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WHEN ETHNICITY DID NOT MATTER IN THE BALKANS

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS

Chapter One

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Croat nationalists today proclaim that the Croats have at last fulfilled a one-thousand-year ambition by their establishment of independent statehood. As with much of the so-called history that is trumpeted forth by twentieth-century Croat nationalists (until recently exemplified by the pseudo-historian and most Balkan of all the 1990s strong-men of that region, Croatia's dictator Franjo Tudjman), this statement is sheer nonsense. At most this goal is no more than 150 years old and, in the nineteenth century, it was the goal of only a few intellectuals. In fact through most of the thousand "stateless years" the majority of the ancestors of the current Croat nationalists did not even conceive of themselves as Croats.

OVERVIEW OF THE MEDIEVAL HISTORY OF THE WESTERN BALKANS

The Slavs, the ancestors of today's Serbo-Croatian speakers, migrated into what was to become Yugoslavia inthe second half of the sixth and early seventh centuries. The Byzantines called them "Slaveni" (Slavs). A survey about the empire's neighbors, conventionally referred to as De administrando imperio, was written by tenth-century Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. If we can believe this survey, then a second migration brought Croats into parts of northwestern Yugoslavia during the reign of Emperor Heraclius (610-41). Constantine was writing some 300 years after the event. He clearly utilized earlier documents, though their nature and accuracy are unknown. Thus, his text is not an ideal source, but unfortunately, we have no other sources that speak of the arrival of the Croats. Constantine also makes many errors in his depiction of later Croatian events, about which we do have other sources. However, despite these drawbacks, most historians, admitting that Constantine may have erred in details, have now come to accept him as reliable for a general picture. The main reason for this acceptance is the fact that twentieth-century scholars have found confirmation of a White Croatia, whence he says the Croats came, beyond the Carpathians. However, it is worth emphasizing that no source confirms his data on the actual Croat migration. Thus, we must keep in mind that some or even much of what he says may be inaccurate.

Constantine, combined with other Byzantine writers, provides a picture of a large-scale migration which brought Slavs into all of what became Yugoslavia, whereas he alone describes a later Croat migration into certain parts of it. These Croats, then, in at least part of the area they settled, made themselves overlords/rulers over territory on which also lived the Slavic settlers, who had arrived earlier.

What were the relations between these two groups? Nineteenth-century Croat historians focused on the Croats and basically described a process by which the Croats imposed their rule and identity upon the Slavs. As a result, territory that fell under Croat rule gradually became ethnically Croat. For most of these historians, simply having people come to call themselves "Croats" was enough to make them ethnic Croats. But, as we shall see, it is not at all certain that people in the Croat state did come to call themselves "Croats."

Moreover, some of these nineteenth-century historians also decided that the real Croats, though a minority, made themselves, as conquerers, into a ruling elite. Thus the noble families of Croatia were depicted as descendants of the elite of the Croat tribes. However, as we shall see, people referred to as Slavs remained numerous in this area throughout the Middle Ages.

Thus it seems that many Slavs did not come to consider themselves Croats. So, in the study that follows, we shall assume nothing and leave the issue open in order to see what the sources tell us about the relations between these two people. Did these later migrants within the state of Croatia continue to use the name "Croat" (derived from the tribal name they arrived with), or did they come to think of themselves as "Slavs"? Did the Slavs under the rule of a leader who called his state "Croatia" actually come to call themselves "Croats," or did they remain "Slavs"? In this mixing, we must recognize that the process was probably not monolithically one directional, so some may have changed their identity labels (and presumably some to "Croat" and some to "Slav" depending on where they lived) while others did not. In any case, we shall let the sources provide the data rather than start with any sort of preconceived assumptions; and at the end we shall base our conclusions on the basis of the evidence to the extent that this is possible given our sparse sources. We shall discover, needless to say, that things were much more complex than a one-way process of Croat ethnogenesis.

It also needs repeating that to most Yugoslav (including Croat) scholars the acquisition of ethnicity simply means the picking up and using of a given, in this case "Croat," name. I shall note the use of this and other names as they appear, but shall use the much stricter and complex standards for "ethnicity" that I laid out in the introduction. And, to look ahead, I can tell the reader right now that we shall turn up almost no ethnic Croats by that stricter standard. However, even if one uses the general Yugoslav/Croat standard of proclaiming ethnicity simply when one Ands people labelled by what might be an ethnic name, one still Ands many fewer Croats than these scholars have consistently claimed. Thus, even by their standards, one would be hard put to argue that a process of Croat ethnogenesis occurred anywhere in what is now Croatia during the Middle Ages, and, I would argue, employing whichever definition, before the nineteenth century.

