Ottoman Conquest and Its Impact on Territorial Reduction and Spatial Change of Croatian Territory

Abstract

In Croatian territory, the Late Middle Ages were characterised by spatial and societal disintegration processes. This mainly coincided with the era of the Ottoman expansion—a new power that straddled three continents at the apex of its power. The general crisis in Europe worked to the advantage of the Ottoman Empire, which was more advanced than Christian European states in almost every respect. The Ottoman expansion would bring about a radical change in the cultural landscape of Croatian territory. On the one hand, the border areas with the Ottoman Empire would be marked by the complete destruction of all elements of the cultural landscape as a result of continual raiding and battle. The most prominent destructive processes would be the agrarian population discharge from the border areas and the disappearance of settlements. The territorial advancement of the Ottoman Empire, generally from the southeast to the northwest, induced great migration waves toward the more secure lands in the northern and western parts of contemporary Croatia and Austria, or even overseas. The borderlands were emptied of most of their population, and came to be occupied only by semi-nomadic Vlach warriors–herders. Areas incorporated into the Ottoman Empire, mostly in the eastern parts of the Pannonian Basin, were included into the Ottoman administrative system of eyalets and sanjaks and developed Oriental-Islamic types of settlements, although their cultural influence would be largely eradicated after the Ottoman retreat in later centuries.