the Treccani encyclopedia and the Rough Guide to Croatia still include the Bay as being part of the region.
- The island of Rab, along with the small islands of Sveti Grgur and Goli Otok, were a part of the Kingdom of Dalmatia and are historically and culturally related to the region, but are today associated more with the Croatian Littoral, due to geographical vicinity and administrative expediency.
- Gračac municipality and northern Pag. A number of sources express the view that "from the modern-day administrative point of view", the extent of Dalmatia equates to the four southernmost counties of Croatia: Zadar, Šibenik-Knin, Split-Dalmatia, and Dubrovnik-Neretva. This definition does not include the Bay of Kotor, or the islands of Rab, Sveti Grgur, and Goli Otok. It also excludes the northern part of the island of Pag, which is part of the Lika-Senj County. However, it includes the Gračac municipality in Zadar County, which was not a part of the Kingdom of Dalmatia and is not traditionally associated with the region.
Etymology
The form of the regional name Dalmatia and the respective tribal name Dalmatae are later variants as was already noted by Appian. His contemporary grammarian Velius Longus highlights in his treatise about orthography that the correct form of Dalmatia is Delmatia, and notes that Marcus Terentius Varro who lived about two centuries prior to Appian and Velius Longius, used the form Delmatia as it corresponded to the chief settlement of the tribe, Delminium. The toponym Duvno is a derivation from Delminium in Croatian via an intermediate form *Delminio in late antiquity. Its Latin form Dalmatia gave rise to its English name. In the Venetian language, once dominant in the area, it is spelled Dalmàssia, and in modern Italian Dalmazia. The modern Croatian spelling is Dalmacija, and the modern Serbian Cyrillic spelling is Далмација.
History
Antiquity
Dalmatia's name is derived from the name of an Illyrian tribe called the Dalmatae who lived in the area of the eastern Adriatic coast in the 1st millennium BC. It was part of the Illyrian kingdom between the 4th century BC and the Illyrian Wars when the Roman Republic established its protectorate south of the river Neretva. The name "Dalmatia" was in use probably from the second half of the 2nd century BC and certainly from the first half of the 1st century BC, defining a coastal area of the eastern Adriatic between the Krka and Neretva rivers. It was slowly incorporated into Roman possessions until the Roman province of Illyricum was formally established around 32–27 BC. In 9 AD, the Dalmatians raised the last in a series of revolts together with the Pannonians, but it was finally crushed and, in 10 AD, Illyricum was split into two provinces, Pannonia and Dalmatia, which spread into larger area inland to cover all of the Dinaric Alps and most of the eastern Adriatic coast.The historian Theodor Mommsen wrote in his book, The Provinces of the Roman Empire, that all Dalmatia was fully romanized by the 4th century AD. However, analysis of archaeological material from that period has shown that the process of Romanization was rather selective. While urban centers, both coastal and inland, were almost completely romanized, the situation in the countryside was completely different. Despite the Illyrians being subject to a strong process of acculturation, they continued to speak their native language, worship their own gods and traditions, and follow their own social-political tribal organization which was adapted to Roman administration and political structure only in some necessities.
The fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the beginning of the Migration Period, left the region subject to Gothic rulers Odoacer and Theodoric the Great. They ruled Dalmatia from 480 to 535 AD, when it was restored to the Eastern Roman Empire by Justinian I.