The Identity of the Burgenland Croats: Origins and Perspectives

The modern identity of the Burgenland Croats as a term including equality, oneness and unity was formed after 1921 among the descendants of the Croats who left their old residences between the Drava River and the Adriatic Sea in the 16th century as parts of a large displacement of the Croatian lands before the tide of the Ottoman expansion in south-eastern Europe and settled on the western edge of Pannonia, i.e. in the area divided among the Austrian province of Burgenland (in Croatian “Gradišće”), the Vas county and the Győr-Moson-Sopron county in western Hungary, as well as the surroundings of Bratislava in Slovakia within the European Union.
KEY WORDS: Burgenland, Croats, identity