kingdom · Balkans and Hungary

Kingdom of Dalmatia

1815 CE – 1918 CE · capital Zara

Austrian crown land along the Adriatic coast, where Croatian and Italian national movements competed for a century before it joined Yugoslavia.

Origins

Austria had taken Venetian Dalmatia in 1797 but lost it to Napoleon. After the Congress of Vienna it recovered the coast, now including the former Republic of Ragusa and the Bay of Kotor, and organised it in 1815 as the Kingdom of Dalmatia, a crown land of the Austrian Empire governed from Zara.

Dalmatia was poor and rural, living from wine, olive oil, fishing and seafaring, and many emigrated to the Americas. Its diet, created in 1861, was at first dominated by the Italian-speaking Autonomist Party, but the Croatian People's Party won control in 1870. Croats sought union with Croatia-Slavonia, which Vienna refused. The Austrian navy defeated Italy off Lissa in 1866.

In October 1918 Dalmatia joined the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, and then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Zara and some islands passed to Italy under the Treaty of Rapallo in 1920, returning to Yugoslavia after 1945.

Cite this page

APA: The Epoch Institute. (2026). Kingdom of Dalmatia. In The Epoch Institute States Register. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/kingdom-of-dalmatia
MLA: “Kingdom of Dalmatia.” The Epoch Institute States Register, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/kingdom-of-dalmatia. Accessed .
Chicago: The Epoch Institute. “Kingdom of Dalmatia.” The Epoch Institute States Register. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/kingdom-of-dalmatia.
Harvard: The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Kingdom of Dalmatia’, The Epoch Institute States Register. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/kingdom-of-dalmatia (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random state ↻