land and people
Bearing in mind the specific features and influences which are interwoven in it, the root and expression of Croatian culture has always been unambiguously European. Within today’s European Union, several cultural circles can be identified: Central European, Austrian, German, Italian, French, Iberian and British, with all of which Croatia has had rewarding contacts through the ages.
The names Croat and Croatia in the country as it is today have gradually superseded the ethnically wider concept of the Slavs and their first territorial groupings, Sklavonija, Slovinje (Sclaviniae), and the individual names of the ancient Illyrian tribes...
In their early cultural history, the Croats appear as a ‘nation of three scripts’. Along with Latin, in different variations, they also used two Slavic scripts, Glagolitic and Cyrillic. Both appeared in the 9th century and were linked to the educational activities...
Croatian-European links in the Carolingian period retained the characteristics of links with wider Western culture overall; the Carolingian Renaissance gave that culture a general European significance within Croatia too. The tangible forms of such links...
Geographical proximity and the gravitation of Italian regions towards the Adriatic Sea, along with the ecclesiastical and political tendencies of Croatia towards the West, dictated, in spite of many mutual prejudices, common connections through the centuries...
Because the Mediterranean Sea served as a geographical link, Croatian historical ties with the Iberian Peninsula were more developed with Spain than with Portugal. As an oceanic country first and foremost, Portugal was traditionally more oriented towards...
Links between Croatia and German-speaking countries and their cultures are long-standing and complex. This is especially due to the fact that, for almost 400 years, from the election of Ferdinand I as Croatian king...
In the Old English 9th century translation from the Latin by King Alfred of the History of the World by Paulus Orosius, to which the king appended a review of more recent history up to his own day, White Croatia is mentioned, as are the geographical names...
Apart from its relations with leading European nations and cultures, relations with Central European nations have also been important to Croatia for historical and geographical reasons. Relations between...