The term Vlachs () was initially used in medieval Croatian and Venetian history for a Romance-speaking pastoralist community, called "Vlachs" and "Morlachs", inhabiting the mountains and lands of the Croatian Kingdom and the Republic of Venice (Venetian Dalmatia) from the early 14th century. By the end of the 15th century they were highly assimilated with the Slavs and lost their language or were at least bilingual, while some communities managed to preserve and continue to speak their language (Istro-Romanians).
Later in the 16th and 17th century with the Ottoman conquest and mass migrations, the term was primarily used for a socio-cultural and professional segment of the population rather than to an ethnicity, and referred to the mostly Slavic-speaking emigrants and refugees from Ottoman-held territories to the Habsburg Empire (such as Croatia) and the Republic of Venice (Dalmatia), mostly of Eastern Orthodox faith, and to a lesser degree, Catholic. With the nation-building in the 19th century this population played a significant part in the national ideologies in Croatia and Serbia, and according to religious confession espoused either Croat or Serb ethnicity.
In Croatia today, the Vlachs are a recognized national minority (along with 22 other ethnic groups), with 22 individuals declared as Vlachs in the 2021 Croatian census, making them the smallest recognized minority in Croatia. Other ethnic groups that were also traditionally referred to as Vlachs in Croatia now identify by their respective ethnic names – namely Serbs, Romanians, Aromanians and Istro-Romanians (which are native to modern Croatia's Istria County).
Appellation The meaning of the term Vlach within the territory of present-day Croatia (like Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia) differed over time and had multiple meanings. In the Middle Ages it was primarily an exonym that referred to Romance-speaking pastoralist communities in the mountains, or rarely other Romance-speaking people like Italians. Due to their specific lifestyle, the term acquired a social-professional (shepherd) connotation. In the 13th and 14th centuries the shepherds of the Balkans were called Vlachs (Vlasi), including Slavic-speakers. Initially it was used for shepherds and transporters in the hinterland regardless of ethnicity and religion (though often Romance-speaking), strangers and newcomers as opposed to natives (in Istria, for speakers with Shtokavian traits), for hinterlanders by Dalmatian island inhabitants, for rugged villagers by the townspeople, and later for Orthodox Christians (with time mostly identified with Serbs). From the 16th century, with the Ottoman conquest and mass migrations of Slavic-speaking people, the term Vlach was primarily used for a socio-cultural and professional segment of the population, rather than for an ethnicity.
Regardless of their religious affiliation that is the entire population of Generalate which came from the Ottoman and Venetian territories was called Vlachs; they were distinguished by their semi-nomadic pastoral way of life as economically transhumant shepherds, mainly of sheep, goats and horses. Also, their characteristics were cultural traits: wearing dark clothes, use of the gusle musical instrument (that accompanied epic singing), and Ojkanje singing. Such a lifestyle allowed specific socio-cultural traits, like learning about the area, orientation during multi-day movement, organization and wartime skills, which was recognized and used by the Late Medieval nobility and kings. They lived in extended families (as per the Western Balkan type), and were organised into local communities (), and were bearers of a strongly patriarchal culture associated with the Dinaric Alps.
While the Slavic communities managed to form national identities founding regional provinces and kingdoms, Romance-speaking Vlachs did not manage to form a national identity and were prone to assimilation. However, even if they were prone to national, linguistical and cultural assimilation with the Slavs, they did contribute to their respective communities. The problems the Vlachs faced with the creation of the national identity did not differ very much from what other rural communities face. Rural people comprised the majority of the population in the Middle Ages, and the centuries of war, conquest, regional boundaries, migrations, religious conversions, cultural blending and socio-economic problems affected the belonging of a population to a specific South Slavic national group. The regions of Lika (which mostly involved the Croatian Military Frontier) and Dalmatia were the border area between Habsburg, Ottoman and Venetian empires, a place of mass migrations and mixing of communities.
In the area, the confessional, socio-cultural and geo-regional characteristics had a crucial impact on the creation of an ethnic identity. The equalization between religious confession and ethnicity began in the middle of the 16th century when the Serbian Orthodox Church (Patriarchate of Peć), which had a significant religious and political influence on Serbs, started since 1557 to identify Orthodoxy with Serbdom. Gradually in the 17th century, as Croatian culture was preserved by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Senj-Modruš in Croatia, and the Franciscan Province of Bosna Srebrena in Ottoman Bosnia, Roman Catholicism was identified with the Croatian national name. The socio-cultural difference was a lifestyle distinction between the natives (Catholic, peasant, smaller families) and the newer migrants (Orthodox, pastoralist, larger families) from Ottoman and Venetian territory who were referred to as Vlachs in the social sense, and their "Vlach" identity was mainly in the context of claiming the traditional legal rights and privileges of their social class by the state.
Medieval usage The Vlachs mentioned in medieval documents up until the 16th century, before the Ottoman invasion and migrations, were the progeny of Romanized Illyrians and Thraco-Romans, other pre-Slavic Romance-speaking people, and after arrival in the 6th-8th centuries also of Slavic people. Some Romance-speaking groups were autochthonous in Croatia and assimilated with Slavs, some were assimilated but preserved their identity and name, while some other groups migrated from Herzegovina to Dalmatia in very late 14th century.
