The manufacture of wine con stitutes one of the chief industries of the coun try and the peasantry use wine freely as their principal beverage. Vineyards are most nu merous in Syrmia, but they are frequent also in the coastland. In the western part, however, they have been devastated by phylloxera. Oak and beech forests are abundant, especially in Slavonia where there are even virgin forests, and form the principal wealth of the country. The timber is of excellent quality and is used in various industries, even in shipbuilding. The surplus of the production is exported mostly to France. Great quantities of acorns furnish good food to numerous herds of pigs which are exported. Horses of two races, the Hun garian in the plains and the Bosniana in the mountains, oxen, pigs and sheep are the prin cipal domestic animals. Silkworms have been cultivated to an appreciable degree only since the reign of Maria Theresa, but the silk in dustry is still in its infancy. The same could be said of the industries of glass, paper, chem icals and tobacco. Hemp and flax are woven by the peasants, of which they manufacture their own clothes with much originality in de sign and shape. Owing to the lack of native capital the commerce is in a deplorable state. It is practically controlled by Germans, Mag yars and Jews. The principal articles of ex port are: Timbers, wine, cereals, plums, plum brandy, horned animals, wax, honey, etc. The principal ways of communication are the Drave, the Save and partly the Danube, but there are also railways (about 1,000 miles in all) con necting the country with the Adriatic and Bos nia.
Education is compulsory for all children between the ages of 11 and 12. There are elementary schools in great numbers all over the country; 21 high schools and sec ondary schools with an aggregate staff of 320 professors and about 6,500 students. At Zag reb there are, besides the university, schools of arts and crafts, commercial academies, acad emy of forestry and normal school of rural economy, music schools, high schools for girls, the Normal Teachers' Institute and the Nau tical School.
Language and The language and literature of the Croatians and Slovenians is Serbian (see SERBIA) in its quintessence. However, there are some dialectic differences. The literature of the Croats and the Sloven ians is consequently only a branch of the Ser bian and it is hard to establish the borders in that field. The Croatians and the Slovenians use in their written language the Latin alpha bet, modified somewhat by means of certain diacritics, while the Serbians, like the Russians, remained faithful to their Cyrillic alphabet, de rived from the Greek characters, by the so called Slav apostles, saints Cyrill and Metho dius, and modified by Vuk Stefanovich Karad zie.
Croatians are virtually the trans-Danubian Serbians, having the same ethnographic characteristics and speaking ab solutely the same language as the Serbians in Shumadia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, etc., with the exception of some slight dialectic differences, due chiefly to foreign influences. The inhabitants are chiefly Serbo-Croats and Slovenians (uSlovenci” with some admixtures of other races (Magyars, Germans, Gypsies, Jews, etc.), and they belong to the Catholic Church, represented by the archbishop of Zag reb (Agram), and the Orthodox Church, rep resented by the patriarch of Karlovci. It is not certain when and from where the Croats came to inhabit the Adriatic littoral, nor is it possible to establish the exact frontiers of their original state. Their primitive abode must have been on the slopes of the Carpathians and the provinces to which they immigrated were situ ated around the cities of Clissa, Trannona and were divided into 11 counties, ruled by counts, and one principality consisting of three coun ties, ruled by a ban (or prince). The Croa tians, like their brothers, the Serbians, were pagan and the cultured Catholic priests, who were then numerous in Dalmatia, energetically spread Christianity among them; but it was only in the 9th century that, with the aid of the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, they were bap tized in any considerable numbers. Their first metropolitan had his palace in Spalato. But when the ever-growing state of the Franks spread its authority over the Croatian lands and Louis, the ban of the Croatians of Save, endeavored to resist their dominion with his army, Borna, the ban of the Dalmatian Croa tians, aided the Franks and frustrated the _pa triotic plans of his northern brother. Ban Louis's successors (Ratimir, Mutimir and Bral sav, 872-882) fought bitter battles against the Moravians, while the Dalmatian Croatians were engaged in a secular struggle against the Ve netian Republic. Borna's successors extended their territory in Istria, the Velebit Mountains and in Gorica and (in 910) Ban Tomislav as sumed the title of king. But it was only under
