Croatia in Personal Union With Hungary - Historical Context, Terms, Controversies

Historical Context, Terms, Controversies

The events surrounding the union of Croatia and Hungary are a source of historical controversy. Croatian historians argue that the union was a personal one in the form of a shared king, while Hungarian historians insist that Croatia was conquered. The significance of the debate lies in the Croatian claim to an unbroken heritage of historical statehood which is compromised by the other claim. The Hungarian claim was made in the 19th century during the Hungarian national reawakening, while the same argument could also be leveled about the idea of a personal union first articulated in the fourteenth century. The actual nature of the relationship is difficult to define. Sometimes Croatia acted as an independent agent and at other times as a vassal of Hungary. However, Croatia retained a large degree of internal independence.

According to the research of the Library of Congress, a faction of Croatian nobles offered the Croatian throne to King Ladislaus I of Hungary after the death of Zvonimir in an effort to assert legitimacy. In 1091 Ladislaus accepted, and in 1094 he founded the Zagreb bishopric, which later became the ecclesiastical center of Croatia. King Coloman, King of Hungary crushed this opposition after the death of Ladislaus and won the crown of Dalmatia and Croatia in 1102. The crowning of Coloman forged a link between the Croatian and Hungarian crowns that lasted until the end of World War I. Croats claim that Croatia remained a sovereign state despite the voluntary union of the two crowns, but Hungarians believe that Hungary annexed Croatia outright in 1102. In either case, Hungarian culture permeated Croatia, the Croatian-Hungarian border shifted often, and at times Hungary treated Croatia as a vassal state. Croatia, however, had its own local governor, or ban (a privileged landowning nobility) and an assembly of nobles, the Sabor.

Other sources say King Coloman established a personal union of the Kingdom of Croatia and the Kingdom of Hungary by an alleged agreement called the Pacta conventa. Although the precise time and terms of Pacta Conventa later became a matter of dispute, there was nevertheless at least a non-written agreement that regulated the relations between Hungary and Croatia in approximately the same way. According to Daniel Power, Croatia became part of Hungary in the late 11th and early twelfth century. The official entering of Croatia into a personal union with Hungary (becoming part of the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen) had several important consequences. Institutions of separate Croatian statehood were maintained with the Sabor (parliament) and the ban (viceroy) in the name of the king. A single ban governed all Croatian provinces until 1225, when the authority was split between one ban of the whole of Slavonia and one ban of Dalmatia and Croatia. The positions were intermittently held by the same person after 1345, and officially merged back into one position by 1476.