engleski

From the Triune Kingdom to the Nation: The Role of the Croatian Coat of Arms in the Process of Croatian National Integration

The processes of nation building in modern European history are inseparable from the use of national symbols, primarily tricolor flags. In the Croatian case, unlike in most other European countries, the coat of arms continued to play the role of an important integrative factor. Symbols of medieval Croatia were thus gradually transformed in modern national symbols. During the Middle Ages the Croatian lands were divided in three politically separated but well connected Kingdoms – Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia. They all had their individual coats of arms, but the most cognizable among them was the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Croatia (5x5 white and red squares). From the late 15th to the beginning of the 17th century stronger political connections between these kingdoms were established. That is most noticeable in the banal coat of arms of Toma Bakač Erdödy from the early 1620s, who for the first time bore the title of the ban (viceroy) of Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia. Little attention has been paid to the fact that during the same period most grants of arms granted by the Habsburgs as Croatian rulers to Croatian and Slavonian nobility bear Croatian squares as the symbol of royal power in all three Croatian Kingdoms. Such a practice later had a major impact on the acceptance of white and red (or red and white) squares as national symbols of Croats living in all three historical Kingdoms. Croatian national identity as constructed during the 19th century was based on Croatian as an ethnic name and on historical statehood traditions of the Kingdom of Croatia as the one among three kingdoms whose name reflected the same ethnic name and had inherited the traditions of early medieval independent Croatian kingdom. This had a major impact on the use of Croatian coat of arms. During the same period the process of national integration has transformed silver and red (or red and silver) squares of the Kingdom of Croatia into a kind of all-Croatian national symbol. For the first time it was officially recognized as such in the so-called middle coat of arms of Austria-Hungary in 1916. In 1918 the newly founded Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes approached Croatian national symbols in the same manner. The shield of its coat of arms consisted of three “tribal, ” i. e. national, symbols. Croats were therefore represented by 25 Croatian squares. From that moment on they have remained in use as unchallenged symbols of Croatian identity, in spite of the fact that the order of fields (red or white, or white or red) is still a matter of some discussions. They are symbols of the modern Republic of Croatia, as well as being symbols of other Croatian political and territorial entities throughout the 20th century.

Croatian coat of arms ; national symbols ; national integration

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