White Croatia
According to recent archaeological and historiographical research it is considered it existed as a tribal proto-state with polis-like gords of Plisnesk, Stilsko, Revno, Halych, Terebovlia among others in Western Ukraine, which lasted until the very end of the 10th century.
[2] The 10th-century treatise De Administrando Imperio ("On the management of the Empire", later DAI), written in Greek by Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, is the only known document that suggests "White Croatia" as the place from which Croats migrated to Dalmatia, bordering the coastline of the Adriatic Sea.
According to 21st-century historian A. Mayorov, the territory of this Croatia Alba was the most developed and densely populated and formed the core of the emerging Croatian state.
[4] In the undated part of the 12th-century Primary Chronicle, which tells about the resettlement of the Slavs from the Danube, White Croats were mentioned once, together with Serbs and Chorutans (Carinthians).
According to A. Majorov, this account is based on Western European medieval tradition and agrees with the Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja.
[11] However, in DAI there's seemingly no contradiction between "white" and "great" Croatia north of the Carpathians, possibly meaning the same in the perception of the Croats.
[14] The ethnonym with the epithet was also questioned lexically and grammatically by linguists like Petar Skok, Stanisław Rospond, Jerzy Nalepa and Heinrich Kunstmann, who argued that the Byzantines did not differentiate Slavic "bělъ-" (white) from "velъ-" (big, great), and because of common Greek betacism, the "Belohrobatoi" should be read as "Velohrobatoi" ("Velohrovatoi"; "Great/Old Croats").
[18][19] According to Majorov, in the 10th century, the ethnic Croats are believed to have been surviving in remnant communities, scattered in the East in Ukraine, Poland and Slovakia, with others in the West in Bohemia.
[18][19] However, recent archaeological research of 7-10th century sites in Western Ukraine suggests otherwise,[24] that Great Croatia most probably was a polycentric proto-state.
Some scholars have related it to Babia Góra near the river Vistula and Kraków in Lesser Poland, but it is commonly considered to be a reference to Bavaria.
[27][28] Tibor Živković notes that this term comes from the Latin name of Bavaria (Bagoaria and Baioaria) and, therefore, the source of this information for the DAI could be of West European/Western Roman origin (possibly by Anastasius Bibliothecarius from Rome).
[8][35][36] Other Arabian-Persian sources also describe a large Slavic state with the city Khordab ten days from Pechenegs, through which passes a river (Dniester) and is bounded by mountains (Carpathians), which places the Croats and Croatia in Prykarpattia.
[52] However, whether the Cherven Cities were inhabited by the Lendians or White Croats, and were independent from both Poland and Kievan Rus', it is part of a wider ethnographic dispute between Polish and Ukrainian-Russian historians.
[58] However, due to information from other sources, in the 19th century became common conclusion that the Croats lived North and East of Carpathians, specifically Prykarpattia and Eastern Galicia.
[69] Łowmiański besides Prykarpattia and Zakarpattia, placed the main part of the Croats to the Upper Vistula valley in Lesser Poland, and that the accounts in DAI identified White Croatia with Duchy of Bohemia of Boleslaus I which at the time incorporated the territory of the Vistulans and Lendians, because they were attacked by the Pechenegs, and that according to the sources it is uncertain whether the White Croats lived around the Elbe river and placing them instead in Sudetes.
He agrees that White Croatia and those Croats identified as "White" were a second concept appeared to have some historical presence in the Upper Elbe and Upper Vistula regions, but that Great Croatia, the motherland of the Croats, was primary concept located in Eastern Prykarpattia and Tisza river basin in Zakarpattia.
[59] Ukrainian and Russian historians and archaeologists generally argued that Great Croatia, also in the sense of homeland from where Carpathian Croats emigrated to the Balkans,[79][80] included almost all the lands of later historical region of Galicia.
[55][24] According to Francis Dvornik, White Croatia extended from the Southern Bug and rivers Wieprz and San along the Poland-Ukraine border, to the slopes of Carpathian Mountains, including the Northern part of Slovakia, then from the rivers Netolica and Dudleba in upper Vltava, through Cidlina to the Krkonoše Mountains to the North and North-West.
[55] Sedov sharply criticized such assumptions, saying "these hypothetical constructions are now of purely historiographic interest, since they do not find any confirmation in archaeological materials".
[96] Nada Klaić thought the Croats had migrated from Carantania, rather than from East and West Slavic territory, but such an idea is rejected by older and newer generation of historians.
Based on the toponyms (and historical sources), the homeland of Croatian tribes would have been in today's Southeastern Poland and Western Ukraine.
[101] In literature are mentioned also other Eastern European toponyms but with doubtful etymological relation with Croatian ethnonym, for example those with root "Charb-" (Charbce, Charbicze, Charbin, Charbowo), "Karw-" (Karwacz, Karwatyno/Charwatynia, Karovath),[102] "Choro-" (Chorovjatinskaja/Chorowiacka, Chorow, Chorowa gora, Chorowica, Chorowiec etc.
[103] Surnames derived from Croatian ethnonym in Poland are recorded since the 14th century in Kraków, Przemyśl and else, and generally among Polish native nobility, peasants, and local residents, but not among the foreigners.
