Croatian nationalism in the context of "History of Croatia"

The culture of Croatia has historically been influenced by Central European, Mediterranean, and Balkan cultures. Croatia's unique culture and identity can be traced back to the historical llyricum. The early Croatian cultural and political identity developed through the integration of the ancient Roman heritage of Dalmatia, the traditions of early Slavic groups who settled in the region during the Migration period, and the emergence of a distinct Croatian polity by the 9th century. The Croatian language is believed to have been formed in the 6th or 7th century, with the written language present in Glagolitic texts from the 11th century.

In terms of Croatian national emancipation, the 19th-century Illyrian movement led by Ljudevit Gaj was a key driver for emergence of Croatian romantic nationalism. In 1842, the Matica ilirska organization (renamed Matica hrvatska in 1872) was established as part of the Zagreb Reading Room. The organization's mission was to promote Croatian national and cultural identity in fields of arts, science spiritual creation, economy, and public life. In 1847-1848 Croatian language replaced Latin as official language in Croatia.

Serbian nationalism asserts that Serbs are a nation and promotes the cultural and political unity of Serbs. It is an ethnic nationalism, originally arising in the context of the general rise of nationalism in the Balkans under Ottoman rule, under the influence of Serbian linguist Vuk Stefanović Karadžić and Serbian statesman Ilija Garašanin.Serbian nationalism was an important factor during the Balkan Wars which contributed to the decline of the Ottoman Empire, during and after World War I when it contributed to the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and again during the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.

After 1878, Serbian nationalists merged their goals with those of Yugoslavists, and emulated the Piedmont's leading role in the Risorgimento of Italy, by claiming that Serbia sought not only to unite all Serbs in one state, but that Serbia intended to be a South Slavic Piedmont that would unite all South Slavs in one state known as Yugoslavia. Serbian nationalists supported a centralized Yugoslav state that guaranteed the unity of the Serbs while resisting efforts to decentralize the state. The Vidovdan Constitution adopted by Yugoslavia in 1921 consolidated the country as a centralized state under the Serbian Karađorđević monarchy. Croatian nationalists opposed the centralized state and demanded decentralization and an autonomous Croatia within Yugoslavia, which was accepted by the Yugoslav government in the Cvetković–Maček Agreement of 1939. Serbian nationalists opposed the agreement on the grounds that it weakened the unity of Serbdom, asserting its importance to Yugoslavia with the slogan "Strong Serbdom, Strong Yugoslavia". The invasion and partition of Yugoslavia in World War II resulted in violent ethnic conflict between nationalist Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, and others, resulting in a highly violent sectarian variant of Serbian nationalism rising in the Chetnik movement.

The Ustaše (pronounced [ûstaʃe]), also known by anglicised versions Ustasha or Ustashe, was a Croatian fascist and ultranationalist organization active, as one organization, between 1929 and 1945, formally known as the Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement (Croatian: Ustaša – Hrvatski revolucionarni pokret). From its inception and before the Second World War, the organization engaged in a series of terrorist activities against the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, including collaborating with IMRO to assassinate King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in 1934. During World War II in Yugoslavia, the Ustaše went on to perpetrate the Holocaust and genocide against its Jewish, Serb and Roma populations, killing hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma, as well as Muslim and Croat political dissidents.

The ideology of the movement was a blend of fascism, Roman Catholicism and Croatian ultranationalism. The Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia that would span the Drina River and extend to the border of Belgrade. The movement advocated a racially "pure" Croatia and promoted genocide against Serbs—due to the Ustaše's anti-Serb sentiment—and Holocaust against Jews and Roma via Nazi racial theory, and persecution of anti-fascist or dissident Croats and Bosniaks. The Ustaše viewed the Bosniaks as "Muslim Croats", and as a result, Bosniaks were not persecuted on the basis of race. The Ustaše espoused Roman Catholicism and Islam as the religions of the Croats and condemned Orthodox Christianity, which was the main religion of the Serbs. Roman Catholicism was identified with Croatian nationalism, while Islam, which had a large following in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was praised by the Ustaše as the religion that "keeps true the blood of Croats."

The Independent Democratic Party (Serbo-Croatian: Samostalna demokratska stranka, Самостална демократска странка; Slovene: Samostojna demokratska stranka, SDS) was a social liberal political party in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. It was established by Svetozar Pribićević as a breakaway faction of the Democratic Party in 1924. It was formed by three different groups: by far the largest group were the Serbs from the areas of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, that is Croatian, Bosnian and Vojvodina Serbs, with the prevalence of the first. The second most influential group were Slovene centralist liberals. The third group was composed by Croat liberals, mostly from Dalmatia and Zagreb.

In the first three years of its existence, the party supported a strong central Yugoslav government, fiercely opposing the federalism of the Croatian Peasant Party, the Croatian nationalism and the Croatian Party of Rights, ethnic Serbian hegemonism of the People's Radical Party, and Slovenian and Bosnian quests for territorial autonomy, supported respectively by the Slovene People's Party and the Yugoslav Muslim Organization. In 1927, however, they reached an agreement with Stjepan Radić's Croatian Peasant Party, forming the Peasant-Democratic Opposition, which demanded a decentralization of Yugoslavia. After the establishment of the royal dictatorship of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in January 1929, the party was officially dissolved, but continued to function underground, while its president Svetozar Pribićević went into exile. Many of its members joined the officially sponsored Yugoslav Radical Peasants' Democracy (renamed to Yugoslav National Party in 1933), including the great majority of its Slovenian members.

The Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia (Serbo-Croatian: Genocid nad Srbima u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj / Геноцид над Србима у Независној Држави Хрватској) was the systematic persecution and extermination of Serbs committed during World War II by the fascist Ustaše regime in the Nazi German puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia (Serbo-Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska / Независна Држава Хрватска, NDH) between 1941 and 1945. It was carried out through executions in death camps, as well as through mass murder, ethnic cleansing, deportations, forced conversions, and war rape. This genocide was simultaneously carried out with the Holocaust in the NDH as well as the genocide of Roma, by combining Nazi racial policies with the ultimate goal of creating an ethnically pure Greater Croatia.

The ideological foundation of the Ustaše movement reaches back to the 19th century. Several Croatian nationalists and intellectuals established theories about Serbs as an inferior race. The World War I legacy, as well as the opposition of a group of nationalists to the unification into a common state of South Slavs, influenced ethnic tensions in the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (since 1929 Kingdom of Yugoslavia). The 6 January Dictatorship and the later anti-Croat policies of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav government in the 1920s and 1930s fueled the rise of nationalist and far-right movements. This culminated in the rise of the Ustaše, an ultranationalist, terrorist organization, founded by Ante Pavelić. The movement was financially and ideologically supported by Benito Mussolini, and it was also involved in the assassination of King Alexander I.

The concept of Greater Croatia (Croatian: Velika Hrvatska) describes the irredentist belief in the equivalence between the territorial scope of the Croat people and that of the country of Croatia. It is a foundational tenet within multiple variants of Croatian nationalism. The term has been used to describe the Croatian diaspora living in Southeast Europe as a regional sphere of influence. The Croatian language is spoken in many neighboring countries, extending its cultural reach abroad.