History of the island of Brač

The first Croats to settle on Brač were the tribe of the Neretljani. They displaced the Romans, who had previously wrested the land from the Greeks and Illyrians. Yet in the Stone Age too there had already been human life here, which gave the island the name derived from their word for “stag”. As everywhere there were hunter-gatherer groups in Europe, the missionaries did not stay away for long here either, and so Brač was Christianised by the Franks, until the Venetians discovered the large island for themselves and wanted to establish trading and military stations here too. From the eleventh to the fifteenth century Brač experienced a phase of permanent contention: Hungarians, Venetians and the pirates from Omiš came, went or were driven out. So among the peasants living here permanently a culture very intent on independence developed, and it hardly surprises that a few thousand people at the end of the eighteenth century stood up against the superior Austrian army and in a peasants' war demanded more autonomy. The uprising was indeed put down, but the Austro-Hungarians too could not hold the coveted isle for long: Russians, French and English were drawn to the Adriatic and all of them stopped at Brač. Italy at least managed to stay long enough to anchor Italian as the official language — many inhabitants still speak it fluently today. Once again the population rose against the foreign lords and founded the workers' and national movement which from here was to take hold of the rest of Croatia as well. Yet only here was the centre of the partisan movement which fought bitterly against the enemy in the Second World War and counts as the forerunner of the country's communist politics. Of this the monument in Bol reminds us, erected in 1951 in honour of the resistance fighters. Since then comfort has arrived on Brač: an area-wide electricity network, running fresh water and asphalted roads did not exist before. So the inhabitants today are far less pugnacious as well — but as self-assured as ever!