With the arrival of Slavs, Vlachs began to assimilate with them, and being exposed to the Slavic language, they gradually began to adopt it as their own. Raymond D'Aguilers and William of Tyre, during the passage of the Crusaders in the 11th century, contrasted the people who lived in the hilly hinterlands, spoke Slavic and dealt with cattle grooming with those on the coast who still spoke the Latin language (probably the extinct Dalmatian language) and had different customs. In documents from Lika (1433), Cetina (1436), and Zrmanja (1486–1487), a century after their first mention in Croatian historical documents, the Vlachs had mostly non-Christian, traditional South Slavic names and surnames. On that note, the Vlachs mostly differed from the Croats who usually had Christian names. The Vlachs were called , "good Vlachs" (), "good men from katuns" (), or "royal Vlachs" (, ).
However, despite this cross-pollination of language, some groups of Vlachs may have remained distinct from the Slavs; historical sources from the 14th and 15th centuries differentiate Slavs and Vlachs in the area of Kotor, Dubrovnik, Bosnia and Croatia (, , ). In 1345, in Cetina are differentiated, while in a 1436 document, Catholic Vlachs of the county of Cetina (around the town of Sinj) were represented as distinct from both the Croats and the Serbs inhabiting the county. In 1450, in the area of Šibenik, were differentiated. In a book by Ragusan historian Ludovik Crijević (1459–1527), Writings on the Present Age, Vlachs (Valachos) were distinguished from other people, and were mentioned as "nomadic Illyrians who in the common language are called Vlachs" and there is also the mention of the present-day surname Kožul/lj in "Cossuli, a kind of Illyrian people considered Romans". During the Orthodox migration to Žumberak in 1538, general commander Nikola Jurišić mentioned the Vlachs who "in our parts are called as Old Romans" separate from the Serbs and Rascians.
During the 14th century, Vlach settlements existed throughout much of today's Croatia, but centres of population were focused around the Velebit and Dinara mountains and along the Krka and Cetina rivers. The Vlachs were divided into common Vlachs from Cetina and royal Vlachs from Lika. The Vlach population lived on the territory of noble families: the Nelipić family (Cetina–Knin), Šubić family (Pokrčje), Gusić family (Pozrmanje), and Frankopan family (Lika). Between 1400 and 1600 many Vlach families had settled Istria and island of Krk. The Frankopans settled Vlachs on the island of Krk (Dubašnica, Poljica) in the 15th century, and later around Učka. The Venetian colonization of Istria started not later than the early 1520s, and there were several cases when they returned to Dalmatia.
The Vlach people distinctively lived as shepherds and as traveling merchants on trading routes. They lived in villages, and hamlets called katun (ro. ), smaller village-like places in the mountains and lower areas where they dwelled during the transhumant period. The 1436 document (Vlach law) confirmed in Klis by ban Ivan Frankopan, beside clear ethnic diversity in the county of Cetina, showed that there were two social groups of Vlachs: those with villages who pay tax, and those without villages who are nomads and thus obligated to serve in the army as horsemen.
According to Stjepan Pavičić (1931), the Romance Vlachs or Morlachs of the Dinara and Velebit lost their Romance language by the 14th or 15th century, or were at least bilingual at that time. The so-called Istro-Romanians, who called themselves Rumeri or Vlasi, continued to speak their language on the island of Krk (extinct in the 20th century; recorded Pater Noster) and villages around the Čepić lake in Istria, while other communities in the mountains (Ćićarija) above the lake preserved the Shtokavian-Chakavian dialect with Ikavian accent from the southern Velebit and area of Zadar. The documents about Vlachs from Cetina county indicate Chakavian dialect with Ikavian accent.
The evidence of their Romance language are toponyms throughout the Dinaric Alps, and many anthroponyms (surnames) with specific Romance or Slavic word roots, and Romanian ending suffixes found among South Slavic people. The "Vlach" or "Romanian" traditional system of counting sheep in pairs do ('two'; cf. Rmn. ), pato ('four'; cf. Rmn. ), šasto ('six'; cf. Rmn. ), šopći ('eight'; cf. Rmn. ), zeći ('ten'; cf. Rmn. ) has been preserved in Velebit, Bukovica, Dalmatian Zagora, and Ćićarija to the present day.
Early modern usage Socioculturally, there were two main ethnic divisions in the Croatian Military Frontier, those of the "native" Croats and "immigrant" Vlachs. The Croats were Catholics, Habsburg subjects, made up of an agrarian population concentrated around frontier towns, of nuclear families, and linguistically predominantly Chakavian-speaking (or Chakavian-based speech). The Vlachs, regardless of their religious affiliation, were refugees from Ottoman and Venetian territories, holders of patriarchal-pastoral culture of the Dinaric, of extended families, and linguistically Neo-Shtokavian-speaking. The holders of Balkan Patriarchate were mostly three socio-ethnic groups: Albanian, Vlach and Slavic.Karl Kaser, 2003, POPIS Like i Krbave 1712. godine, http://www.skdprosvjeta.com/pdf/9.pdf #page=30