THE CROAT MIGRATION TO THE BALKANS: A NEW ATTEMPT AT RECONSTRUCTION

Abstract

The article offers a fresh look at the issue of the Croat resettlement from East Central Europe to the north-western Balkans. By providing the critical analysis of the historiographical discourse, interpreting the evidence from the treatise “De administrando imperio”, comparing them with information from other written sources, as well as involving current results of the studies in historical linguistics, archeology, and paleogenetics, the author investigates the starting points, routes, chronology, and geopolitical context of the migration processes that led to the appearance of the Croat people in Dalmatia.

Proceeding from the localization of White Croatia on the Upper Elbe and the Upper Oder, the study has made a series of updates to the current understanding of the circumstances and course of partial resettlement of its inhabitants to the Balkans, explaining the most controversial data from chapters 30 & 31 of the Constantine’s treatise, and suggesting the return of the research on the early stages of the Croat ethnogenesis to the paradigm of migration. In particular, the author argues that the resettlement of the White Croats to Dalmatia was initiated by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius in the aftermath of the siege of Constantinople by the Avars in 626, while the route of their movement from Northeast Bohemia led through the Middle Elbe basin, Thuringia, Bavaria, and the Eastern Alps, thus allowing the migrants to bypass the lands of Pannonia which were tightly controlled by the hostile Avars. The suggested shift of the crucial part of the route of Croat migration towards the West, into the territory under Merovingian influence, created the basis for a more complex understanding of the geopolitical circumstances of this action which were featured by the anti-Avar collaboration between the Byzantines and the Frankish king Dagobert I.