The Croats are a Slavic-speaking people who lived in an area of what is today Galicia (in Ukraine and Poland). From there they migrated further south to present-day Croatia during the 7th century. Nominally under East Roman and then Frankish authority, Croatia eventually became a strong independant kingdom, but in 1102 the Croatians ended a decade-long dynastic struggle by agreeing to submit themselves to Hungarian authority.
By the mid-1400s, the Hungarian kingdom was gravely impacted by the Ottoman expansion and much of the mountainous country now known as Bosnia and Herzegovina fell to the Turks. At the same time, Dalmatia became mostly Venetian. Dubrovnik was a city-state that was firstly Byzantine (Roman) and Venetian, but later, unlike other Dalmatian city-states, it became independant as Republic of Dubrovnik, even if it was often under the suzerainty of neighboring powers.
The Battle of Mohács in 1526 led the Croatian Parliament to invite the Habsburgs, under Ferdinand I, to assume control over Croatia. Habsburg rule eventually did prove to be successful in thwarting the Ottomans, and by the 18th century, much of Croatia was free of Turkish control. Istria, Dalmatia and Dubrovnik all eventually passed to the Habsburg Monarchy between 1797 and 1815.
Following World War I and the demise of Austria-Hungary, Croatia joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (which became Yugoslavia in 1929). Yugoslavia was invaded during World War II and Croatia was made into a fascist puppet-state named the Independent State of Croatia. After the defeat of the Axis powers, Yugoslavia became a federal socialist state under the strong hand of Josip Broz Tito.
Although Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, it had to endure four-to-five years of sporadic and often bitter fighting with the Yugoslav People's Army and the Army of the internationally unrecognized Republic of Serbian Krajina. The Croatian major offensives in 1995, Operation Storm and Operation Flash, defeated the separatists and ended the war, restoring the territories of Krajina to Croatia. Between 1992 and late 1995, various Croatian forces were also involved in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Peaceful integration of the remaining separatist territories was completed in 1998 under UN supervision.
This article is however, incomplete and does a shabby job of portrying the long and eventfull history of my country.... It doesn't mention the NDH (Indepentand State of Croatia) that was formed durin WW2 (but lated only 3 days as German troops marched in Zagreb).
During it's histroy, for unknown reasons, croatian government had a stupid tendecy to join some otehr empires/ federaions/ whatever ( with a large ammount of control left) and eventually loose allmost all control and sovereginty over it's territory.
