Racial Nationalism and Anti-Semitism, 1782–1918

Abstract

This chapter outlines the modern history of Jews in Croatia from the Edict of Toleration issued by the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II, which permitted Jews to settle in the Kingdom of Croatia (or Dalmatia-Croatia-Slavonia), to the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1918. This period saw the numerical growth of the Jewish minority and its increasing influence in Croatian political and social life, as well as the parallel growth of anti-Semitic attitudes and ideas among certain political groups, who identified the Jews with the worst aspects of modern urban life and the ideologies of liberalism and socialism. The chapter goes into some detail on the reasons for the general emergence of anti-Semitism in nineteenth-century Europe, as well as the simultaneous evolution of race theory in both Europe and Croatia.