VUGOSLAVIA and BALKAN PENINSULA.) Ancient and Mediaeval History.—Dalmatia originally be longed to the Illyrian kingdom, which was conquered in 168 B.C. by the Romans, but it was not till A.D. 12 that Tiberius quelled the last of many insurrections. Its capital Delminium was prob ably Durno in Hercegovina. Already in the 4th century B.C. Greek colonies were established at Issa (Lissa, Vis), Pharia (Lesina, Hvar), Corcyra Nigra (Curzola, Korcula), etc., and these and other towns became flourishing Roman municipalities. Iadera and Salona were the chief towns. Various Illyrian generals be came emperor, notably Diocletian, who on his abdication retired to his native province and built the famous palace which still forms the centre of the town of Spalato (Split). Spalato and Epidaurum (Ragusa) were founded after the annihilation of Salona in 639 by the Avars (q.v.). The Avars were soon followed by the Croats and Serbs, who established themselves along the coast during the 7 th and 8th centuries. The first Croat dukes (see CROATIA) resided mainly at Bihac near Trau (Trogir) and at Knin, but the towns preserved their autonomy and By zantine suzerainty was little more than nominal. In 879 Duke Branimir acknowledged the Pope, and henceforth the Croats held with Rome, the archbishop of Spalato becoming metropolitan of the littoral from the Arsa to Cattaro (Kotor). After two cen turies of struggle the Slav liturgy (the so-called Glagolitic rite) was sanctioned by a church council at Spalato in 1076. Dalmatia formed part of the Croatian kingdom till its union with Hungary in 1102, and already was involved in conflicts with the rising power of Venice. King Koloman almost at once conceded special autonomy to the Dalmatian towns, the charter of Trau (110I) serving as a model for others. Between 1115 and 1420 there were 21 wars between Hungary-Croatia and Venice; in that of 1202, the republic diverted the Fourth Crusade to the conquest of Zara (Zadgr) . During the Mongol invasions King Bela IV. took refuge in Dalmatia, but the crown's hold upon it was by now slight, and power was divided between the Venetians and a few great Croat nobles, such as the counts of Bribir, while south of the Narenta (Neretva) river the Serbian rulers held sway. In 1220 Stephen "the First-crowned," having married a niece of Enrico Dandolo, assumed the style "Totius Serviae Diocliae Tribuniae Dalmatiae atque Clilumiae Rex coronatus": and over a century later his descendant Tsar Dusan invaded and held southern Dalmatia (13 50-6) . His death was followed by a successful war of Louis the Great against Venice, who in 1358 ceded to Hungary the whole coast from the Quarnero to Durazzo, though Ragusa (Du brovnik) maintained its independence. Louis died in 1382 and in 1389 King Tvrtko of Bosnia (q.v.) seized most of the coast towns and took the title of king of Croatia and Dalmatia, but died a year later. The disputed succession in Hungary gave Venice a new opportunity: in 1409 Ladislas of Naples, to finance the campaign against his cousin Mary and her husband Sigismund, sold Dalmatia to Venice for 1oo,000 ducats: and in 1420 Sigis mund had to ratify the cession.
Venetian Rule.—Thus from 1420 to 1797 Venice held the coast from the Zrmanja to the Neretva (including Zara, Sebenico, Trau, Spalato and the North and Central islands) and then again (south of Ragusan territory) Cattaro and the Albanian ports. In 1537 Clissa, near Spalato, was captured by the Turks, who gained a further foothold at the mouth of the Neretva. In the second half of the 16th century the Uzkoks established an al most independent corsair community round Almissa (Omis) and the Neretva, and gave both Venice and Turkey much trouble. In 1635 Venice obtained from the Turks the cession of the "Mani line," as far as the watershed of the Dinaric Alps: by the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699) she obtained the Nuovo Acquisto (Knin and Sinj) and in 1718 the Nuovissimo Acquisto (district of Imotski). Dalmatia supplied numerous levies to the Venetian fleet and army, but was treated in stepmotherly fashion and regarded as a strategic outpost to protect the Adriatic trade route. Sarpi's advice—"If you want the Dalmatians to be faithful, keep them ignorant"—was closely followed: there were scarcely any schools and the first printing press was erected at Zara in 1796. Taxes were heavy ; there was an oppressive salt monopoly ; the forests were felled and not replanted. Dalmatia had produced real archi tectural and artistic masterpieces in the 15th and 16th centuries, but then fell into neglect and isolation. Ragusa alone remained an intellectual centre, and produced a brilliant galaxy of poets and writers, notably Ivan Gundulic in the first half of the 17 th century. Later still it produced the mathematician Boskovic.
