| History of Croatia | |
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| Early history | |
| Prehistoric Croatia | |
| Origins of the Croats | |
| White Croatia | |
| Medieval history | |
| Littoral Croatia · Pannonian Croatia · Pagania · Zachlumia · Travunia | |
| Kingdom of Croatia | |
| March of Istria | |
| Republic of Poljica | |
| Republic of Dubrovnik | |
| Kingdom of Bosnia | |
| Habsburg Empire | |
| Kingdom of Croatia | |
| Croatian Military Frontier | |
| Illyrian Provinces · Kingdom of Illyria | |
| Kingdom of Slavonia | |
| Kingdom of Dalmatia | |
| Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia | |
| State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs | |
| Yugoslavia | |
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Kingdom of Yugoslavia |
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World War II |
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| Socialist Republic of Croatia | |
| Contemporary Croatia | |
| War of independence | |
| Republic of Croatia | |
| Chronology | |
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Croatia Portal |
Red Croatia (Latin: Croatia Rubea, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian: Crvena Hrvatska), is a historical term used for the southeastern parts of Roman Dalmatia and some other territories, in including part of present-day Montenegro, greater part of Albania, the Herzegovina part of Bosnia and Herzegovina and southeastern Croatia, stretching across the Adriatic Sea. Another Red Croatia was between rivers Bug and Dniester according to Bruno of Querfurt ,and was part of Pechenegs tribal union and was 6th Pechenegs province. Red Croatia was neighbour to Kievan Rus' and White Croatia.
The term was first used in one version of the Chronicle of the Priest of Dioclea, which is as a whole dated to have been written in 1298-1300. It had been then mentioned by a number of sources that referenced the Chronicle across the ages in various languages and by a number of people of different backgrounds, until becoming in the 19th century during the Age of Romantic Nationalism a central point of hot discussion and research, often a component part of Croatian nationalism and the national myth, in which Red Croatia was sometimes popularized as a historical state of the Croatian people and thus should become part of a Greater Croatia. Today it is generally not considered that there ever was a political entity by the name of Red Croatia in the history of the region.
Crvena Hrvatska was also the name for a weekly Croatian Party of Rights political paper that spread the ideology of Ante Starčević in Dubrovnik, Dalmatia and that existed in 1890-1899 Austria-Hungary, edited by Frano Supilo.
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Red Croatia was first mentioned in the Chronicle of the Priest of Dioclea which was written by a Roman Catholic priest in Doclea. His work is not preserved in original, but only in copies since the 16th and 17th century, and has been dated from as early as the late 13th century to as far as the 15th century. It is most likely that it was written ca. 1300. There were numerous erroneous guesses and other plain errors regarding the identity of the writer, the most known being referring to him as "Archbishop Gregory" of a non-existent Archbishopric.
Most recent and detailed research identifies him as a member of the Cistercian order by the name of Rudger, of Bohemian ethnic origins, working in the Archbishopric of Split and for Croatian Ban Paul Šubić who was from 1298 to 1301 Archbishop of Bar. If the Priest of Doclea didn't take the term from some unknown and unpreserved source while rewriting his work for a second edition and he is its inventor, it is believed that he did partially in political aspirations of the Šubić family over all Croato-Serb lands, which would also explain the lack of Red Croatia in the first version, which centered on Bosnia, the second one being written after Paul had taken the title "Lord of Bosnia".
Croatian linguist Petar Skok has defined that this misinterpretation on the Priest's part is a result of transliteration of the Crmnica - Crvnica area in Montenegro, which also translates to Red Land.
