Croatia

Croatia
officially the Republic of Croatia (Republika Hrvatska), is a country in Europe at the crossroads of the Mediterranean and Central Europe. Its capital is Zagreb. Croatia shares land borders with Slovenia and Hungary on the north, Serbia on the east, Bosnia and Herzegovina on the south and east, and Montenegro on the south, as well as a sea border with Italy to the west. It is a candidate for membership in the European Union and NATO.

History
A Slavic tribe of Croats came to the Roman provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia in the seventh century and ultimately assimilated the larger native Illyrian population, which took the Croat name. Ruled by various Croatian rulers, these people were intermittently threatened by the Byzantine Empire and the Franks. Croatia became an independent Monarchy in 925, when Tomislav was crowned the first King of Croatia by a decree of the Pope.

Croatia retained its independence until 1102, when, after decades of inner struggles, the country entered a dynastic union, a "personal union", with the Kingdom of Hungary under the name "Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen". Croatian statehood was preserved through a number of institutions, notably the Sabor which served as an assembly of Croatian nobles, and the ban or viceroy. Furthermore, the Croatian nobles retained their lands and titles.

By the mid-1400s, the Hungarian kingdom was shaken by Ottoman expansion as much of the mountainous country now known as Bosnia and Herzegovina fell to the Turks (northwestern part of vilayet of Bosnia was for the long time known as Turkish Croatia). At the same time, northern and southern littoral Croatia came mostly under Venetian rule. Dubrovnik was a city-state that was, at first, under the protection of the Byzantine Empire and, after crusades, under the sovereignty of Venice (1205–1358), but later, unlike other Dalmatian city-states, became independent as Republic of Dubrovnik.

The Battle of Mohács in 1526 led the Croatian Parliament to elect the Habsburgs to the throne of Croatia. Habsburg rule eventually thwarted Ottoman expansion, and by the Eighteenth century, many of the Croatian territories that had previously been Ottoman passed to the Austrians. The odd crescent shape of the Croatian lands remained as a mark, more or less, of the northern frontier of the Ottoman advance into Europe. Further south, Istria, Dalmatia and Dubrovnik all eventually passed to the Habsburg Monarchy between 1797 and 1815.

Following World War I, Croatia joined the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. Shortly thereafter, this joint state entered into a union with Serbia to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which eventually became Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929. After Germany and its Axis allies invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Nazis permitted the extreme right-wing organization Ustaše, backed and sponsored by Italian fascists, to create the "Independent State of Croatia". The new regime was highly dependent upon German support for survival. Numerous concentration camps were established in Croatia between 1941 and 1945, when many Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, anti-fascist Croats and others were murdered for racial, religious or political reasons. When the Axis powers were defeated in Croatia by the anti-fascists, the State Anti-Fascist Council of People's Liberation of Croatia (ZAVNOH) declared the People's Republic of Croatia, which became one of the six socialist republics within federal Yugoslavia under the rule of Josip Broz Tito. After his death in 1980, the economic and political crises that the Federation faced multiplied and escalated.

Along with Slovenia, Croatia declared its independence on June 25, 1991. Earlier Serbian military intervention against Croatia developed into a much larger-scale conflict. Early on, the Serbian population living in Croatia revolted and were supported by the Serb-led federal army (at that time it mobilized reserve corps from Serbia, while the number of recruits from Croatia and Slovenia, serving the regular military service, was significantly decreasing) and paramilitary extremist groups from Serbia, under the guidance of Serbian president Slobodan Miloševiæ. Aggression on eastern Croatia came directly from Serbian territory. The ensuing months saw combat between newly established Croatian Army and joint heavily armed Yugoslav/Serb armed forces. Following this stage of the war, the independence of Croatia was internationally-recognized. The war ended in 1995, after the Croatian Army successfully launched two major military operations ("Storm" and "Flash") to retake the occupied areas. The war left hundreds of thousands refugees on both sides, and thousands were killed either in battle or by ethnic cleansing. Trials for crimes from both sides are under way in UN Hague Tribunal.

The country was in a perilous state at the time of death of president Franjo Tuðman in December 1999. The HDZ lost power after the presidential and parliamentary elections at the beginning of 2000, which ushered in a new era of politicians who pledged commitment to political and economic reforms and Croatia's integration into the European mainstream. The left-centre coalition government was led by the SDP until November 2003, when the reformed HDZ formed minority government. President Stjepan Mesiæ, coming from centrist/liberal party HNS, was elected two times, in 2000 and 2005. The constitution has been changed to shift power away from the president to the parliament. Croatia has joined the World Trade Organization and opened up the economy, making it grow and inflation was kept under control. It joined NATO's Partnership for Peace program and became an official candidate for membership in that alliance. By early 2003 it had made sufficient progress to apply for European Union membership, becoming the second EU candidate country from former Yugoslavia, after Slovenia (who joined the EU on May 1, 2004). Accession negotiations were opened on October 3, 2005, and the country is expected to become an EU member state in 2009 or 2010.

Geography
Croatia is located in Southern Europe. Its shape resembles that of a crescent or a horseshoe, which flanks its neighbours Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. To the north lie Slovenia and Hungary; Italy lies across the Adriatic Sea. Its mainland territory is split in two non-contiguous parts by the short coastline of Bosnia and Herzegovina around Neum.
Its terrain is diverse, including:

plains, lakes and rolling hills in the continental north and northeast (Central Croatia and Slavonia, part of the Pannonian plain);
densely wooded mountains in Lika and Gorski Kotar, part of the Dinaric Alps;
rocky coastlines on the Adriatic Sea (Istria, Northern Seacoast and Dalmatia).
The country is famous for its many national parks. Croatia has a mixture of climates. In the north and east it is continental, Mediterranean along the coast and a semi-highland and highland climate in the south-central region. Offshore Croatia consists of over one thousand islands varying in size.

National Geographic Adventure Magazine named Croatia as Destination of the Year in 2006.