more at http://news.quickfound.net/intl/croatia_news.html Film opens with 4 minutes of scenes of Venice, Italy, then moves across the sea to "the rugged Dalmatian coast [now mostly Croatia], home of the ancient Illyrian pirates, raiders of the Adriatic." The cities of Cattaro (now Kotor, Montenegro) and Ragusa (now Dubrovnik, Croatia) are visited. Silent. Public domain film from the Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalmatia Dalmatia (/dælˈmeɪʃə/; Croatian: Dalmacija, Croatian pronunciation: [dǎlmaːt͡sija]; see names in other languages) is one of the four historical regions of Croatia, alongside Croatia proper, Slavonia, and Istria. Located on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, the region's hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges in width from fifty kilometres in the north, to just a few kilometres in the south... Definition The name Dalmatia derives from the name of the Dalmatae tribe, which is connected with the Illyrian word delme meaning "sheep" (Albanian: dele). In antiquity the Roman province of Dalmatia was much larger than the present-day Split-Dalmatia County, stretching from Istria in the north to historical Albania in the south. Dalmatia signified not only a geographical unit, but was an entity based on common culture and settlement types, a common narrow eastern Adriatic coastal belt, Mediterranean climate, sclerophyllous vegetation of the Illyrian province, Adriatic carbonate platform, and karst geomorphology.[citation needed] Modern area Dalmatia is today a historical region only, not formally instituted in Croatian law. Its exact extent is therefore uncertain and subject to public perception... "Dalmatia" is therefore generally perceived to extend approximately to the borders of the Austrian Kingdom of Dalmatia... From 1420 to 1797 the Republic of Venice controlled most of Dalmatia, calling it Esclavonia in the 15th century with the southern enclave, the Bay of Kotor, being called Albania Veneta. Venetian was the commercial lingua franca in the Mediterranean at that time, and it heavily influenced Dalmatian and to a lesser degree coastal Croatian and Albanian. The southern city of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) became de facto independent in 1358 through the Treaty of Zadar when Venice relinquished its suzerainty over it to Louis I of Hungary. In 1481, Ragusa switched allegiance to the Ottoman Empire. This gave its tradesmen advantages such as access to the Black Sea, and the Republic of Ragusa was the fiercest competitor to Venice's merchants in the 15th and 16th century... At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Dalmatia was granted as a province to the Emperor of Austria. It was officially known as the Kingdom of Dalmatia... At the end of the First World War, the Austrian Empire disintegrated, and Dalmatia was again split between the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) which controlled most of it, and the Kingdom of Italy which held small portions of northern Dalmatia around Zadar and the islands of Cres, Lošinj and Lastovo... Dalmatia was a strategic region during World War I that both Italy and Serbia intended to seize from Austria-Hungary... In 1922, the territory of the former Kingdom of Dalmatia was divided into two provinces, the District of Split (Splitska oblast), with its capital in Split, and the District of Dubrovnik (Dubrovačka oblast), with its capital in Dubrovnik. In 1929, the Littoral Banovina (Primorska Banovina), a province of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, was formed. Its capital was Split, and it included most of Dalmatia and parts of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina... Following the surrender of Italy in 1943, most of Italian-controlled Dalmatia was reverted to Croatian control. Zadar was razed by the Allies during World War II, starting the exodus of its Italian population. After WWII, Dalmatia became part of the People's Republic of Croatia, part of the SFR Yugoslavia (then called the Federative People's Republic of Yugoslavia). The territory of former Kingdom of Dalmatia was divided between two federal Republics of Yugoslavia and most of the territory went to Croatia, leaving only the Bay of Kotor to Montenegro. When Yugoslavia dissolved in 1991, those borders were retained and remain in force. During the Croatian war of Independence, most of Dalmatia was a battleground between the Croatian government and local Serb rebels, with much of the region being placed under the control of Serbs. Croatia did regain southern parts of these territories in 1992 but did not regain all of the territory until 1995...

• published: 26 Nov 2014
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