Kotor, Montenegro & Dubrovnik, Croatia: "Down to Dalmatia" circa 1920 deRochemont & Glenn
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...