Talk:History of Dalmatia/Archive 1

Archive 1

Italian city names

I do not understand why the Italian city names are used througout the text? Is it like that in source? Anyway, I do not think it is politicaly correct nowadays, because it strongly reminds on the time of fascist occupation of Dalmatia. Especially it is strange when using Italian variants of originally Croatian names like Cattaro - Kotor. On the same manner could be used French or German or Hungarian names, because Dalmatia was occupied by all these rulers.
So I turned the names to Croatian origin, I hope it is correct. --Mestric 22:09, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

I think the Latin names make sense in the historic descriptions, as do the Italian ones in the period between 1420 and 1797. The influence of Venice and the old Italic population on Dalmatia is obvious, regardless of what fascist Italy did in the 20th century. --Shallot 16:06, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

But this is not the reason to refer to Italian toponyms throughout all the text, because it looks like it is translated from Italian.--Mestric 21:04, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, there were some extras. I think changes to Latin names (slightly different, but still) are fine. --Shallot 14:07, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Old Dalmatians

As far as I am informed, the people lived in Dalmatia before the migration of Slavs are never refered to as Italic. If you do not mind, I changed this to the Dalmatians. They spoke Latin language, and really there is no need to name the Dalmatian towns in Italian. Better in Latin (historically) or Croatian.--Mestric 23:11, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

This was originally from EB1911, IIRC. In any event, I doubt that they ever spoke pure Latin in the vernacular, rather Dalmatian language (other than Slavic, of course), which was a Romance language. The adjective Italic as described on its page would fit them just fine if it included post-Roman-Empire times as well as pre-Roman-Empire times... the Wordnet dictionary also says that "italic" as a noun is a branch of languages of which Latin is the chief representative. --Shallot 16:06, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

I do not see how the italic as it is described there would fit here. Anyway, I will try to find some reference (maybe Katicic's history Ancient Languages of the Balkans), before I continue this debate.--Mestric 21:04, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps "Romance" would be the best. --Shallot 14:07, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Nations in medieval context

And one additional point: I think that mentioning of Croats and Serbs, or Italians, as nations in context of middleage is either not historically or productive. There where Venetians, Ragusans, Dalmatians, and Croats only in meanings of inhabitants of these-days kingdom of Croatia. There was no national conciusnnes in Europe before 19th century. So I deleted , "and mixed Croat and Serb", and chenged Serbia to Raska. I find it important, because such missinterpetations of historical facts were often used as a propaganda.--Mestric 23:40, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, but to say that there were no Serbs in the hinterland would be a propagandist method as well. They migrated just like other Slavs (e.g. the Croats) into the Dinaric Alps, but mostly in the southern parts. This is actually pretty amusing, as previously we had people say that Narentines were all Serbs, and now that none of them are Serbs. Both claims seem like ridiculous overgeneralizations to me. --Shallot 16:06, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

I am not sure if one can speak of Croats and Serbs as nations in this context. You can speak about the Slavic tribes which much more later summed up to Croats or Serbs.--Mestric 21:04, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

That is correct, but it is nevertheless a fact that some of those Slavic tribes were even back then known as "Croats" and as "Serbs" -- there are old documents that use those specific names (De Administrando Imperio, for starters, but others as well). It's possible that a lot of people at the time were generic Slavs, and therefore also possible that this was one of the reasons why the smaller duchies existed separately from main Croatian and Serbian states, but I don't believe we know that for a fact, and it's reasonable to assume that there's some credibility in the documents that mention Croats and Serbs and defer to them. --Shallot 14:07, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Nations as we know them are made up in 19th century, in whole Europe and in Dalmatia as well. I noticed it is one of main problem in historical issues on Balkans on wikipedia. (Rudjer Boskovic!) Medieval history of Dalmatia is extremly pure documented (see Katicic's Literraum studia) and many stories we learned in school are made up in 19th-20th century. That is why I think we should refer here to more modern source, which gets rid of this ridiculous changing of history in sake of nationalisms.--Mestric 21:04, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

"Made up" is a bit too strong a term. I agree that there were lots of interpolations in the modern interpretations, but we can't dismiss them completely. If we did that, we also couldn't refer to "Croats" in the period as inhabitants of "Croatia" (that should be "Croatians", too) because that was also a volatile term.

