Dalmatia

Dalmatia is a territory on the Adriatic Sea and today a province of Croatia stretching roughly from Istria and Carniola in the north to Montenegro in the south. Mountain ranges separate its coastline from the hinterlands. Most of Dalmatia, with the exception of the town of Ragusa (today: Dubrovnik) had been ruled by the Republic of Venice until 1797. From 1809-1813 Napoleon created it his French province of 'Illyria', aping the ancient Roman name. The Congress of Vienna awarded Dalmatia to the Austrian Empire (from 1867 Austria-Hungary) who held it until November 1918.

Modern history

In 1818 Dalmatia was a poor province which had a population of 296,800, most of whom spoke a Slavic language (later codified as Croatian and Serbian) and a small urban minority (under 5 percent) who spoke and Italian dialect. Of the Slav-speaking population 20 percent practiced an eastern Orthodox Christian rite, while the rest were Roman Catholics. There were also some 400 Jews living in the coastal towns of Ragusa and Spalato. The latter town, in 1848, counted just 5,462 people and Zara (Zadar), the provincial capital, counted 7,280. Linguistic barriers separated literate coastal townspeople, who often spoke and read both Italian and Slavic, from rural Dalmatian peasants, who used only Slavic.

Sources

• Judson, Pieter M., The Habsburg Empire, Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 2016, pps: 125-130, ISBN: 978-0-674-04776-1