The Kingdom of Dalmatia (Croatian: Kraljevina Dalmacija; German: Königreich Dalmatien; Italian: Regno di Dalmazia) was a crown land of the Austrian Empire (1815 - 1867) and the Cisleithanian half of Austria-Hungary (1867 - 1918). It encompassed the entirety of the region of Dalmatia, with its capital at Zadar.
In 1917, representatives of Dalmatia in Imperial Council headed by Vjekoslav Spinčić, Josip Smodlak and Ivo Prodan, wrote the May Declaration, in which they presented a program of unification of all South Slavs within the Austria-Hungary that had to be divided into three equal parts - Austria, Hungary, and Croatia. At the end of the war, the National Council for Dalmatia was founded in Zadar and the unified National Organization for Dalmatia in Split. These bodies soon started to independently governer Dalmatia. In the last days of the Monarchy, General Stjepan Sarkotić managed to convince Hungarian Prime Minister Sándor Wekerle and Emperor Charles I. to support the unification of Dalmatia with Croatia, but that didn't happen until the collapse of the Monarchy in 1918. On October 29, 1918, when the Austro-Hungarian Parliament dismantled, the Croatian Parliament passed a decision by which Croatia terminated state-law relations with Austria-Hungary and, together with Dalmatia and town of Rijeka, joined State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. |
