From Illyria to Croatia: the early past of the kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia in Juraj Rattkay's historical narrative

The article analyzes the description of the early Croatian history presented in Juraj Rattkay's book "History of the kings and bans of the kingdoms of Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia" (Memoria regum et banorum regnorum Dalmatiae, Croatiae, et Sclavoniae) (1652), which was the earliest consistent presentation of the history of Croatia (Croatian-Slavonian Kingdom) as a separate entity from the very beginning to modern era. Based on the fact that the main means of creating a national history is projecting contemporary ethnic categories into the distant past, the author of this article focuses on identifying those aspects of Rattkay's narrative on the early Croatian history that were caused by what is usually called ethnic discourse, that is a historically determined way of structuring social, political, and cultural reality in ethnic categories. In doing so, the author shows that the picture of the early past of the Croatian-Slavonian Kingdom, presented by Rattkay in his historical narrative, was in no way a result of connecting mechanically pieces of heterogeneous historical evidence. On the contrary, Rattkay's picture of the early past had a clear internal logic. The basis of this logic was the representation of the kingdoms of Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia, on the one hand, as three components of one ethno-political organism, and on the other, as three ethno-political units, each of them having their own historical individuality. In his narrative, Rattkay adheres to the idea of the existence of three Illyrian tribes (nationes) - Dalmatians, Croats, and Slavs, each of whom, in his view, inhabited its own kingdom. At the same time, all three tribes were parts of a single "Illyrian nation" and used the Slavic language. The political equivalent of this ethnic unity was the unity of the "Illyrian" kingdom, which embraced all the three kingdoms, and, as a rule, was under the rule of a single king. The idea of the existence of inseparable ties between an ethnic group (natio) and a polity (regnum) resulted in Rattkay's combining elements of Illyrianism, which was a South Slavic proto-national ideology characteristic especially for Dalmatia and the Republic of Dubrovnik, with those of the patriotism of the Croatian-Slavonian estates. Unlike the Dalmatian authors of Illyrianist tradition (Priboevic, Orbini, etc.), Rattkay did not use the term "Slavs" (Sclavi) as a designation of all Slavic peoples, but identified Slavs with the inhabitants of the kingdom of Slavonia, which was a characteristic feature of the Slavonian usage of the term. By identifying this feature of Rattkay's ethnic discourse, the author explains the genesis of such figures of Rattkay's narrative as Slavonian kings Keanus and Godescalcus. The author concludes that Rattkay's notion of the early past of the Croatian-Slavonian Kingdom was a result of his projecting a specific "hybrid" identity, consisting of elements of the proto-national Illyrianism and Croatian-Slavonian patriotism, deep into the centuries.

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