(Note also that Boskovic lived much later than the period discussed here, by the time ethnicities were less vague a concept, which complicates that matter.) --Shallot 14:07, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

"sharing perforce in the march"

I would also leave out the following paragraph:
"Dalmatia never attained a political or racial ... shared perforce in the march of Italian civilization." It sounds really historically old-fashioned and much from particulary Italian PoV.--Mestric 23:40, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

That's a remnant of EB1911. It can probably be rephrased, but it's true that the cities advanced just like the marine republics of Italy and that they were rather similar. --Shallot 16:06, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

It is true, but it is not written in these paragraph. In paragraph states that Dalmatia did not formed a nation. I would say the Italy also did not formed a nation in these times. Anyway, I will try to find some contemporary source and let you know.--Mestric 21:04, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Right, it's not entirely incorrect but it can be dismissed as impertinent. Go ahead and ditch it. --Shallot 14:07, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

foibe

To Joy: there were many Italians living in Dalmatian territories, 25.000 to 30.000, most of them in Zader. After 1947 those who didn't escape in Italy were forced to chose between Yugoslavian and Italian citizenship, and almost all of them were aware of the massacres in foibe and choosed Italy. Between 1943 and 1945 about 300 Italians were executed in Split, Sibenik, Trogir and in other places, I'm referring to identified peoples, there were many missing persons too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.180.172.85 (talk • contribs) 14:45, 16 November 2004 (UTC)

Earlier history (ca. 900 + A.D.)

Since some Serbian propagandists try (in vain) to Serbianize historical central and southern Dalmatia- they should be reminded to pay attention to historical records: Talk:History of Bosnia and Herzegovina#Coup de grace Mir Harven 12:21, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Pay attention that Doclea is at north fro Skadarsko jezero which is far from Dalmatia. Milan Tešović 15:23, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Split

See discussion here. GhePeU 20:15, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

references to Eastern Orthodoxy etc

User:Kubura has again tried to remove the references to Eastern Orthodoxy (latest diff), this time with the commit log Bogomils had nothing with Great schism. Old border of W & E Christianity was on the Drina river.

However, as it is apparent from the diff, this misses the point. He also changed:

All of these duchies were at the time self-ruled by their Slavic population that was, by religion, mixed pagan and Christian, and by ethnicity could have originated from both Croat and Serb tribes.

...to exclude the possibility that they were Serb by ethnicity. This is wrong because there is no proof whatsoever that all of the southern Dalmatian territories were inhabited by Croats only. There are several indications that there were Serbs there as well - references to them in De Administrando Imperio or the intensive intermingling of Duklja with Raška during the rule of the House of Vojislavljević are fairly decent examples.

Another change involved:

The great schism between Eastern and Western Christianity of 1054 further intensified the rift between the coastal cities and the hinterland, with many of the Slavs in the hinterland preferring the Eastern Orthodoxy (or sometimes the Bogomil creed).

...where the second clause was completely removed. This is wrong because Slavs preferring Orthodoxy is quite apparent from the increasing introduction of Orthodox churches and Slavic rulers from that period onwards in southern Dalmatian hinterland. The reference to Bogomils refers to the Bosnian Church - during this period the northern areas included those that were in the old Roman province of Dalmatia. I'll amend it, but it was a notable trend.

Another change was:

In the period of the rise of the Serbian state of Raška, the Nemanjić dynasty acquired the southern Dalmatian states and the coastal cities by the end of the twelfth century, with the population being mixed, both Catholic and Orthodox with a Serb Orthodox bishopric of Zahumlje being located in the city of Ston.

to remove the references to mixed population and the Zahumlje bishopric, and to mark the Nemanjić dynasty as "temporary". I can't explain this as anything other than censorship and misrepresentation.