Before moving on, I think one more point of clarification of my position is needed. I believe people could call themselves "Croats" or "Slavs"-and surely some used both terms for themselves-and still not have an ethnicity. One can live without ethnicity, just as most Byzantines did and as most Americans do now. So, the mere acquisition of a "Croat" identity label in itself may be of no ethnic significance. I may move to New York City-God forbid-and call myself and be referred to by others as a "New Yorker," but this label will not reflect anything essential about the way I view my own identity. And, I believe the evidence bears out the conclusion that in most examples provided by our sources the use of a specific identity term for an individual in Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, or elsewhere was no more significant to that individual than my example of acquiring the "New Yorker" label.

In any case, the word "Croatia" became a name, though not an exclusive one, for the state lying between the Cetina River and Istria, which the Croat migrants set up, and the term "Croatian" came into use for people under their rule. It was particularly commonly used for people in northern Dalmatia and the hinterland behind this coastal territory. This area consists of a triangle extending along the coast from Zadar to Istria, and inland to include (south to north): Lika, Gacka, Krbava, Modruš, and Vinodol. Since the Velebit range runs through this area, I shall coin the term "Velebitia" for this general area in the discussion that follows. "Velebitia" coincides closely with the principality, later kingdom, of Croatia; but to call the region "Croatia" introduces too much ambiguity as to whether it is the state or a territory under discussion. Thus, it makes sense to make use of this coined geographical term, when speaking simply about the general territory.

In the ninth century there were two states called by modern scholars "Croatian," one in Dalmatia and one (with a prince at least called "Croatian" by Constantine Porphyrogenitus) in the interior, between the Drava and Sava rivers, including what is now Zagreb. This latter territory is often referred to by scholars as Pannonian Croatia. However, it should be noted, Constantine is the only medieval author to use the term "Croatian" in connection with Pannonia. Thus perhaps during the Middle Ages only one of these two territorial entities (the Dalmatian one) should have the name "Croatia(n)" applied to it.

The Dalmatian state included most of the northern coastal territory, but scattered within it were a certain number of walled cities that had not been conquered and remained under the nominal control of the Byzantine Emperor: Split, Trogir, and Zadar. To the south, Dubrovnik and Kotor held out against the undifferentiated Slavic invaders. In medieval sources, the term "Dalmatia" may refer to just these Byzantine cities (as was Byzantine usage), the whole geographical area, or various other political units assembled in parts of this territory. Traditionally, scholars have claimed that the two so-called "Croatian" entities were united early in the tenth century into one state by Tomislav, who by 925 had allegedly received a crown from the pope and become King of Croatia.

Recent scholarship has questioned much about the reign of Tomislav, and some scholars date Croatian kingship to the following century and also raise doubts about the union of the coast and Pannonia. After all, our sources, many of which are later narratives or later copies of charters, make a complete jumble of rulers' titles; a sixteenth-century source cites an alleged papal letter which calls Tomislav king, but the documents about his successors, most of which come in unsatisfactory late copies (often containing interpolations, if they are not outright forgeries), call these individuals kings, dukes, or counts. For our purposes it does not matter how glorious the title was; what matters is what one is "ruler" of (e.g., Croats or Slavs) and that the given document gives us confidence about its authenticity and accuracy. Second, it is not at all clear that Tomislav really united Dalmatia and Pannonia. From our assortment of often unreliable documents it is evident that in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Pannonian territory-or parts of it-seems to have been sometimes under Hungary and sometimes under the Croatian rulers operating out of Dalmatia. Who held what and when, owing to the absence of clear sources, is most controversial. Nada Klaic has concluded that from the third decade of the eleventh century, Slavonia was more closely tied to Hungary than to Croatia. And we shall see that the Archbishop of Split, Metropolitan for Dalmatia and Croatia, did not extend his authority over what was to become Slavonia. In any case, the area controlled by the rulers of Croatia for the pre-1102 (or early-medieval) period was Velebitia, much of northern Dalmatia, and whatever territory the rulers could maintain in Pannonia/ Slavonia; with various ups and downs this state survived until 1102, when it was annexed by Hungary. After the annexation the Hungarian king retained Croatia as a unit, continuing to call it the Kingdom of Croatia, and adding that phrase to his ever-lengthening title. The king appointed a governor (called the Ban of Croatia), whose territory included "Velebitia" and whatever parts of the Dalmatian coast the Hungarians held. Thus the name "Croatia," as a territorial one, was perpetuated in this area. Whether the inhabitants of this region, who from time to time appear in sources calling themselves "Croats," saw the term as being anything more than a territorial label that described their region of residence or a reflection of their status as being subject to this ban, as we shall see, is not clear. What scholars refer to as "Pannonian Croatia" or, as it was called in the Later Middle Ages, "Slavonia," remained under Hungary for the rest of the Middle Ages. The Hungarian king appointed a separate ban, the Ban of Slavonia, for this territory.

