История Далмации: от древности до современности.

The History of Dalmatia concerns the history of the area that covers eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea and its inland regions, from the 2nd century BC up to the present day. The region was populated by Illyrian tribes around 1,000 B. C, including the Delmatae, who formed a kingdom and for whom the province is named. Later it was conquered by Rome, thus becoming the province of Dalmatia, part of the Roman Empire. Dalmatia was ravaged by barbaric tribes in the beginning of the 4th century. Slavs started settling in the area in the 6th and 7th century, including Croats. These Slavic arrivals created the Kingdom of Croatia and other Slavic principalities. Byzantium, Hungary, Venice and the Ottoman Empire all fought for control of Dalmatia. In the south the Republic of Ragusa (1358 1808) emerged. The Republic of Venice, from 1420 to 1797 controlled a significant part of Dalmatia (see Venetian Dalmatia). In 1527 the Kingdom of Croatia became a Habsburg crown land, and in 1812 the Kingdom of Dalmatia was formed. In 1918, Dalmatia was a part of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. After World War II, Dalmatia became part of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in SR Croatia.

Following the end of the Illyrian wars the Romanization of Dalmatia began, similar as in conquered Gaul and Hispania. The Roman province of Dalmatia spread inland to cover all of the Dinaric Alps and most of the eastern Adriatic coast. Its capital was the city of Salona (Solin). Emperor Diocletian made Dalmatia famous by building a palace for himself a few kilometers south of Salona, in Aspalathos/Spalatum. Other Dalmatian cities at the time were: Tarsatica, Senia, Vegium, Aenona, Iader, Scardona, Tragurium, Aequum, Oneum, Issa, Pharus, Bona, Corcyra Nigra, Narona, Epidaurus, Rhizinium, Acruvium, Olcinium, Scodra, Epidamnus/Dyrrachium. The Roman Emperor Diocletian (ruled AD 284 to 305) reformed the government in the late Roman Empire and established the Tetrarchy. This new system for the first time divided rule of the empire into the Western and Eastern courts, each headed by a person with the title of Augustus. Each of the two Augusti also had an appointed successor, a Caesar, who administered about half the district belonging to his own Augustus (and was subordinate to him). In Diocletian's division, Dalmatia fell under the rule of the Eastern Court, headed by Diocletian, but was administered by his Caesar and appointed successor Galerius, who had his seat in the city of Sirmium. In AD 395, the Emperor Theodosius I permanently divided Imperial rule by granting his two sons the position of Augusti separately in the West and the East. This time, however, Spalatum and Dalmatia fell under the Western Court of Honorius, not the Eastern Court. In 468 Flavius Julius Nepos became the ruler of the province of Dalmatia. Four years later, in the spring of 472, the Western Emperor Anthemius was murdered by his Germanic general Ricimer; the appointment of his successor legally fell to Emperor Leo I the Thracian of the Eastern Court. Leo however tarried in his appointment. Ricimer, along with his nephew Gundobad, appointed Olybrius and then Glycerius as their puppet emperors in the West. This was not recognized by Leo I and the Eastern Court, who considered them usurpers. In 473 Leo appointed Flavius Julius Nepos, the ruler of Dalmatia, as the legal Western Emperor. In June 474, Nepos sailed across the Adriatic, entered Ravenna (the seat of the Western court), forced Glycerius to abdicate, and secured the throne. However, next year his Magister militum Orestes forced Nepos to flee back to Salona (on 28 August 475). Romulus Augustulus, the son of Orestes, was proclaimed Emperor within a few months, but was deposed the following year after the execution of his father. Odoacer, the general who deposed Romulus Augustulus, did not appoint a puppet emperor, but instead, for his part, abolished the Western court altogether. Julius Nepos, however, continued to rule in Dalmatia until 480 as the sole legal Emperor of the West (Dalmatia still being de jure a part of the Western court's administration).

Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 481 A. D. Dalmatia briefly fell under Gothic rulers who had also conquered Italy Odoacer and Theodoric the Great. During the rule of the Ostrogoths, Dalmatia was united with the Pannonian area south of the Drava river into a single military administrative unit, which was governed from Salona. In 545, during Justinian I's war against the Ostrogoths, Dalmatia became part of the Greek dominated Byzantine Empire. Ruled from Constantinople, it became a Byzantine province, still associated with Pannonia. The 6th and 7th century saw the gradual arrival of the Slavs and Avars into the territory of Dalmatia, conquering a number of Dalmatian cities (Salona, Epidaurum, Delminium, etc.). The traditional borders between the provinces disappeared, and the direct Byzantine possessions were reduced to a narrow coastal strip of towns and islands, with the hinterland becoming Slavic. In 751 what remained of Byzantine Dalmatia (the coastal cities of Zadar, Trogir, Split, Dubrovnik and Kotor and the islands of Krk, Lošinj, Cres and Rab) was organized into a separate Dalmatian theme, which was managed by a Byzantine strategist in Zadar. Throughout the following centuries, effectively until the early 13th century and the Fourth Crusade, the city of Split remained a possession of the Byzantine emperors, even though its hinterland would seldom be under Byzantine control, and de facto suzerainty over the city would often be exercised by Croatian, Venetian, or Hungarian rulers. Overall, the city enjoyed significant autonomy during this time, due to the periodic weakness and/or preoccupation of the Byzantine Imperial administration.

