Th e First Secession in the Dalmatian People’s Party in 1873 / Prva secesija u dalmatinskoj Narodnoj stranci 1873. godine

Abstract

This paper deals with secession in the Dalmatian People’s Party that took place in 1873, after the Dalmatian Representatives to the Imperial Council endorsed the law that introduced direct elections for the Council. The People’s Party strongly condemned their actions, attacking them for being deceived by the promises of the Viennese government and betraying people’s honesty. Representatives believed that their actions served to protect Dalmatia from the negative reaction of the Government and to enable Dalmatia’s development by support of the same government. The conflict within the party peaked when Representatives seceded from the party centre and established the Mainstream Folk Party, called Zemljačka (Eng.: Compatriotic) after its publication Zemljak after which they were nicknamed “Zemljaci” (Eng.: Compatriots). A fierce controversy ensued between Zemljak and Narodni list, a newspaper of the People’s Party centrepiece. It analyses the period until the first direct elections to the Imperial Council held in late 1873 in which both sides achieved weaker than expected outcome. The paper analyses discourse of both sides in this conflict and tries to determine what ideological positions they came from and their position on the opposing side.

Keywords

• people’s party
• narodni list
• zemljak
• the imperial council
• croatian-serbian relations.