Napoleonic Period.—.On the fall of Venice in 1797, Dalmatia was assigned to Austria by the Treaty of Campo Formio. In 18o5, however, it was united with Napoleon's vassal Italian kingdom. For a time, combined Russian and Montenegrin forces held the French at bay in the Bocche di Cattaro, but eventually the latter occupied Dalmatia, and suppressed the Ragusan republic and even the tiny peasant republic of Poljica (near Split). In 18o8 the Russians evacuated, but the British fleet held Vis (Lissa) and under Hoste inflicted on March 12, 1812, a severe naval defeat upon the French. Several islands remained in British occupation till the end of the war. The rest of Dalmatia formed from 1809 to 1814 part of the French province of Illyria, under Marshal Marmont, whose short rule was marked by the building of roads, schools and public institutions. The Austrians under the Croat general Milutinovic captured Ragusa from the French in January 1814 and Cattaro in June. The province was definitely assigned to Austria at the peace of 1815 and reorganized in four districts, one consisting of former Ragusan territory.
For the next generation Dalmatia lived its own life, almost forgotten by the rest of Austria and only acces sible by sea. Its population was overwhelmingly Slav, but the small educated class, knowing Italian often better than Croat, formed a useful recruiting ground for the Austrian bureaucracy in Lombardy and Venetia, and there was a very close connection with Padua University, where the Yugoslav poet Orsat Poi (Pozza) was specially active. The greatest Dalmatian of this period was Niccolo Tommaseo, who was in close touch with the Illyrian movement before he became a minister in Manin's revolu tionary government at Venice in 1848, and provided a synthesis between Italian and Slav aspirations on the Adriatic. In 1836 a Slav review, and in 1849 a Slav literary society, was founded in Zara ; but during the fifties all such tendencies were rigorously repressed. National life first really became vocal in 1861 when Dalmatia, like other Austrian provinces, received a diet. Under the narrow franchise 15,600 Italians elected 26 deputies and 140,000 Serbo-Croats only 15. The struggle lay between the Autonomist Party, with its organ Il Dalmata, and the Croat Na tional Party, which desired Dalmatia's union with Croatia. The former found a remarkable leader in Bajamonti, mayor of Split, whose motto was "Slavo sempre, Croato giammai" (Slav ever, Croat never), but his successors gave the party more and more an exclusively Italian character. Vienna steadily promoted dis cord between Italian and Slav, and also between Croat and Serb. Already in 187o the Slays won a majority in the diet, and in the eighties stormed the municipalities one by one, till only Zara remained mainly Italian, while Serbo-Croat asserted itself in ad ministration, justice and education. In 1897 a compromise be tween the Croats and the Serbs reduced the Italians to such a tiny minority, that they lost all representation in the Vienna Reicjisrat even before the advent of universal suffrage. The events of 1903 in Croatia caused intense excitement in Dalmatia, whose deputies vainly petitioned Francis Joseph on behalf of their kinsmen. The Dalmatian leaders Trumbic, Supilo and Smodlaka played a leading part in drafting the Resolutions of Fiume and Zara (Oct. 1905), and thus effecting a firm Serb-Croat coalition against Budapest and Vienna. With the coming of universal suf frage for the Reichsrat (19o7) the Dalmatian deputies became more vocal, in Vienna, allied themselves with the Slovenes and Czechs, and by constant interpellations drew attention to the scandalous conditions in Croatia (q.v.). During the same period publicity was thrown upon the backward economic conditions of Dalmatia, which owing to political jealousies between Budapest and Vienna remained without railway connections northwards. It was very inadequately supplied with primary schools, and had been injured in its fishing and wine trade by Vienna's customs concessions to Italy. Emigration was high, and though the popula tion was only 635,000 in 191o, no fewer than 67,000 persons had left Dalmatia in the previous thirty years, mostly for South America, the United States and New Zealand.