With the arrival and conquest by the Slavs who started organizing their own principalities, the Roman province of Dalmatia in the sense of a political subject with the name of Dalmatia by the 9th century fell to the narrow coastal island Theme of Dalmatia (existed between c. 870s 1060s) which was under Byzantine influence and control. The most significant Slavic principality founded on the former large province of Dalmatia was the Duchy of Croatia and Borna of Croatia (803–821) is one of the earliest recorded rulers in Dalmatia. In 806, Dalmatia was temporarily added to the Frankish Empire, but the cities were restored to Byzantium by the Treaty of Aachen in 812. The treaty had also slightly expanded the Duchy of Dalmatia eastwards. The establishment of cordial relations between the cities and the Croatian dukedom began with the reign of Duke Mislav (835), who signed an official peace treaty with Pietro, doge of Venice in 840 and who also started giving land donations to the churches from the cities. Dalmatia's Croatian Duke Trpimir (ruled 845–864), founder of the House of Trpimir, greatly expanded the new Duchy to include territories all the way to the river of Drina, thereby covering the entirety of Bosnia in his wars against the Bulgar Khans and their Serbian subjects. The Saracens had raided the southernmost cities in 840 and 842, but this threat was eliminated by a common Frankish Byzantine campaign of 871. Since the time of duke Branimir of Croatia, Venetians had to pay taxes to Croatia and to the Narentines for their ships traveling along the eastern Adriatic coast, while the Dalmatian city states paid 710 ducats of tribute to the Croatian ruler. Duke Tomislav had created the Kingdom of Croatia in 924 or 925, and was crowned in Tomislavgrad after defending and annexing the Principality of Pannonia. His powerful realm extended influence further southwards to Duklja. Between 986 and 990, king Stephen Držislav was awarded by the Byzantine Emperor Basil II the title Patriarch and an Exarch of Dalmatia, which gave him formal authority over the Theme of Dalmatia (but some historians believe not over the Dalmatian city states). According to Thomas the Archdeacon, Stephen Držislav received royal insignia and the titles as an act of recognition from the Byzantine Emperor, becoming reges Dalmatie et Chroatie and his descendants having the same titles. After wintering in Zadar, the Fourth Crusade continued its campaign, which led to the siege of Constantinople. In 1204 the same army conquered Byzantium and finally eliminated the Eastern Empire from the list of contenders on Dalmatian territory. The early 13th century was marked by a decline in external hostilities. The Dalmatian cities started accepting foreign sovereignty (mainly of the Republic of Venice) but eventually they reverted to their previous desire for independence. The Mongol invasion severely impaired Hungary, so much that in 1241, the king Béla IV had to take refuge in Dalmatia (in the Klis fortress). The Mongols attacked the Dalmatian cities for the next few years but eventually withdrew. The Croats were no longer regarded by the city folk as a hostile people, in fact the power of certain Croatian magnates, notably the counts Šubić of Bribir, was from time to time supreme in the northern districts (in the period between 1295 and 1328). In 1344, the citizens of Zadar again rebelled against Venetian rule. The Venetians put down the rebellion with 20,000 to 30,000 troops and their navy during the 1345 1346 Siege of Zadar. In 1346, Dalmatia was struck by the Black Death. The economic situation was also poor, and the cities became more and more dependent on Venice. Stephen Tvrtko, the founder of the Bosnian kingdom, was able in 1389 to annex the Adriatic littoral between Kotor (Cattaro) and Šibenik, and even claimed control over the northern coast up to Fiume (Rijeka) except for the Venetian ruled Zara (Zadar), and his own independent ally, Ragusa (Dubrovnik). This was only temporary, as the Hungarians and the Venetians continued their struggle over Dalmatia as soon as Tvrtko died in 1391. An internal struggle of Hungary, between king Sigismund and the Neapolitan house of Anjou, also reflected on Dalmatia: in the early 15th century, all Dalmatian cities welcomed the Neapolitan fleet except for Dubrovnik (Ragusa). The Bosnian duke Hrvoje Vukčić Hrvatinić controlled Dalmatia for the Angevins, but later switched loyalty to Sigismund. Over the period of twenty years, this struggle weakened the Hungarian influence. In 1409, Ladislaus of Naples sold his rights over Dalmatia to Venice for 100,000 Ducats. Venice gradually took over most of Dalmatia by 1420. In 1437, Sigismund recognized Venetian rule over Dalmatia in return for 100,000 Ducats. The city of Omiš yielded to Venice in 1444. From 1448 up to 1482 the Duchy of St. Sava, led by the Kosača noble family, held Herzegovina and southern Dalmatia, from Omiš and Imotski to the Pelješac border with the Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and the Bay of Kotor. In 1482 it was absorbed by the Ottoman Empire, thus only the Republic of Ragusa remained independent.

The history of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) goes back to at least to the 7th century. After the fall of the Ostrogothic Kingdom, the town came under the protection of the Byzantine Empire. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Dubrovnik grew into an oligarchic republic, and benefited by becoming a commercial outpost for the Serbian and Bosnian states. After the Crusades, Dubrovnik came under the sovereignty of Venice (1205–1358). Ragusa grew by purchasing the island of Lastovo, Pelješac and Ston from Serbia. By the Peace Treaty of Zadar in 1358, Dubrovnik achieved relative independence as a vassal state of the Kingdom of Hungary. Between the 14th century and 1808, Dubrovnik ruled itself as a free state, although it was a tributary from 1382 to 1804 of the Ottoman Empire. The Republic reached its peak in the 15th and 16th centuries, when its thalassocracy sent its ships as far as India and America, rivalling the Republic of Venice and other Italian maritime states. The city became a cradle of culture, particularly in literature written in the local Slavic language, which became a foundation stone for present day Croatian.