Kubura, I can understand that there is an antagonism towards references to Serbs in southern Dalmatia, but at the time the southern parts of the region of Dalmatia included those areas and there appears to be no proof whatsoever against this. Please provide references for your removals if you wish to make them in the future. --Joy [shallot] 16:18, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, Joy, I know about De administrando Imperio, how important source for this time and area is, and and how much good/not good source it is. To shorten, S Dalmatia hinterland is E Herzegowina, so that area is not the matter of this article. Hinterland of Travunja, Zahumlje are Herzegowina, Duklja is Montenegro, so what happened there is not the matter for this article.

Ah, but you are mistaken to think that the 2005 definition of "Dalmatia" applies in the first millenium. This is the core problem. You need to understand that the term "Herzegovina" arose much later than "Dalmatia", and before it did, this was the hinterland of Dalmatia just like Zagora is now more to the north. Before there was a "Herceg" and Herzegovina, Humska zemlja and Travunja+Konavli reached to the sea and were part of the wider region of Dalmatia.

Hence, before the 15th century it's quite appropriate to talk of these territories as Dalmatian hinterland. Also, the relation of Boka Kotorska and down to Bar in the later periods also warrants discussion about that. Maybe this needs to be better explained, but it's not untrue. I'll see if I can explain it better. --Joy [shallot] 12:42, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

About orthodoxy... this part of Croatia was christianized via Byzantium, which had its toehold on coastal cities. Bogomils appeared and remained in hinterland, they didn't reach the coast (if they somewhere did, it had nothing with relation coast-hinterlnad).

Why did I (over)reacted on sentences about Serbs, orthodoxy and stuff? When I read first time this article, I saw that:

1. some brief periods of Dal.history got bigger attention than they deserved, bigger attention than some other, much longer and much important periods,

   This is quite possible. Indeed, much of the 20th century history is trivialized simply because most of the text comes from the 1911th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. We've been working to fix this - please feel free to contribute. --Joy [shallot] 12:42, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

2. the history of some regions/areas was incorporated into history of Dalmatia, although those areas were last time considered as a part of Dalmatia during ancient Rome. If we'll work like this, we can merge it the history of Bosnia.

   There is a gray area between being too generic and too specific; but neither is good. Let me see if I can fix that. --Joy [shallot]

3. somebody put a bunch of lines about Serbs, orthodoxy, zar Dushan, Italian connections... without mentioning as first the Croats, catholicism, local paganism, Croatian kings... Croatian spirit of Dalmatia was completely n-e-g-l-e-c-t-e-d in this article. Nowhere was mentioned that Dalmatia was part of Croatia, that from Dalmatia came Croatian noble families that had a right to elect the Croatian king, Croatian historical monuments from that time, glagolica and poljičica tradition, that the written name "Croat" is first time mentioned in Dalmatia, that there were the capitals of medieval Croatia, nothing about Croatian nobles, which were the lords and rulers of Dalmatian towns, that king Tomislav, that united two Croatias, was from Dalmatia, neither why some parts of De administrando...were found as dubious and disputed. Neither that one part of Dalmatia was White Croatia, and the other part was Red Croatia. For a foreigner, the whole article was misleading.

Please feel free to contribute those things. I've added some, but some of it is missing, indeed. You should see how the original article looked - it mentioned neither Croats nor Serbs, it only spoke of Slavs, and used only Italianized/Magyarized names for locations - talk about slant...