The Dalmatian cities had a different history. Their populations remained centered in and around the various cities, administering themselves as individual city states, under the suzerainty of one or another frequently changing overlords. The cities were marked by civic patriotism, and people usually referred to themselves by the names of their cities: Zadrani, Splicani, Ragusans (Dubrovcani), and so on. We shall examine later whether and to what extent they also came to consider themselves Croats.

The interior remained under Hungary for the rest of the Middle Ages. At the end of the fifteenth century and during the early sixteenth century, part of the interior was conquered by the Ottomans. The Venetians assumed overlordship over all the Dalmatian cities in the course of the fifteenth century, except for Dubrovnik (Ragusa), which managed to keep its autonomy as an Ottoman tributary. The Ottomans lost most of their "Croatian" lands to the Habsburgs in 1699; Venice kept its colonies until 1797.

THE MIGRATIONS

A variety of Byzantine sources-including Constantine Porphyrogenitus-refer to raids and eventually to settlement by Slavs or Slavs and Avars in the sixth and seventh centuries; these texts emphasized the traumatic fall of Salona, the Roman capital of Dalmatia, in 614. This date is also becoming a matter of controversy, but it does not matter for our study. These events, which I have discussed elsewhere, need only be noted here to indicate that Slavs were operating in large numbers in most parts of the future Yugoslavia prior to the migration of Croats and Serbs during the reign of Heraclius, described by Constantine. Thus, throughout the area into which these two incoming tribes migrated, large numbers of Slavs were already present, presumably speaking a proto Serbo-Croatian. They had taken control of most of Dalmatia, except for the already-noted walled cities that held out and remained Roman or Byzantine: Kotor, Dubrovnik, Split, Trogir, and Zadar. Many islands also were initially unaffected, but subsequently the Slavs began over time to penetrate most of those as well.

CONSTANTINE PORPHYROGENITUS

The only source on the arrival of the Croats in the Balkans is Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus' De administrando imperio written by the emperor ca. 950. At first Constantine presented the Avars or the Avars and the Slavs as masters of Dalmatia. In this context "Dalmatia" is the old Roman province, which was a broader territory than that which we now think of as Dalmatia; it included most of present-day Dalmatia's hinterland with Bosnia as well. Constantine then goes on to describe an invasion by Croats. "After they had fought one another for some years, the Croats prevailed and killed some of the Avars and the remainder they compelled to be subject to them." Those subjected, of course, included the large number of Slavs (in the given area) who had been living under Avar rule prior to the Croats' arrival. In the next chapter, 31, Constantine dates these events to the time of the Emperor Heraclius (610-41), who is said to have summoned them, thus providing a basis for Byzantine claims of suzerainty over the Croats and the territory they had assumed control of. Elsewhere Constantine reports that the empire suffered reduced influence in this area, particularly during the time of Michael II, the Amorian (820-29), and that "the inhabitants of Dalmatia became independent, subject neither to the Emperor of the Romans nor to anybody else, and, what is more, the nations of those parts, the Croats and Serbs and Zachlumites [people of Zahumlje, later Hum], Terbuniotes [people of Trebinje], Kanalites [people of Konavlje] and Diocletians [Dukljans, in present-day Montenegro] and Pagani [whom we shall meet as the Neretljani], shook off the reins of the empire of the Romans and became self-governing and independent, subject to none. Princes, as they say, these nations had none, but only 'zupans,' elders, as is the rule in the other Slavonic regions." (Continues...)

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Excerpted from WHEN ETHNICITY DID NOT MATTER IN THE BALKANS by JOHN V. A. FINE, JR. Copyright © 2006 by University of Michigan . Excerpted by permission.
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