Kingdom of Croatia (Habsburg) followed by Austrian Empire
The Kingdom of Croatia (Croatian: Kraljevina Hrvatska; Latin: Regnum Croatiae; Hungarian: Horvát Királyság, German: Königreich Kroatien) was part of the Lands of the Hungarian Crown, but was subject to direct Imperial Austrian rule for significant periods of time, including its final years. Its capital was Zagreb. It was also a part of the lands of the Habsburg monarchy from 1527, following the Election in Cetin, and the Austrian Empire from 1804 to 1867.
The Kingdom of Croatia had large territorial losses in wars with the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. Until the 18th century, the kingdom included only a small north-western part of present-day Croatia around Zagreb, and a small strip of coastland around Rijeka, that were not part of the Ottoman Empire or part of the Croatian Military Frontier. Between 1744 and 1868, the Kingdom of Croatia included a subordinate autonomous kingdom, the Kingdom of Slavonia. The territory of the Slavonian kingdom was recovered from the Ottoman Empire, and was subsequently part of the Military Frontier for a short period. In 1744, these territories were organized as the Kingdom of Slavonia and included within the Kingdom of Croatia as an autonomous part. In 1868, they were merged into the newly formed Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia.History and government
Habsburg rule
Following the fall of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary at the Battle of Mohács, in 1527 the Croatian and Hungarian nobles needed to decide on a new king. The bulk of the Croatian nobility convened the Croatian Parliament in Cetin and chose to join the Habsburg monarchy under the Austrian king Ferdinand I von Habsburg. Some nobles dissented and supported John Zápolya, but the Habsburg option still prevailed in 1540, when John Zápolya died.
Territory recovered by the Austrians from the Ottoman Empire was formed in 1745 as the Kingdom of Slavonia, subordinate to the Croatian Kingdom. In 1804 the Habsburg monarchy became the Austrian Empire which annexed the Venetian Republic in 1814 and established the Kingdom of Dalmatia. After the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 (by which the Austrian Empire became the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and the Croatian–Hungarian Settlement (Nagodba) of 1868, the Kingdom of Croatia and Kingdom of Slavonia were joined to create the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia within the Hungarian part of the Empire, while the Kingdom of Dalmatia remained a crown land in the Austrian part of the Empire.