Ravni kotari

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Part of the Ravni kotari region near the village of Ostrovica in the Lišane Ostrovičke municipality , viewed from north to south

As Ravni Kotari (German about "plain districts" ) refers to the surrounding areas and the hinterland of the northern Dalmatian town of Zadar in Croatia , the south-east as far as the mouth of the river Krka stretches. Before the Yugoslav Wars, it was one of the most ethnically mixed regions within Yugoslavia. Today it is an agriculturally relatively well developed area with greenhouse crops and many orchards and vineyards.

location

The region extends from the north of the Vrsi peninsula to Benkovac , which is also the administrative center of the region, and on to Skradin . It borders in the northeast, east and southeast on the Dalmatian hinterland, the Bukovica and Zagora , and in the north on the island of Pag . Administratively it is divided between the Zadar and Šibenik-Knin counties .

history

The first settlers in the region were, as in all of Dalmatia, the Illyrians , who founded the settlement Diadora ( Croatian : Zadar ) here. In the 2nd century BC The Romans subjugated Zadar and with it the entire area around the city.

The region became more important again after the fall of the Western Roman Empire , when Zadar became the capital of the Byzantine theme of Dalmatia.

With the conquest of the Slavs in the Balkans in the 7th and 8th centuries AD, the Roman and Illyrian settlers were more and more displaced and now the Croats settled in this area. Local Croatian rulers ruled the area in the 7th to 11th centuries until Croatia formed a personal union with Hungary in 1102 .

In the meantime, around the year 1000, the parts of the area were placed under Venetian protection after the rule had long changed between fighting Franks and Byzantines.

From the beginning of the 12th century, several attacks by Venice on Zadar followed until the city was conquered during the fourth crusade in 1202. With the rise of the Greater Serbian Kingdom in the 14th century under Stefan Dušan, Orthodox Serbs also settled in Dalmatia and thus also to Ravni kotari, where they founded three Serbian monasteries in neighboring Bukovica .

As the Ottoman expansion into Europe began and spread, the region was partially divided between Venice and the Ottomans after Croatian losses in the first half of the 16th century . Here the village of Islam acted as a border point. The Serbian Orthodox village of Islam Grčki and the eastern part of the region were placed under Ottoman rule and the Croatian Roman Catholic Islam Latinski and the western area of ​​the Ravni kotari were in Venetian hands.

Venice fell in 1797 and the Ravni Kotari and Zadar passed to the Habsburg monarchy . The latter had to cede the region to France in 1805, which proposed it to the Illyrian provinces. During the French rule, the first newspaper in Croatian appeared in Zadar, the Kraljski Dalmatin (1806-1810).

In December 1813, after a six-day bombardment of Zadar, the region returned to the Habsburg Monarchy by surrendering, and it remained in its possession until 1918. The region now belonged to the Kingdom of Dalmatia, which was one of the Habsburg crown lands .

After the First World War, Zadar fell to Italy through the Rapallo border treaty (1920) , but the Ravni kotari now belonged to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later called "Kingdom of Yugoslavia"). Zadar thus formed an Italian exclave in the otherwise Yugoslavian Dalmatia.

With the Balkan campaign of the Axis powers in 1941 , the Ravni kotari, like the rest of Dalmatia, fell to the fascist Italy , or the independent state of Croatia . This time was marked by bloody clashes of the population against the occupiers, but also among themselves. So Croatians and Serbs waged an underground war against the Italians, but also fought each other in a very brutal way.

Part of the Ravni kotari region near the village of Posedarje in the northeast

As the Second World War came to an end and the collapse of the fascist organizations in Yugoslavia (Serbian Četniks and Croatian Ustaša ) and the occupier loomed, the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army conquered the area and ended the fighting. Since the end of the Second World War, the area belonged to communist or socialist Yugoslavia.

After all, since 1991 and the war in Croatia , the Ravni kotari became part of the territory of the independent Republic of Croatia .

population

Similar to the neighboring Bukovica, the ethnic composition of the population of the Ravni kotari has changed several times in the course of history due to the wars that the area had to endure. After the Ottomans withdrew, the Croats and Serbs made up almost the entire population. In the interior (towards Bukovica and Knin ) after the Second World War, Serbs made up the majority of the population. In Zadar and the coastal area, as well as Biograd na Moru , Croatians were in the majority, and the proportion of the population of Serbs, for example, in Zadar until 1991 was approx. 20% and in Biograd na Moru approx. 10%.

With the beginning of the Croatian War in 1991, the Yugoslav People's Army captured the predominantly Serbian villages and communities of the Ravni kotari and began the siege of Zadar. The siege lasted until 1993 when the Croatian army started the Maslenica offensive , which destroyed the Maslenica Bridge . The now Serbian army (the Yugoslav People's Army had officially disbanded in 1992) had to withdraw, and almost the whole area was conquered by the Croatian army.

Today the Croatian majority and the Serb minority live in peace. You are mainly concerned with agriculture, in particular with fruit growing , viticulture , vegetable growing and ornamental plants .

Great personalities

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.hic.hr/books/creation/part-07.htm