Croacia

Diocletian's palace in Split is the largest surviving late Roman complex in the world; Dubrovnik was a merchant republic rivalling Venice. Croatia is the only country where the Latin Mass was long celebrated in a Slavic language, in the Glagolitic alphabet, by papal privilege.

Settled in the seventh century on a deeply Romanised coast, the Croats adopted Latin Christianity and formed a kingdom in the tenth century. From 1102 they united with Hungary while keeping their own diet and law.

The Dalmatian coast followed a distinct path: Venice dominated it for centuries, while Ragusa-Dubrovnik remained an independent republic until 1808. The interior formed the Military Frontier, the Habsburg Empire's glacis against the Ottomans.

After 1918 Croatia entered Yugoslavia. The war of independence of 1991-1995 was the longest of the Yugoslav conflicts on its soil. Accession to the Union in 2013, then simultaneous entry into the euro and Schengen on 1 January 2023, completed the country's return to the Western institutional space.