Filip Novaković*
LEGAL POSITION OF CROATIA AFTER THE CROATIAN-HUNGARIAN AGREEMENT OF 1868
Summary
The authors state that the Croatian-Hungarian state union is the longest-lived community of two peoples on the European continent. Croats and Hungarians, connected through a centuries-long period (which lasted a little over 800 years), had many common bright episodes, but at the end of the 18th and during the 19th century there was a sharp deterioration of relations between the two peoples, which eventually resulted in armed conflict.
In the middle of the 19th century, the long-awakened Hungarian national spirit was strengthened, and in the Hungarian part of the Habsburg Empire, Hungarian aspirations for a nation-state flourished. These state-building ideas of the Hungarian leaders led to a great, but also bloody, revolution against 1848/49. years against the authorities in Vienna.
After the "spring of the people" and the suffocation of great national revolutions throughout Europe, it is concluded that the old order is becoming unsustainable. It was necessary to change something so that the emperors of the Habsburg-Lothar House would not lose the crown, but also to avoid the dissolution of the state that lasted for almost seven centuries.
This crisis, which occurred in a large multinational state such as the Habsburg Empire, will be the reason for the authorities seeking a useful partner in order to save what was left of the Empire after the wars of the 1960s, and the loss of significant territory in Italy. renunciation of the primacy of leading the German states into unification. This partner was found in the Hungarian oligarchy, primarily because of its financial, but also political power, and the authority it enjoyed with the common people. This agreement between Vienna and Budapest would be perpetuated in the Austro-Hungarian settlement of 1867.
This Agreement marked the beginning of a new era in Hungarian-Croatian relations. It marked the creation of a new state union. As the topic of this paper, we see the relationship created by the Agreement between Hungary and Croatia, and we try to figure out what was the legal position of Croatia in relation to Hungary, but also to the Dual Monarchy.
For decades after the signing of the Agreement, the authors argued over whether Croatia preserved its statehood and its specific state legal subjectivity after the Settlement. And what kind of relationship she had with other members of the Monarchy. Most Croatian and Yugoslav authors argued that Croatia had preserved its statehood for several reasons: first of all, the Croatian-Hungarian settlement was an intergovernmental act concluded by equal contracting parties - Croatia and Hungary, then the agreement divided powers between the governments in Budapest and Zagreb, but also determined the exclusive competencies of Croatia, which were reflected in the independent legislative power formed in the Croatian Parliament, then in running its own executive power and having its own government headed by a ban, but the most important argument is that Croatia retained three key elements of statehood - state territory, political people (citizenship, citizens) and the organization of state power. This thesis was mostly advocated by Croatian professors Josip Pliverić, Ferdo Čulinović, Bogoslav Šulek, but also by some Hungarian authors such as Ernest Nagy, while others believed that Croatia and Hungary formed a real union and that Croatia thus preserved its statehood, as Louigi Palma, Josip Ulbrech, Franz von Höltzendorff and others.
On the other hand, there are a significant number of authors who believe that Croatia did not have any statehood and represented only a Hungarian province (for example, Nikola Ratner and Gusztav Beksics), but we cannot agree with this view.
It is true that this is a rather complex problem that requires a broader discussion by historians, lawyers, political scientists and many others. But if so far, more than 140 years after the signing of the Croatian-Hungarian Agreement, consensus has not been reached, the question is whether it ever will?
Key words: Triune Kingdom, agreement, Croatia, legal status, Hungary, trialism, Austro-Hungary, Legal article.
* Student of the 3rd year of Basic academic studies of law at the Faculty of Law, University of Banja Luka, filip.novakovic@student.pf.unibl.org.