Kingdom of Slavonia in the context of "Gaj's Latin"

Ferdinand II (9 July 1578 – 15 February 1637) was Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia, Hungary, and Croatia from 1619 until his death in 1637. He was the son of Archduke Charles II of Inner Austria and Maria of Bavaria, who were devout Catholics. In 1590, when Ferdinand was 11 years old, they sent him to study at the Jesuits' college in Ingolstadt because they wanted to isolate him from the Lutheran nobles. A few months later, his father died, and he inherited Inner Austria–Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and smaller provinces. His cousin, Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, who was the head of the Habsburg family, appointed regents to administer these lands.

Ferdinand was installed as the actual ruler of the Inner Austrian provinces in 1596 and 1597. Rudolf II also charged him with the command of the defense of Croatia, Slavonia, and southeastern Hungary against the Ottoman Empire. Ferdinand regarded the regulation of religious issues as a royal prerogative and introduced strict Counter-Reformation measures from 1598. First, he ordered the expulsion of all Protestant pastors and teachers; next, he established special commissions to restore the Catholic parishes. The Ottomans captured Nagykanizsa in Hungary in 1600, which enabled them to invade Styria. A year later, Ferdinand tried to recapture the fortress, but the action ended in November 1601 with a defeat, due to unprofessional command of his troops. During the first stage of the family feud known as the Brothers' Quarrel, Ferdinand initially supported Rudolph II's brother, Matthias, who wanted to convince the melancholic emperor to abdicate, but Matthias' concessions to the Protestants in Hungary, Austria, and Bohemia outraged Ferdinand. He planned an alliance to strengthen the position of the Catholic Church in the Holy Roman Empire, but the Catholic princes established the Catholic League without his participation in 1610.

The Kingdom of Croatia (Croatian: Kraljevina Hrvatska; Latin: Regnum Croatiae; Hungarian: Horvát Királyság, German: Königreich Kroatien) was part of the Lands of the Hungarian Crown, but was subject to direct Imperial Austrian rule for significant periods of time, including its final years. Its capital was Zagreb. It was also a part of the lands of the Habsburg monarchy from 1527, following the Election in Cetin, and the Austrian Empire from 1804 to 1867.

The Kingdom of Croatia had large territorial losses in wars with the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. Until the 18th century, the kingdom included only a small north-western part of present-day Croatia around Zagreb, and a small strip of coastland around Rijeka, that were not part of the Ottoman Empire or part of the Croatian Military Frontier. Between 1744 and 1868, the Kingdom of Croatia included a subordinate autonomous kingdom, the Kingdom of Slavonia. The territory of the Slavonian kingdom was recovered from the Ottoman Empire, and was subsequently part of the Military Frontier for a short period. In 1744, these territories were organized as the Kingdom of Slavonia and included within the Kingdom of Croatia as an autonomous part. In 1868, they were merged into the newly formed Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia.

The Triune Kingdom (Croatian: Trojedna kraljevina) or Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia (Croatian: Trojedna Kraljevina Hrvatske, Slavonije i Dalmacije) was the concept—advocated by the leaders of the 19th-century Croatian national revival—of a united kingdom between Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, which were already within the Austrian Empire under one king, who was also the Emperor of Austria, but were politically and administratively separate entities. This concept had roots in the high medieval period, as a successor to the historical Kingdom of Croatia which was made up of those regions.

After 1867, Croatia and Slavonia were within the Hungarian half of Austria-Hungary and were united in 1868 as the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, where the name Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia became official. However, Dalmatia, being located in the Austrian half, still remained de facto separate. Until the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, several Croatian political parties and groups sought recognition of the Triune Kingdom and the incorporation of Dalmatia into Croatia-Slavonia. The Croatian intelligentsia, especially lawyers and historians, played a key role in interpreting historical sources so as to legitimize the demand for the Triune Kingdom.

Gaj's Latin alphabet (Serbo-Croatian: Gajeva latinica / Гајева латиница, pronounced [ɡâːjeva latǐnit͡sa]), also known as abeceda (Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: абецеда, pronounced [abet͡sěːda]) or gajica (Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: гајица, pronounced [ɡǎjit͡sa]), is the form of the Latin script used for writing all four standard varieties of Serbo-Croatian: Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian. It contains 27 individual letters and 3 digraphs. Each letter (including digraphs) represents one Serbo-Croatian phoneme, yielding a highly phonemic orthography. It closely corresponds to the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet.

The alphabet was initially devised by Croatian linguist Ljudevit Gaj in 1835 during the Illyrian movement in ethnically Croatian parts of the Austrian Empire. It was largely based on Jan Hus's Czech alphabet and was meant to serve as a unified orthography for three Croat-populated kingdoms within the Austrian Empire at the time, namely Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia, and their three dialect groups, Kajkavian, Chakavian and Shtokavian, which historically utilized different spelling rules. The alphabet's final form was defined in the late 19th century.

The Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia or the Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia (Croatian: Trojedna Kraljevina Hrvatska, Slavonija i Dalmacija; Hungarian: Horvát-Szlavónország or Horvát–Szlavón Királyság; German: Königreich Kroatien, Slawonien und Dalmatien) was a nominally autonomous kingdom and constitutionally defined separate political nation within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was created in 1868 by merging the kingdoms of Croatia and Slavonia following the Croatian–Hungarian Settlement of 1868. It was associated with the Kingdom of Hungary within the dual Austro-Hungarian state, being within the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen, also known as Transleithania. While Croatia had been granted a wide internal autonomy with "national features", in reality, Croatian control over key issues such as tax and military issues was minimal and hampered by Hungary. It was officially referred to as the Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, also simply known as the Triune Kingdom, and had claims on Kingdom of Dalmatia, which was administered separately by the Austrian Cisleithania. The city of Rijeka, following a disputed section in the 1868 Settlement known as the Rijeka Addendum [hr], became a corpus separatum and was legally owned by Hungary, but administered by both Croatia and Hungary.

The Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia was ruled by the emperor of Austria, who bore the title King of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia and was confirmed by the State Sabor (Parliament of Croatia-Slavonia or Croatian-Slavonian Diet) upon accession. The King's appointed steward was the Ban of Croatia and Slavonia. On 21 October 1918, Emperor Karl I, known as King Karlo IV in Croatia, issued a Trialist manifest, which was ratified by the Hungarian side on the next day and which unified all Croatian Crown Lands. One week later, on 29 October 1918, the Croatian State Sabor proclaimed an independent kingdom which entered the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs.

Serb Independent Party (Serbian: Srpska samostalna stranka, SSS, German: Serbische selbständige Partei), also known as Serb Autonomous Party or simply Serb Autonomists, was an ethnic Serb political party in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was established in August 1881, in Ruma, by Pavle Jovanović and other affluent Serbs. In 1903 Svetozar Pribićević (1875–1936) became the party leader. They published Srbobran, which was the party organ. The party advocated for the unification of Lika, Kordun, Banija, Dalmatia, Slavonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina with Serbia to form a Greater Serbia. It was later one of the key members of the Croat-Serb coalition (formed in 1905).

It was formed by the Serbs of Croatia in response to the merging of the Military Frontier, inhabited by the Serbs, back into the Kingdom of Croatia.