History of Croatia

A tribe of Croats came to the Roman provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia in the 7th century and was ultimately assimilated into the larger native Illyro-Roman and recently arrived Slavic population which took the same name. Ruled by various Croatian rulers, these duchies were intermittently controlled by the Roman Empire at Constantinople and the Franks. Eventually Croatia became an independent kingdom in 925, when — by a decree of the Holy Catholic Church in Rome — King Tomislav was crowned first king of Croatia. Croatia retained its independence until 1102 when, after decades of inner struggles, the country entered a dynastic union with Hungary.

Croatian statehood was preserved through a number of institutions, notably the Sabor which served as an assembly of Croatian nobles, and the ban or viceroy. Furthermore, the Croatian nobles retained their lands and titles. By the mid-1400s, the Hungarian kingdom was shaken by the Ottoman expansion as much of the mountainous country now known as Bosnia and Herzegovina fell to the Turks. At the same time, Dalmatia became mostly Venetian. Dubrovnik was a city-state that was, at first, Byzantine (Roman) and Venetian, but later, unlike other Dalmatian city-states, became independent as Republic of Dubrovnik, even though it was often under the suzerainty of neighbouring powers. The Battle of Mohács in 1526 led the Croatian Parliament to elect the Habsburgs to the throne of Croatia. Habsburg rule eventually thwarted Ottoman expansion, and by the 18th century, much of the Croatian territories that had previously been Ottoman passed to the Austrians. The odd crescent shape of the Croatian lands remained as a mark, more or less, of the frontier to the Ottoman advance into Europe. Further south, Istria, Dalmatia and Dubrovnik all eventually passed to the Habsburg Monarchy between 1797 and 1815. Following World War I, Croatia joined the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. Shortly thereafter, this joint state entered into a union with Serbia to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which eventually became Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929.

After Germany and its Axis allies invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Nazis permitted the extreme right-wing organization Usta?e, backed and sponsored by Italian fascists, to found the "Independent State of Croatia". The new regime was highly dependent upon German support for survival. Numerous concentration camps were established in Croatia between 1941 and 1945, when hundred of thousand of Serbs, Jews, anti-fascist Croats and others were murdered for racial, religious or political reasons. When the Axis powers were defeated in Croatia by the anti-fascists, the State Anti-Fascist Council of People's Liberation of Croatia (ZAVNOH) declared People's Republic of Croatia, which became one of the six socialist republics within federal Yugoslavia. Along with Slovenia, Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia on June 25, 1991, which triggered the Croatian War of Independence. The Serb population living in Croatia revolted, supported by the Yugoslav army and paramilitary extremist groups from Serbia. The ensuing months saw combat between newly established Croatian Army and joint Yugoslav/Serb armed forces. Following this stage of the war, the independence of Croatia was internationally-recognized. During the war, the Croatian Serbs proclaimed their own state in areas where they made up relative or absolute ethnic majority, the "Republic of Serbian Krajina", a short lived territory without international recognision. The war left hundreds of thousands refugees on the Croatian side, and thousands were killed either in battle or by ethnic cleansing. The war ended in 1995, when the Croatian Army successfully launched two major military operations to retake the rebel area by force, leading to a mass displacement of more than 200.000 local Serbs from those area into Serbia and Serbian parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Some of Croatian Army generals were being indicted, trialed or convicted for war crime cases later, by Hague based UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and domestic Croatian courts, mainly after 2000 when political changes took place in Croatia. A peaceful reintegration of the remaining Serbian rebel controlled territory in the eastern part of the country was completed in 1998 under UN supervision. At the time of first modern Croatia's president Franjo Tuđman's death in December 1999, the country was in a parlous state. Its citizens suffered from government-backed attacks on their civil and political rights. The governing party, conservative and nationalist HDZ, was then corrupt and the economy was in difficulties, with around 20% of Croatians unemployed. Presidential and parliamentary elections at the beginning of 2000 ushered in politicians from who pledged commitment to political and economic reforms and Croatia's integration into the European mainstream. Left-centre coalition government was led by SDP until November 2003, when reformed HDZ formed minority government. President Stjepan Mesić, coming from centrist/liberal party HNS, was elected two times, in 2000 and 2005. The constitution has been changed to shift power away from the president to the parliament.

Croatia has joined the World Trade Organization and opened up its economy. It has achieved economic growth and inflation is under control. It joined NATO's Partnership for Peace program and became an official candidate for membership in that alliance. By early 2003 it had made sufficient progress to apply for European Union membership, becoming the second EU candidate country from former Yugoslavia, after Slovenia. Croatia is currently in the process of joining the EU. Accession negotiations were opened on October 3, 2005, and country is expected to become an EU member state in 2009 or 2010.