Duchy of Croatia: Map & History

History

The Roman provinces and native populations in Southeastern Europe, including the province of Dalmatia and other parts of the Praetorian prefecture of Illyricum, were attacked and conquered by the Huns and Goths with the latter Ostrogoths forming Ostrogothic Kingdom (493–553). The archaeological findings of fibulae and other artifacts confirm the presence of Ostrogoths and Gepids in Northern Dalmatia, and Pannonia.

Although the Byzantine Empire managed to reconquest the territory (albeit the Plague of Justinian and Late Antique Little Ice Age), since the mid-6th century followed even more devastating intrusions and migrations of the early Slavs.

Geography

Within the area of the Roman province of Dalmatia, various tribal groupings, which were called sclaviniae by the Byzantines, were settled along the Adriatic coast. Croatia in the early Middle Ages was an area bounded by the Eastern Adriatic hinterland on one side, then extended to a part of western Herzegovina, western and central Bosnia, then into Lika, Gacka and Krbava, and North-West to Vinodol and Labin in the Croatian Littoral area. Several coastal Dalmatian city-states were under the rule of the Byzantines, including Split, Zadar, Kotor and Dubrovnik, as well as islands of Hvar and Krk. To the south Croatia bordered with the land of the Narentines, which stretched from the rivers Cetina to Neretva, and had the islands of Brač, Hvar, Korčula, Mljet, Vis and Lastovo in its possession.