Dalmatia

Dalmatia (/dælˈmeɪʃə, -tiə/ ^ⓘ; Dalmatian: Dalmátia [dalˈmaθija]; Croatian: Dalmacija [dǎlmatsija]; Italian: Dalmazia [dal'mattsja]) is a historical region located in modern-day Croatia and Montenegro, on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea. Through time it formed part of several historical states: the Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Croatia, the Republic of Venice, the Austrian Empire, and presently the Republic of Croatia.

Dalmatia is a narrow 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 (and about 500 islets) run parallel to the coast, the largest (in Dalmatia) 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. Later it became a Roman province (with a much larger territory than the modern region), and consequently a Romance culture emerged, along with the later-extinct Dalmatian language, largely replaced by related Venetian and Italian, which were mainly spoken by the Dalmatian Italians. With the increasing presence of the Sclaveni (South Slavs) in the area following their arrival in the late 6th and early 7th centuries, Slavic and Romance elements began to intermix in language and culture. In the Middle Ages, coastal Dalmatian cities were organised into the Theme of Dalmatia (9th-11th century), though they operated as independent city-states, inhabited by Romance peoples and under the protection of the Byzantine Empire. Most of what is considered the modern region of Dalmatia came under the rule of the medieval Duchy and Kingdom of Croatia (also known as the "Kingdom of Croatia and Dalmatia"). After Croatia entered into a personal union with Hungary in 1102, Dalmatian cities were often conquered by, or switched allegiance to, the kingdoms of the region during the Middle Ages. The most notable one was the Republic of Venice, which took over a number of Dalmatian cities and islands from the year 1000 AD and held them until the Treaty of Zadar of 1358, when it briefly lost its Dalmatian holdings to the Kingdom of Hungary. Venice regained control of coastal Dalmatia in 1409, incorporating it into its State of the Sea and consolidating its dominance in the region. Zadar became the capital of Venetian Dalmatia, and the region was organised as a governorate.

In the early 16th century, the Dalmatian Hinterland, by then still under the influence of the Kingdom of Hungary, was conquered by the Ottoman Empire. The exception from Venetian and Ottoman rule was the small but stable Republic of Ragusa (1358–1808) in the south, with its capital at Dubrovnik. The borderline between Venetian Dalmatia and inland Ottoman Dalmatia fluctuated over the centuries, but from the early 18th century the entirety of Dalmatia came under the complete rule of the Venetians. Following the fall of the Republic of Venice (1797), Dalmatia briefly became part of the French-controlled Kingdom of Italy, and between 1815 and 1918 the region was a province of the Austrian Empire known as the Kingdom of Dalmatia, with its own assembly called the Diet of Dalmatia, based in Zadar and with Italian as the administrative language. After the Austro-Hungarian defeat in World War I, Dalmatia was split between the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which controlled most of it, and the Kingdom of Italy, which held several smaller parts. After World War II, the People's Republic of Croatia as part of Yugoslavia took complete control of the area. Following the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Dalmatia became part of the Republic of Croatia.

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. Croatian is mainly spoken on the mainland and in the hinterland, while Chakavian is spoken on the islands. While the number of native Italian and Venetian speakers has fallen over time, especially after the Istrian-Dalmatian exodus (1943–1960), these languages have left a deep and lasting impact on the vocabulary and prosody of Dalmatian dialects, especially that of modern Chakavian.

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.

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 (Montenegro) 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.