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Croatia
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CROATIA

Capital: Zagreb (pop. 930,753)

Population: 4,422,248

Area: 56,542 sq. km.

Economy: In 2002, Croatia ranked 47th on the UN's Human Development Index survey and 76th in total GDP, with a per capita GDP of $8,859. In 2001, 27.93% of its revenues went to foreign debt service. Poverty statistics unavailable.

Main Language: Serbo-Croat (now referred to by Croats as Croat)

Monkey's Name: Majmun (my-moon)

Fun Fact: Two inventions for which the world owes the Croats credit are the necktie and the radio. The former evolved from a silk scarf worn by Croat sailors (dubbed the "cravate"), and the latter was developed by the Croat inventor Nikola Tesla, though many have erroneously credited Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi with the creation of the radio.
The Monkey visited Croatia (or Hrvatska as the Croats call it) in late May of 2002. The formerly Yugoslav Croatia is shaped roughly as a boomerang, with one blade fronting the Adriatic Sea and possessed of historically close ties to the seafaring microstates of Italy (Venice chief among them), and the other edge inland, with a more Central European, Austro-Hungarian influence. In the void between the blades lies Bosnia i Hercegovina, which is itself home to a large community of ethnic Croats, as well as significant Serb and Muslim populations. Unusual in the Balkans, though understandable given its history, Croatia is predominantly Roman Catholic, and Latin script, as opposed to the Cyrillic and Greek used elsewhere on the peninsula, is the norm. The Monkey visited the southern tip of the coastal boomerang blade, in the form of the spectacular walled city of Dubrovnik, and the islands of Lokrum, Korcula, and Hvar. He hears Zagreb, the capital city, is well worth a visit too.

In the early 1990s Croatia followed Slovenia's lead by asserting its independence from Yugoslavia's federal system. It was not the first time in the 20th Century that Croats had sought to break from Belgrade. From 1941 to 1945, the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) emerged as a puppet state closely linked to Nazi Germany, with its own homegrown fascist movement, the Ustashe. Of course, World War II era Croatia also spawned the leader of the anti-fascist Partisan resistance, Josip Broz Tito, who went on to become one of the founders and leaders of the second—and most globally influential—incarnation of Yugoslavia (literally, the Land of the Southern Slavs). Thus, in Croatia could be found striking instances of the two political extremes of the 1940s.

During the 1990s, Croatian independence again came about through powerful nationalist forces whose zeal countered the federalism of the increasingly Serb-dominated forces of Yugoslavia. When war ensued, Bosnia i Hercegovina—another of the then-constitutive republics of Yugoslavia, and one with significant Croat, Serb, and Muslim communities—was stuck between the Croat and Yugoslav forces, and suffered many of the worst events of the conflict that dominated world headlines for much of the mid 1990s. A series of UN-brokered cease-fires eventually culminated in Croatia winning its independence, but one which stopped short of unifying Croatia with Croats residing in Bosnia i Hercegovina. Under its controversial and autocratic president, Franjo Tudjman, Croatia spent the first several years of independence continuing to negotiate with the truncated Yugoslavia, with Bosnia i Hercegovina, and with the UN and NATO over various territorial claims. Since his death in 1999, nationalist parties have maintained popularity in Croatia, but as it seeks entry to the European Union along with the other other ex-Yugoslav states, the country's politics are moderating. Indeed, across the lands of the former Yugoslavia, there are modest signs of regional reintegration.

The Monkey hopes to return and see much more of Croatia, where he found warm and wonderful people, gorgeous (really gorgeous) scenery, splendid architecture, and a proud nation that has suffered, like all former Yugoslavs, immensely in recent years.

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The Monkey and the Croatian flag catch a breeze atop Dubrovnik's city walls.
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