LITMIR.BIZ

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066215538

Table of Contents

       CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

       CHAPTER II THE FOUNDATION AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE CITY (656-1204)

       CHAPTER III VENETIAN SUPREMACY

       I.—THE CONSTITUTION AND THE LAWS, 1204-1276.

       CHAPTER IV VENETIAN SUPREMACY

       II.—SERVIAN AND BOSNIAN WARS, 1276-1358

       CHAPTER V THE TRADE OF RAGUSA

       CHAPTER VI ART IN THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES

       CHAPTER VII RAGUSA UNDER HUNGARIAN SUPREMACY—THE TURKISH INVASION, 1358-1420

       CHAPTER VIII THE TURKISH CONQUEST (1420-1526)

       CHAPTER IX TRADE AND INTERNAL CONDITIONS DURING THE HUNGARIAN PERIOD

       CHAPTER X RAGUSA INDEPENDENT OF HUNGARY (1526-1667)

       CHAPTER XI RAGUSAN SHIPS AND SEAMEN IN THE SERVICE OF SPAIN

       CHAPTER XII FROM THE EARTHQUAKE TO THE NAPOLEONIC WARS (1667-1797)

       CHAPTER XIII ART SINCE THE YEAR 1358

       CHAPTER XIV LITERATURE

       CHAPTER XV THE FALL OF THE REPUBLIC

       LIST OF BOOKS ON THE HISTORY AND TOPOGRAPHY OF RAGUSA

       BIBLIOGRAPHY

       COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS

       CHRONICLES AND GENERAL HISTORIES OF RAGUSA

       HISTORIES OF OTHER COUNTRIES

       COMMERCIAL HISTORIES

       SPECIAL HISTORIES

       ART AND LITERATURE

       TOPOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL

       INDEX

CHAPTER I

       INTRODUCTION

       Table of Contents

      THE eastern shore of the Adriatic from the Quarnero to the Bocche di Cattaro is a series of deep inlets and bays, with rocky mountains rising up behind, while countless islands, forming a veritable archipelago, follow the coastline. The country is for the most part bare and stony. The cypress, the olive, the vine grow on it, but never in great quantities. Patches of juniper and other bushes are often the only relief to the long stretches of sterile coast. Here and there more favoured spots appear. At Spalato and in the Canale dei Sette Castelli, on the island of Curzola, in the environs of Ragusa, the vegetation is luxuriant, almost tropical. But Dalmatia is always a narrow strip, and as one proceeds southwards it becomes ever narrower, the mountain ranges at various points coming right down to the water’s edge. The land is subject to intense heat in summer, and is free from great cold, even in the middle of winter. But it suffers from fierce winds, from the bora, which, whirling down from the treeless wastes of the Karst mountains in the north-east, sweeps along the coastline with terrific force. Another curse from which it suffers is the frequency and severity of the earthquakes, which from time to time have wrought fearful havoc among the Dalmatian towns.

      But in spite of these disadvantages, along this shore a Latin civilisation arose and flourished which, if inferior to that of Italy, nevertheless played an important and valuable part in European development. Many wars were fought for the possession of Dalmatia. Roman, Byzantine Greek, Norman, Venetian, Hungarian, Slave, and Austrian struggled for it, and each left his impress on its civilisation, although the influence of two among these peoples far surpassed that of all the others—the Roman and the Venetian.

      Dalmatia has at all times been essentially a borderland. Geographically it belongs to the eastern peninsula of the Mediterranean, to the Balkan lands. But this narrow strip of coast, as Professor Freeman said,1 “has not a little the air of a thread, a finger, a branch cast forth from the western peninsula.” In its history its character as a march land is still more noticeable, and this feature has always been manifested in a series of civilised communities in the towns, with a hinterland of barbarous or semi-civilised races. Here were the farthest Greek settlements in the Adriatic, settlements placed in the midst of a native uncivilised Illyrian population. Here the Romans came and conquered, but did not wholly absorb, the native races. Then the land was disputed between the Eastern and the Western Empires, later between Christianity and Paganism, later still between the Eastern and Western Churches. The Slavonic invasion, while almost obliterating the native Illyrian race, could not sweep away the Roman-Greek civilisation of the coast. Again Dalmatia became the debating ground between Venetian and Hungarian, the former triumphing in the end. When Christianity found itself menaced by the Muhamedan invasion, Dalmatia was the borderland between the two faiths. A hundred years ago it was involved in one phase of the great struggle between England and France. To-day, under the rule of a Power which may be said to be all borderland, it is the scene of another nationalist conflict between two races. As before we still have a civilised fringe, a series of towns, with a vast hinterland inhabited by Slaves, by a race less civilised, yet wishing to become civilised on lines different from those

Скачать книгу