King Zvonimir that Croatia grew to any con siderable size, for he took possession of Naret na and part of Bosnia. No sooner had the Cro atians succeeded in forming a powerful state than their leaders, torn by their vices and in ordinate desire for power, started a state of anarchy which was followed by numerous civil wars. The Hungarians took advantage of the disaster and their King Koloman found the country an easy prey and had himself crowned king of Croatia and Dalmatia. He granted to the Croatians a sort of constitution which still more humiliated them and made their own na tive dynasties, their bans, almost slavish vassals of the Hungarian Crown. When the Turks conquered Bulgaria, Serbia and Bosnia, the principal objective of their expansion was the level land of Hungary, but they found bitter resistance in Croatia under the celebrated Nik ola Zrinsld, who perished in the siege of Siget. The Austrian court utilized the opportunity to subjugate Croatia with the result that a fierce insurrection of the peasantry broke out during the reign of Emperor Maximilian II. In the course of the 16th and 17th centuries the Croa tian lands were called greliquim reliquiarum* and, for the purpose of making the Croatians better fitted for resistance to the Turks, the Aus trian government nominated a king of Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia. A wholesale Germaniza tion of the Croatians and the Slovenes was practised for over three centuries, but the national spirit was kept alive, as in Serbia, by means of the cherished traditions and especially by the exuberant and enchanting national poetry about Royal Prince Marko, the Battle of Kossove, etc., which rapidly spread from Serbia and Montenegro through out the Serbian-speaking lands of the Haps burg Crown. It was only in the beginning of the last century, when Napoleon, by virtue of the treaties of Pressburg (1805) and Sch6n brunn (1809) won the united Dalmatia, a large part of Croatia, Istria, Gorica, Gradiska, Ca rinthia and Carniola, giving them the collective name of °Illyrian Provinceso and organizing them under a single administration, that the Serbo-Croatian people inhabiting those lands realized that their language, traditions and as pirations were absolutely identical and that they formed one and the same nation. Unfortu nately, when those provinces were taken from France at the Congress of Vienna (1815) and restored to the Hapsburgs, the national spirit and language were once more condemned and prosecuted. The Serbo-Croatians resented sharply the ever-growing Germanization and Magyarization and, when the Magyars passed certain laws in their Parliament in 1848, where by the autonomy of Croatia was virtually an milled, and when the whole of Hungary re volted against the court of Vienna, ban of Cro atia, Jellachich, upon advice from Austria, im mediately declared war on the Hungarian Rev olutionary Cabinet and, with his army of 40,000 men, largely contributed in suppressing that in surrection. The Serbians in Hungary, who also rose against their Magyar oppressors, now de manded their long-promised autonomy, which they finally obtained in the so-called °Voyvo dina') dukedom, comprising Syrmia (Srem), Bachka and the Banat, only to be shortly after ward suppressed by the Austrian government. The Croatians were treated in like manner, for they were abandoned entirely to the mercy of the revengeful Magyars and a reactionary pol icy of the blackest type was started. When. however, the Austrian government collapsed (in 1859) and the necessity of Serbo-Croatian help was again keenly felt, several Serbo-Croa tian deputations were kindly received in Vienna and the just demands of the people were grant ed. The Serbo-Croatian language was rein troduced in the national schools and the local administration and, in 1868, a treaty between the Serbo-Croatians and the Hungarians was concluded whereby the former secured com plete independence in their national aspirations. But the notorious Ban Khnen Hedewary (1883 1903) eluded most of the treaty stipulations and executions of most notable Croatians in Agram (1907) and Vienna (1908) accelerated the for mation of the Serbo-Croatian coalition which complicated more than any other event the dif ficult South Slavonic problem in Austria-Hun gary. The struggle of the Slovenes (or Slo venians) against their German oppressors re sulted first in their literary emancipation, which was started by their patriot Blaiweiss (1843) and then in their political development which secured for them an overwhelming majority both in their home Diet and their municipal government.