Croatian historiography
For example, the Anti-Habsburg politician and writer Ante Starčević portrayed men who were generally considered Croatian national heroes such as Nikola IV Zrinski and Josip Jelačić as symbols of submission to Austrian rule, while propagating Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan, who were executed by Vienna for conspiracy to overthrow the Kingdom.
Conversely, the Roman Catholic priest Josip Juraj Strossmayer advanced the idea of Orthodox-Catholic and Yugoslav unification in the second half of the nineteenth century, using the missionary brothers Cyril and Methodius as his basis.
[6] The main figure in the development of modern Croatian historiography was Franjo Rački, an associate of Strossmayer, who published a collection of medieval sources.
Rački had a profound impact in the future historiography of early medieval Croats as he provided an ideologically consistent historical narrative for the South Slavic peoples.
[8] During the establishment of the first Yugoslavia in 1918, some Croatian-centric historians expressed their opposition with unification with Serbia, saying it was contradictory to the thousand year development of a self-reliant Croatian state.
[12] These narratives shifted during the 1960s as Yugoslav historiography transitioned into debates between Serbian and Croatian historians regarding each respective ethnic group's role in the war.
[14] The growing nationalist sphere was represented by historian and future Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and became supreme following Croatia's independence in 1991.
[14] Tudjman had challenged the inflated casualties of the Jasenovac concentration camp which had been claimed to be 700,000 by Serbian historians, though he wound up providing figures that were too low.
In the 1970s, historian Mirjana Gross spread the Annales school methodology and popularized an approach that combined "non-dogmatic Marxism and Braudelian understanding of time and structure".
Old myths and stereotypes reappeared in some historians' work, like the "thousand-year-old continuity of Croatian statehood" or Croatia as "Antemurale Christianitatis" during the Ottoman conquest.
Legitimate debate between historians advocating for a uniformed narrative and those for critical and alternative perspectives about the war have only arisen in school curriculum and history textbooks however.
Regarding the 19th century, Croatian statehood is emphasized, with Ante Starčević being seen as the founder of the nation due to his consistent support for an independent Croatia.
Apart from Starčević, Stjepan Radić is considered one of the most meritorious Croats, along with conservative church dignitaries such as Juraj Haulik, Josip Stadler and Alojzij Stepinac.
[30] Radić is considered to be the key bearer of Croatia, to whom numerous works are dedicated that show his political activities and ideology, but also deal with his schooling or his pedagogical views.
However, works published after 1991 paid significant attention to prominent pro-Habsburg oriented individuals, military commanders in the Austro-Hungarian army and Croatian units, although local and regional micro-histories was the focus.
[36] Ustaše atrocities were minimized, while conversely the Bleiburg repatriations were identified with Croat suffering and mythologized with claims that hundreds of thousands of civilians had been killed by Josip Broz Tito's forces.
[25] The political crisis in Yugoslavia that began in 1990–1991 allowed the views of these Croat writers abroad to become transplanted into Croatia and current experiences were aligned with revisionist interpretations of the NDH as a struggle against Greater Serbia.
[39] Starting in the early 2000s, partly as a response to the historical revisionism of the 1990s, there has been an increase in research on the Holocaust and Porajmos though significantly less regarding the mass murder of Serbs.
The Croatian Institute of History (HIP) has formed several projects investigating the number of human losses in Croatia during WWII, focusing on the Yugoslav communist regime's atrocities against NDH soldiers and ethnic Germans following the war.
[42] The new Croatian historiography portrayed Serbia as a warlike nation whose heads of states were planning to commit genocide against their neighbors as early as the 1840s.
[32] A scholarly symposium backed by the Catholic Church in Croatia declared Serbs and the Serbian clergy as the instigators of the war, describing it as a genocide against Croats.
[43] Studies appeared which argued that Serbs began genocide against Croats during the Bleiburg repatriations under communism, continued with the State Security Service (UDBA) and attempted to end it with the war of 1991–95.