According to the Dioclean priest imaginary kingdom of Slavs was divided into two regions: Maritima ( Littoral ) between Dinaric mountains and the Adriatic sea which was also defined as the area where the rivers from the mountains flow south into the sea and Serbia which encompassed everything between Dinaric mountains and the river Danube or as defined in the chronicle as the region where the rivers flow from the mountains to the north into the mighty river of Danube . Thus the Maritima encompassed only the areas in the Adriatic sea drainage basin while Serbia encompassed areas in the Black sea ( Danube ) basin . Maritima was further divide in two areas: White and Red Croatia with latter encompassing present day Hercegovina, southern portion of Montengro and northern Albania. On the other hand Dioclean's Serbia would encompass most of present day Serbia, northern part of Montenegro, most of the Bosnia and Croatia north of the Dinaric mountains.[1]
The Latin version of the Chronicle of the Priest of Dioclea, known as "Gesta regum Sclavorum", was translated by Croat-Latin historian Ioannes Lucius (Ivan Lučić, the father of Croatian historiography) in 1666 and printed under the name "De Regno Dalmatiae et Croatiae" ("On the Kingdom of Dalmatia and Croatia". The following is an excerpt (in Latin):
The following is the translation to English:
Andrea Dandolo (1300–1354), the Venetian author of his Chronicle of Dalmatia, who writes of Croatian lands (Dalmatian Kingdom), reiterated the boundaries of Red Croatia:
In Latin:
Translation:
Another writer confirms the diet of Duvno and the distribution of Croatian lands as well as the existence of Red Croatia. Flavius Blondus (1388–1463) was an Italian humanist. In his well known book Historiarum ab inclinatione Romani imperii decades he word for word confirms what Dandolo writes about the Duvno diet and White and Red Croatia.[3]
Numerous Montenegrin and Croatian researchers, linguists and historians (under the flag of Jevrem Brković and Vojislav Nikčević), aside from slowly standardizing a Montenegrin language separately from the Serbian, have confounded a theory of Montenegrin origin. They claim that the Montenegrins are not of Serb origin, but that they have been under heavy Serbian oppression for centuries, especially ever since the "genocidal Saint Sava that made us Orthodox", referring to the fact that Montenegrins were originally Roman Catholic Croats and claiming the reason of their present Orthodox faith is strictly due to the Serbian military intervention of Stefan Nemanja in the 12th century. We should note, however, that Serbs back then were a mixture of Orthodox and Catholics, and religion was not an indicator of ethnic affiliation. The Montenegrin followers of this theory had to flee the 1990s Milošević-sponsored regime of Momir Bulatović, Milo Đukanović and Svetozar Marović; finding refuge in Croatia. Tuđman generally supported their research and the writing of a Montenegrin language in exile, while the group was propagating against the Yugoslav/Montenegrin/Serbian interventions in Croatia's War of Independence, strictly criticizing the 1991-1992 attacks on Dubrovnik. In 1993 Montenegrin Orthodox Church was created and up to now it struggles to take over the Orthodox property in Montenegro, which is under control of the Serbian Church. After the late 1990s large turnover of Montenegro's policy to opposition of Slobodan Milosevic's control of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Brković and his followers returned. They tried to get some recognition in the Republic of Montenegro, supporting the uncanonical Montenegrin Orthodox Church (and conversion to Catholicism at the same time) and the political fights under Milo Djukanovic against Serbia's influence in the Federation, as well as advocation for Montenegrin independence.
With dissidents from the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts, he formed the Doclean Academy of Sciences and Arts, whose research was dedicated to the study of Red Croatia. One of the many ideals was the crossing of Montenegro (which is mostly Serbian Orthodox) to Roman Catholicism, but with elements of Eastern Orthodoxy (in respect to the Orthodoxes of Montenegro). They are also calling for closer ties with Croatia and Albania, or more precisely the return of Red Croatia which would be autonomous inside a Greater Croatia, together with a "White Croatia". This new "Red Croatia" is supposed to contain present-day Montenegro, Herzegovina, southern Dalmatia and most of Albania, as well as "Old Serbia" (Raška and Metohija). The general viewpoint is considered Greater Croatian nationalist irredentism, which also sees Bosnia a component part of this Greater Croatia, as well as most of western Serbia's Vojvodina (Bačka and eastern Srem).
