This is the history of Croatia. See also history of Europe, and history of present-day nations and states.
The area known as Croatia today was first inhabited in the early Neolithic period. In recorded history, it was colonized first by the Celts and later by the Illyrians. Illyria was a sovereign state until the Romans conquered it in 168 B.C.. Forebears of Croatia's current Slav population settled there in the 7th century.
The Croats arrived from the north around the year 600 -- the exact date is not known. They were Christianized in the 9th century under Duke Porin, although they were never obliged to use Latin -- rather, they had masses in their own language and used the Glagolitic alphabet (only later did the Latin alphabet prevail). The first written mention of Croats was in a statute by Duke Trpimir from 852. The country was recognized by Pope John VIII as an independent dukedom under Branimir in 879.
The first King of Croatia, Tomislav of the Trpimir dynasty, was crowned in Duvno (Tomislavgrad) in 925, having united the Pannonian and Dalmatian duchys and created a sizeable state, including most of today's Central Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, and most of Bosnia. History also recalls the name of king [[[Dmitar Svinimir|Zvonimir]] through the Baška Tablet where his kinghood is carved in stone (the stone was preserved until today and is kept in the archaeological museum in Zagreb).
After the death of Zvonimir, Croatian lords struggled for independence and eventually had to recognize Ladislav I as the common king for Croatia and Hungary in a treaty called "Pacta Conventa" (1102), thus making a personal union with Hungary. The two crowns would remain connected until the end of World War I.
Before the 1526 Battle of Mohacs, the Hungarian dynasty was extinguished, and the Hungarian nobility elected the Austrian Ferdinand Habsburg king. During the next 200 years, the Ottoman Empire was a constant threat, and the Military Frontier was created in 1578, an area carved out of Croatia and Slavonia and ruled directly from Vienna. Because the areas were deserted, Austria encouraged the settlement of Serbs, Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks and Ruthenes/Ukrainians and other Slavs in the Military Frontier, creating an ethnic patchwork. By the 1700s, the Ottoman Empire was driven out of Hungary and Croatia and Austria brought the empire under central control.
The governments of Austria and Hungary each tried to colonize Croatia: they imposed their languages on the Croatian people and immigrated many of their own colonists to Croatia. Croatian romantic nationalism emerged to counteract the non-violent but apparent Germanization and Magyarization. The Croatian national revival began in the 1830s with the Illyrian Movement. By the 1840s, the movement had moved from cultural goals to resisting Hungarian political demands. In 1868, Croatia was given domestic autonomy, but the governor was appointed by Hungary. Struggle towards more independence within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was interrupted by the World War I.
Shortly before the end of the Great War, on October 29, 1918, the Croatian Parliament severed relations with Austria and Hungary void as the Serbian and Allied armies defeated Vienna's. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was created December 1 and later renamed to Yugoslavia. The Croats were but a significant minority in the country and were limited to leading the opposition whereas the Serbian parties formed majority governments with the help of several Muslim and Catholic parties (Bosnian Muslim JMO, Albanian/Turkish Cemiyet, Slovene-Bunjevatz clericals). Stjepan Radić, the leader of the largest Croatian political party (the Croatian Peasants' Party) was mortally wounded by a Serb deputy, Puniša Račić, in the middle of a Parliament session in 1928. Upon Radić's rejecting the notion of a separation by Croatia, King Aleksandar of Yugoslavia proclaimed a dictatorship. Croatia received some autonomy in 1939 when the provinces were shuffled so that there was one called the Croatian banovina comprised of Croatia, Dalmatia, and parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
However, the militarist regime in Belgrade crumbled a few years after Aleksandar's death and the Axis powers quickly occupied Yugoslavia in 1941. The Croatian radical-right Ustaše were installed by Hitler and Mussolini, forming the so-called "Independent State of Croatia". The puppet regime in Croatia enacted racial laws, formed eight concentration camps and started a campaign to exterminate Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. Later in the war they opened up a large complex of five concentration camps near Jasenovac in which up to a hundred thousand people were murdered (some say this camp was the third biggest of WW2). Overall the Ustaša death count may have approached 400,000 people, but all written records were destroyed to cover it up. Serbian guerilla Četnici were active in some parts of this puppet state, ostensibly formed to protect Serb villages but were known to have committed atrocities against Croats in retaliation.
