Rental Cars Croatia - History of Croatia
The first inhabitants of Croatia were the Illyrians in the 6th C BC. Later the Romans arrived and colonized the area converting it to Roman Catholicism in 229 BC. With the collapse of the Roman Empire, Slavic tribes migrated from Poland into Croatia and the Croatian tribes occupied former Roman provinces of Dalmatian Croatia and Pannonian Croatia. In ad 925 the two provinces united into a single kingdom. In 1089 inner Croatia came under control of Hungary followed by the Habsburg empire for the next few centuries. In 1529 the Ottoman Turks invaded and divided the territory with the Habsburgs – with the border running along religious lines (the present day border with Bosnia), the ramifications of which were sorely felt in the early 1990s when the Balkans imploded.
In the early 15th C, the territories of Dalmatia, Istria and Dubrovnik were taken by Venice until the 17th C when they were briefly controlled by France. In the late 18th C Croatia came under Hungarian control. However, during WWI the Austro-Hungarian Empire was defeated and a new kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was created which was named Yugoslavia in 1929.
Conflicts arose which were exploited by Germany in their invasion in 1941. The Independent state of Croatia was set up and ruled by the fascist Ustasa movement. The state adopted a policy of genocide and their ‘ethnic cleansing’ led to 350,000 ethnic Serbs, Jews and Roma being murdered. A communist movement arose to overthrow the Ustasa, taking over in 1945. By the end of the war a million people had died in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. This has tainted Croatian history ever since.
After the war Croatia became a republic of the Yugoslav Federation led by marshall Tito. Tito continuously crushed nationalism with the aid of the Yugoslav National Army, however after his death in 1980 the Yugoslav regime declined and a political system was instituted with a collective presidency.
Yugoslavia disintegrated in the 1990s and Franjo Tudjman's Croatian Democratic Union won the elections. A new constitution was implemented which changed the status of the Serb minorities who fought to gain autonomy with Croatia. In June 1991 Croatia declared its independence from the Federation, and the Serbian Krajina declared its independence from Croatia. The Yugoslav army entered Croatia in support of the minority Serbs. This resulted in a quarter of Croatia falling to Serb militias and the federal army. The federal army withdrew from Croatia and in May 1992 and Croatia was admitted to the UN after amending its constitution to protect minority groups and human rights. By this time a large portion of Croatia was under Serb control.
Serbs maintained power in Krajina area which sparked an attack by Croatia in 1993. Krajina then declared itself a republic, reducing its Croat population. Croation forces later invaded the area and the 15 000 Serbs fled. The Dayton Accord, signed in 1995, brought some stability to the war ridden country. Tudjman’s authoritarian government alienated the country with his dismissive attitude towards the International War Crimes Tribunal reducing chances of them joining the EU. However, with Tudjman’s death in 1999 his Democratic Union was overthrown and Stipe Mesic was elected president. Since then Croatia’s economy has improved, they have developed a more positive attitude towards the War Crimes Tribunal and pledged regional co-operation with Bosnia and Yugoslavia. They have membership in the World Trade Organisation, membership in a NATO security organization and are set to become EU members.
