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Greater Croatia

Croatian nationalist ideology

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Through Early modern period

Background

The concept of a Greater Croatian state has its modern origins with the Illyrian movement, a pan-South-Slavist cultural and political campaign with roots in the early modern period, and revived by a group of young Croatian intellectuals during the first half of the 19th century. Although this movement arose in the developing European nationalist context of the time, it particularly arose as a response to the more powerful nationalist stirrings in the then-Kingdom of Hungary, with whom Croatia was in a personal union.

The foundations of the concept of Greater Croatia are laid in late 17th and early 18th century works of Pavao Ritter Vitezović. He was the first ideologist of Croatian nation who proclaimed that all South Slavs are Croats. His works were used to legitimize expansionism of the Habsburg Empire to the east and south by asserting its historical rights to claim Illyria. "Illyria" as Slavic territory projected by Vitezović would eventually incorporate not only most of the Southeastern Europe but also parts of Central Europe such as Hungary. Vitezović defines territory of Croatia which, besides Illyria and all Slavic populated territory, includes all the territory between Adriatic, Black and Baltic seas.

Because the Kingdom of Hungary was so large, Hungary attempted processes of Magyarisation on its constituent territories. As a reaction, Ljudevit Gaj led the creation of the Illyrian movement. This movement aimed to establish Croatian national presence within Austria-Hungary through linguistic and ethnic unity among South Slavs. This was the first and most prominent Pan-Slavic movement in Croatian history. An early proponent of Croatian-based Pan-Slavism was the politician, Count Janko Drašković. In 1832, he published his Dissertation to the joint Hungarian-Croatian Diet, in which he envisioned a “Great Illyria” consisting of all the South Slav provinces of the Habsburg Empire. Likewise, the influential Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer, although a supporter of the Habsburg monarchy, nonetheless advocated merging the Kingdom of Dalmatia with Croatia.

The concept of a Greater Croatia was developed further by Ante Starčević and Eugen Kvaternik. The two founded the nationalist Party of Rights in 1861. Unlike Strossmayer and the proponents of the Illyrian movement, the Party of Rights advocated a united Croatia that stood independently of a Pan-Slavic umbrella state. For Starčević, a Greater Croatia covered modern-day Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Slovenia and he viewed all South Slavs who inhabited the regions as Croats, regardless of their religion. In his view, Croatia included all the territory from the Alps in the north to Macedonia and the Bulgarian border to the south. The Bulgarians and Croats were the only South Slavic nations. He was an early opponent of Croatia's unification with Serbs and Slovenes (chiefly the Kingdom of Serbia). Starčević and Kvaternik's ideologies gradually gained popularity during the interwar period as tensions grew in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia between the Croatian and the more influential Serbian political leaders. Ensuing events surrounding the ideology culminated in the World War II conflict between the Independent State of Croatia and its opponents including Chetnik Serbs and Communists of all ethnicities (including Croatian).

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