The anti-fascist movement emerged early in 1941 under command of Josip Broz Tito, as in other parts of Yugoslavia. Many Croats and others joined this "partisan" movement, almost controlled by communists. With the help of the Soviet Union's Red Army, Tito's partisans won the war and expelled the quislings (Nazi collaborators). Partisan forces did, however, retaliate when the British forces on the Austrian-Slovenian border refused to accept passage of a large group of anti-communists, Ustashi followers and civilians retreating for Italy. Partisans are said to have executed up to 150,000 people, some of them in a field near the village of Bleiburg near that border, a lot of them on a "death march" back into Yugoslavia.
Croatia became part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1945, which was run by Tito's Communist Party. Tito adopted a carefully contrived policy to manage the conflicting national ambitions of the Croats and Serbs. In effect Serbian interests were placated with substantial although not complete political dominance in the post war state such as it was in 1991 when 134 out of 150 generals in the Yugoslav national army general staff were either Serbian or Montenegrin.
Trends after 1965 led to the Croatian spring of 1970-71, when students in Zagreb organized demonstrations for greater civil liberties and greater Croatian autonomy. The regime stifled the public protest and incarcerated the leaders, but many key Croatian representatives in the Party silently supported this cause, so a new Constitution was ratified in 1974 that gave more rights to the individual republics.
In 1980, after Tito's death, political and economic difficulties started to mount and the federal government began to crumble. Inflation soared, and reforms failed. In 1990, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) led by Franjo Tuđman won the first free postwar elections. Opposition to the Belgrade regime was on the rise.
Croatian emigres, a lot of which were descendants of the Ustaša from WWII that managed to escape, financially supported the election of Franjo Tuđman. Serbs, who constituted 12% of the population of Croatia and who had enjoyed disproportionate influence through their large membership of the League of Communists in Croatia rejected and feared the loss of influence represented by an independent Croatian state. Memories from WWII were manipulated and abused by the increasingly militant Belgrade regime of Slobodan Milošević in order to create a war climate. Milošević was riding the wave of Serbian nationalism, sparking fear across Yugoslavia.
In the summer of 1990, Serbs from the mountainous areas near the Bosnian border (counties of low population density but with Serbs in the majority) rebelled and formed their own provisional state called Republic of Serb Krajina. The Croatian government immediately sent special police forces to interven, but helicopters carrying them were forced to land by the planes of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) under the dictate of generals from Belgrade. The government of Serbia secretly supported the rebels in Croatia with funds and personnel. The conflict culminated with the so-called "log revolution", when Krajina Serbs blocked the roads to the tourist destinations in Dalmatia.
Extremists from both sides started an elaborate campaign of harassment and even abductions and murders of people simply because they weren't of the same nationality. Ethnic hatred grew and various incidents fueled the propaganda machines that in turn caused even more hatred. The wider conflict quickly escalated into armed incidents in the area now known as Krajina. The Croatian government declared independence from Yugoslavia on June 25th, 1991 and started building a real army to counter the Serb-led JNA which had been expanding the Krajina territory. One month after the declaration of independence, Serbian forces held about one third of the country, and some 100,000 Croats and 200,000 Serbs were internally displaced (according to Croat and Serb figures, respectively), in what became known as ethnic cleansing.
In December 1991, during the heavy fighting, Germany recognized Croatia's (and Slovenia's) independence, the first EU country to do so. Some, including successive US Secretaries of State Lawrence Eagleburger and Warren Christopher, have strongly criticized this action, which they say escalated the war. Some would say that by doing nothing and imposing an arms embargo on the seceding republics, western nations silently encouraged the Serbian rampage accross Yugoslavia. The EU was persuaded to recognize the independence of the two breakaway republics in January 1992.
January 1992 brought a UN-sponsored cease-fire and the retreat of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA). Around the same time, war started in Bosnia and Herzegovina, from where hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to Croatia. In 1995, the Croatian army reclaimed Krajina (except for a small strip near the Serbian border) and in just four days about 300,000 Serbs fled to Bosnia and Serbia. The Croatian army proceeded to fight Serbs in Bosnia alongside the Muslims, but further advances were prevented by a US diplomatic intervention that saved Bosnian Serbs' capital Banja Luka from Croatian take-over (Croatian troops were 23 kilometers from the city centre). A few months later, the war ended upon the negotiation of the Dayton Agreement (in Dayton, Ohio) which would later be signed in Paris in December 1995. The remaining part of Krajina was peacefully reintegrated into Croatia by 1998.
Tuđman died in 1999 and the nationalist HDZ government was replaced by a center-left coalition in early 2000. Most refugees from the previously occupied areas, both Croats and Serbs, have returned to their homes rebuilt by the government.
The country applied for accession to the European Union in 2003.