However, bear in mind that we don't want to replace one slant with another - it's much better to have a neutral article that doesn't graphically emphasize things, and instead lets the reader conclude for themselves what is important judging by the amount of relevant content about each covered issue. --Joy [shallot]

Please, would you put back the sections of History of Dalmatia article as articles again? The matter is big, contributions will be numerous. I've put those sections in separate articles, just to avoid the loading the overgrowing text. Sincerely yours, Kubura 02:03, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

It's still not too long, and splitting it up only makes it harder to browse and read as a whole story. If you add enough content, we can split it again later :) --Joy [shallot] 12:42, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

This article is a disgrace

This article is a disgrace. I have on numerous occasions read this article, but to my horror, somebody has turned this into a page about Serbia. It is total propaganda. Shame on you all, that have turned this article into a piece of shit. It is totally misleading and for those that have no idea about the history of this great land, well done, you have totally brainwashed all of them. My family have been natives of this land for more than a thousand years, we have traced our family lineage back as far as Genghis Khan, and no where are Serbs mentioned, apart from the massacres that they incurred on our ancestors in this region. For a person who has not only grown up amongst croats, but also serbs alike, this article has totally changed my views about serbs. (Personal attack removed) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.166.99.229 (talk • contribs) 08:02, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

What? That is a bit extreme . I do not see this article to be THAT biased, given how contentious the topic is. Comments like yours are not useful here.(Personal attack removed) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.243.50.37 (talk • contribs)

Languages used in Catholic Church

This article should reference this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_of_Nin to clarify how Slavic (Croatian) language was introduced into Catholic churches of Dalmatia.

General improvement

To whom it may concern, I took up the task of cleaning up and reorganizing the article to provide a consistent account of Dalmatian history by period. Temporal continuity has been established as best as I could, repetitive pieces of text have been removed, and large sections not directly related to Dalmatian history were moved. I moved the text about minor Dalmatian principalities to the new Medieval Dalmatian principalities article, and all the info about the Dalmatian language was moved to the History section of the Dalmatian language article. Medieval and ancient history is complete, the remainder will be fixed shortly. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 11:45, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Antiquity

Delmatae were not part of Illyria. Illyria was state led by the Ardaei tribe, settled from Central Dalmatian islands to modern day Montenegro. In its best days Illyria spread from Central Dalmatian islands to Epyrus in the south and Dardania and Macedonia in the east. Delmatae were always indenpendent. They arrived to the coast in 3th and 2nd century B.C. and pushed Liburni to the north. They were allies to Illyria against the Romans. Anyhow Delmatae had their own 1,5 century long wars vs Romans beginning in 156 BC. Zenanarh (talk) 12:09, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, go ahead and correct that. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 12:20, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Please check...

that you want "Governorship of Dalmatia" in the infobox. That edit came from a suspect IP. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:58, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

You're right, these nazi-revisionists are tireless. Zenanarh (talk) 13:25, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Most of this article is an exercise in Croat nationalism. It is unworthy of wikipedia. Also, almost totally unsourced Giordaano (talk) 23:36, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Terminology erroneous

Says: "Today the Dalmatians generically means the Dalmatian Slavs (Croats, mostly), but there are small communities of the original inhabitants of Dalmatia: the Dalmatian Italians."

The delicate term "originating", suggests that the Dalmatian Croats are newcomers and the Dalmatian Italians were always there. Whereas we do not speak of "races", "Slav" and "Italian" should refer to speakers of different languages, so strictly speaking, it is likely that the population has remained relatively homogeneous, only switching languages. Furthermore, this ignores the issue of speakers of Dalmatian, Dalmatians that do not fit into either category. Smells a bit irredentism. Ccrazymann (talk) 05:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

This IS irredentism. Etnhnonym "Italo-Dalmati" originated in the 19th century for some small number of the Italians whose ancestors came to Dalmatia during Venetian rule (15th-18th century). These people were the only "newcomers" in whole story, and they have nothing to do with the Dalmatian language. Zenanarh (talk) 07:14, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Where does it say? Zenanarh (talk) 07:32, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Dalmatian neolatins were the original descendants of the romanized Illyrians, living in the roman province of Dalmatia when came the barbarian invasions of the Avars and the Slavs in the VII century. The original Dalmatian neolatins spoke a language that disappeared in the XIX century. Dalmatian Italians started to appear during Venetian control of the region and are directly related to those Dalmatian neolatins. Please, Zenananarh, do not keep changing REAL history because of your croatian out-of-this-century nationalism. Luigi. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.69.137.11 (talk) 16:04, 14 March 2010 (UTC)