In 1912 lively demonstrations in Dalmatia in favour of the Balkan allies led to press confiscations and the dissolution of the municipalities of Split and Sibenik (Sebenico). By 1914 tension was hardly less than in Croatia and Bosnia, and the Yugoslav idea made rapid progress.
On the outbreak of the World War the leading Yugoslav in tellectuals were arrested and interned, and all municipal councils (except Zara, which had an Italian majority) were early dis solved. In the winter of 1917-18 an underground revolutionary movement steadily gained strength.
On Feb. 1, 1918, a mutiny placed the fleet and most of the strategic points in the Bocche di Cattaro for three days at the mercy of a revolutionary com mittee. The leader, Antun Sesan, flew to Italy for help, but was held in arrest, and Austrian ships from Pola suppressed the movement. Early in October, however, a still wider plot was prepared, and its spokesmen, the Czech Stepanek and the Croat Giunio, crossed the Adriatic in a sailing boat with instructions to communicate with Marshal Foch and arrange with him the date for an insurrection. Had not they in their turn been held in custody for over three weeks by the Italians, and debarred from all intercourse with the Czech and Yugoslav national committees, the Allied fleets might have been in control of Dalmatia a fort night before the Italian offensive was actually launched. At the close of October a national committee was formed in Split which recognized the supreme authority of the Yugoslav national coun cil in Zagreb, but made itself responsible for local order in the province and disarmed the Austrian and Hungarian troops as they retired northwards from the Albanian front. A very dangerous situation arose when Italian naval forces occupied northern Dal matia and the islands, and some of D'Annunzio's followers tried to execute a raid upon Trogir (Trail) and Split. A conflict was averted very largely by the tact of the American admiral. By the Treaty of Rapallo between Italy and Yugoslavia (Nov. 12, 192o) the whole of Dalmatia was assigned to the latter, save for the capital, Zara, and a small enclave round it. Under the new centralist constitution of 1921 the provincial autonomy was abolished. (See YUGOSLAVIA.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.-For a general survey of Dalmatian history, art Bibliography.-For a general survey of Dalmatian history, art and antiquities see Sir T. G. Jackson, Dalmatia, the Quarnero and Istria (1887, 3 vols., illust.) and E. A. Freeman, Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice (1881) . See also Sir J. G. Wilkinson, Dalmatia and Montenegro (1840, 2 vols.) ; A. A. Paton, Highlands and Islands of the Adriatic (1849) ; J. M. Neale, Notes on Dalmatia, etc. (1861) ; Horatio F. Brown, Dalmatia (London, 1924) . Robert Adam, The Ruins of the Palace of Diocletian (1764) and E. Hebrard, Le Palais de Diocletien d Spalato (191I) are masterpieces of architectural history. The standard mediaeval history is G. Lucio, De Regno Dalmatiae et Croatiae (Amsterdam, 1666) . See also M: Orbini, II Regno degli Slavi (Pesaro, 1601) ; Alter and Neuer Stoat des Konig reichs Dalmatien (1718) ; Engel, Geschichte des Freystaates Ragusa (Vienna, 5807) ; Tullio Erber, Storia della Dalmazia (Zara, 1886) ; P. Pisani, La Dalmatie de 1797 a 1815 (1893) ; Luigi Villari, The Republic of Ragusa (19o4) ; Dalmatien in Die osterr.-ung. Monarchie in Wort and Bild; Hermann Bahr, Dalmatinische Reise (Berlin, 19o9). For recent history see G. Prezzelini, La Dalmazia (Florence, 1915) ; Lujo Vojnovic, Dalmatia and the Jugoslav Movement (1920) ; Dalmaticus, La Question de la Dalmatie (Geneva, 1918) . On the Adriatic Question see Charles Loiseau, L'Equilibre Adriatique (19o1) ; G. Salvemini and L. Marinelli, La Questione dell' Adriatico (Bari, 1915) ; C. Vellay, La Question de L'Adriatique (1915) ; vol. IV. of History of Peace Conference (ed. H. M. V. Temperley) ; F. Si5i6 and others, Le Littoral Jugoslave (Zagreb, 1919) ; Hugo Werk, Cenni sulla Dalmazia (Zagreb, 1919), and G. Novak, Nase More (Our Sea) (Split, 1927, illust.) . Reinhold Petermann's elaborate Fuhrer durch Dalmatien (Vienna, 5899) still retains its value. (R. W. S.-W.)
