Croat

people
Also known as: Hrvati

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  • differences of regional languages
    • In Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian language

      …of speech employed by Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims). The term Serbo-Croatian was coined in 1824 by German dictionary maker and folklorist Jacob Grimm (see Brothers Grimm). In the 21st century, linguists and philologists adopted Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) as a more accurate and comprehensive label

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    • In Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian language: Writing, pronunciation, and spelling

      …of “the Serbian language” and Croats of “the Croatian language,” though they ended the century with standard forms much more similar and mutually intelligible than they had had previously. Yet the Croats maintained a favourite cultural practice of purism, seeking to replace foreign words with old or newly coined Croatian…

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distribution

    • Bosnia and Herzegovina
      • Bosnia and Herzegovina
        In Bosnia and Herzegovina: Ethnic groups and religions

        …Bosniaks, the Serbs, and the Croats. Continuing efforts by the international community to promote the return of persons forcibly displaced during the Bosnian conflict (1992–95) to their original homes, as well as domestic political sensitivities, blocked the conduct of a census well into the 21st century. Nevertheless, it is estimated…

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    • Croatia
      • Croatia
        In Croatia: Ethnic groups and religions

        In addition to the Croats and the Serbs, there are small groups of Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks), Hungarians, Italians, and Slovenes as well as a few thousand Albanians, Austrians, Bulgarians, Czechs, Germans, and other nationalities.

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    history of

      Bosnia and Herzegovina

      • Bosnia and Herzegovina
        In Bosnia and Herzegovina: Ancient and medieval periods

        …included two powerful tribes, the Croats and the Serbs: Croats probably covered most of central, western, and northern Bosnia, while Serbs extended into the Drina River valley and modern Herzegovina. The terms “Serb” and “Croat” were in this period tribal labels; they were subsequently used to refer to the inhabitants…

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      • Bosnian War
        • Bosnian conflict: destruction in Sarajevo
          In Bosnian War

          Croats. After years of bitter fighting that involved the three Bosnian groups as well as the Yugoslav army, Western countries with backing by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) imposed a final cease-fire negotiated at Dayton, Ohio, U.S., in 1995.

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      • Balkans
        • Balkans
          In Balkans: Problems of integration

          …from the formerly subject groups: Croat, Romanian, Ukrainian, and Slovene—though poor Magyar or German peasants were also allowed a share of the redistributed property. The process of redistribution was not equally enforced; it frequently created resentment and perpetrated injustice, and it was perhaps of questionable economic value. Nevertheless, it was…

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      • Croatia
        • Croatia
          In Croatia: Croatia to the Ottoman conquests

          The lands where the Croats would settle and establish their state lay just within the borders of the Western Roman Empire. In the 6th and 7th centuries ce, Slavs arrived in the western Balkans, settling on Byzantine territory along the Adriatic and in the hinterland and gradually merging with…

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        • Croatia
          In Croatia: Croatia in Yugoslavia, 1945–91

          …Spring), was victorious in the Croatian elections of 1990. The Serb minority was deeply alarmed by Croatia’s new constitution (promulgated in December 1990), which omitted Serbs as a “constituent people,” and by the actions of the new government, which purged Serbs from public administration, especially the police. Serbs’ fears also…

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      • Dayton Accords
      • Serbia
        • Serbia
          In Serbia: The early Slav states

          …Bulgarians, Macedonians, and Montenegrins) from Croats and Slovenes.

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        • Serbia
          In Serbia: The scramble for the Balkans

          In the latter regions Croats were exposed to a regime of Magyarization, which in turn stimulated Croat nationalism. The old Military Frontier, with its large Serb population, was abolished in 1881, bringing the Serbs into an expanded civil Croatia. In an attempt to consolidate their own power, the Magyars…

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        • Serbia
          In Serbia: The third Yugoslavia

          Thus, when a Croatian offensive in the spring and summer of 1995 stripped the Krajina of virtually its entire Serb population, Serbia did not intervene (although many of the expelled Serbs were resettled in the Vojvodina). Serbia also failed to go to the aid of Bosnian Serbs when…

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      Slav, member of the most numerous ethnic and linguistic body of peoples in Europe, residing chiefly in eastern and southeastern Europe but extending also across northern Asia to the Pacific Ocean. Slavic languages belong to the Indo-European family. Customarily, Slavs are subdivided into East Slavs (chiefly Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians), West Slavs (chiefly Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Wends, or Sorbs), and South Slavs (chiefly Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Slovenes, Macedonians, and Montenegrins). Bulgarians, though of mixed origin like the Hungarians, speak a Slavic language and are often designated as South Slavs. (See Bulgar.)

      In religion, the Slavs traditionally divided into two main groups: those associated with the Eastern Orthodox Church (Russians, most Ukrainians, most Belarusians, most Bulgarians, Serbs, and Macedonians) and those associated with the Roman Catholic Church (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Slovenes, some Ukrainians, and some Belarusians). The division is further marked by the use of the Cyrillic alphabet by the former (but including all Ukrainians and Belarusians) and the Latin alphabet by the latter. There are also many minority religious groups, such as Muslims, Protestants, and Jews, and in recent times communist governments’ official encouragement of atheism, together with a general trend toward secularism, has eroded membership in the traditional faiths.

      The original habitat of the Slavs is still a matter of controversy, but scholars believe they populated parts of eastern Europe. They entered the historical record about the 6th century ce, when they expanded westward into the country between the Oder and the Elbe-Saale line, southward into Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, and the Balkans, and northward along the upper Dnieper River. When the migratory movements had ended, there appeared among the Slavs the first rudiments of state organizations, each headed by a prince with a treasury and defense force, and the beginning of class differentiation.

      Greece
      More From Britannica
      Greece: The Slavs

      In the centuries that followed, there developed scarcely any unity among the various Slavic peoples. The cultural and political life of the West Slavs as well as that of the Slovenes and coastal Croatians was integrated into the general European pattern. They were influenced largely by philosophical, political, and economic changes in the West, such as feudalism, humanism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution. As their lands were invaded by Mongols and Turks, however, the Russians and Balkan Slavs remained for centuries without any close contact with the European community; they evolved a system of bureaucratic autocracy and militarism that tended to retard the development of urban middle classes and to prolong the conditions of serfdom. The state’s supremacy over the individual tended to become more firmly rooted.

      A faint kind of Slavic unity sometimes appeared. In the 19th century Pan-Slavism developed as a movement among intellectuals, scholars, and poets, but it rarely influenced practical politics. The various Slavic nationalities conducted their policies in accordance with what they regarded as their national interests, and those policies were as often bitterly hostile toward other Slavic peoples as they were friendly toward non-Slavs. Even political unions of the 20th century, such as that of Yugoslavia, were not always matched by feelings of ethnic or cultural accord, nor did the sharing of communism after World War II necessarily provide more than a high-level political and economic alliance.

      The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Jeff Wallenfeldt.