History of Administrative Borders and Boundaries: Slovenian-Croatian Border 1800 – 1991
Project Code: J6-4132 (A)
The border between the Republic of Slovenia and Republic of Croatia became the external border of the European Union on 1 May 2004, while from 21 December 2007 it has had the status of the Schengen border. The future of this border depends on the enlargement of the European Union (the Croatian accession), while its past is the result of the formation of state entities in this part of Europe. Today the border is burdened by several points of conflict, which we cannot possibly comprehend without understanding the historical development.
Three viewpoints, false in the methodological sense, are dominant in the public and in a part of the research sphere in Slovenia and Croatia:
an anachronistic outlook on the border as a single phenomenon throughout history (individual parts of the today’s borderline have undergone different kinds of the historical development, which is in direct connection with the today’s disputable parts);
focusing on the “movement” of the individual parts of the border, ignoring the wider context;
emphasising the national/ethnic/linguistic moments in situations where this is historically unjustified (the question whether something is “Croatian” or “Slovenian” presupposes that the differences between Croats and Slovenians are very old, “natural”, and that these nations can be divided clearly).
These methodologically unfounded foundations complement each other, and they are especially useful in order to ensure “flexibility” in the political disputes. The basic purpose of our project is to transcend the wrongful methodological foundations that influence the research results decisively. We chose the administrative-political borders at the wider territory of the today’s Slovenian-Croatian border since the beginnings of the modern state administration until the Slovenian independence (from cadastral municipalities to states) as the (wider) subject of research. The subject of the research project does not only entail those administrative borders which have transformed into the border between the states, but also the borders whose significance has changed or diminished, but which are still important in order to comprehend the boundaries at the territory under consideration. The old administrative borders played an important role in the formation of the today’s border, also where the today’s border lies elsewhere. By focusing on the administrative borders we will transcend the anachronistic search for the historical “Croatian” or “Slovenian” territory, which is rooted deeply in the nationalist discourse. The “border” is seen as a fact, while the “boundary” depends on various interpretations. In our case the border is a geographically specified dividing line between the administrative-political units, determined by various boundaries. Borders are not static. They change in two ways: physically: the border moves in actual space; contextually: the border acquires a new character, becomes new kind of boundaries. How to contrast the individual “histories” of the sections of the border with the general history? The proposed project will deal with the history of the today’s Slovenian-Croatian border at two levels: the wider and the narrower.
Since in the limited time the project team cannot carry out a historical analysis of the whole border, we limited ourselves to three borderlands at the narrower level: Severna Istra (Northern Istria) (an example of an administrative-political border created on the basis of political and ideological concepts), Bela krajina/Žumberak (an example of the Slovenian-Croatian border forming on the basis of the old but politically disputable border), Štajerska/Međimurje betwen the rivers Drava and Mura (an example how an important political border is abolished in a certain area, while nearby a new border, which then becomes a state border, is established).
