thumb|250px|Morlach peasant from the [[Split, Croatia|Split region (of modern Croatia). Théodore Valerio (1819–1879), 1864.]]
Morlachs (; ; ) is an exonym used for a rural Christian community in Herzegovina, Lika and the Dalmatian Hinterland. The term was initially used for a bilingual Vlach pastoralist community in the mountains of Croatia from the second half of the 14th until the early 16th century. Then, when the community straddled the Venetian–Ottoman border until the 17th century, it referred only to the Slavic-speaking people of the Dalmatian Hinterland, Orthodox and Catholic, on both the Venetian and Turkish side.
The exonym ceased to be used in an ethnic sense by the end of the 18th century, and came to be viewed as derogatory, but has been renewed as a social or cultural anthropological subject. As the nation-building of the 19th century proceeded, the Vlach/Morlach population residing with the Croats and Serbs of the Dalmatian Hinterland espoused either a Croat or Serb ethnic identity, but preserved some common sociocultural outlines.
Etymology
The word Morlach is derived from the Italian Morlacco (), used by the Venetians to refer to the Vlachs from Dalmatia since the 15th century. The name Morovlah appears in Dubrovnik records in the mid-14th century, while in the 15th century, the abbreviated form Morlah, Morlak or Murlak is found in both Dubrovnik and Venice archives. Two main theories have been put forward to explain the origin of the term.
The first one has initially been proposed by the 17th-century Dalmatian historian Johannes Lucius, who suggested that Morlach would have been derived from the Byzantine Greek Μαυροβλάχοι, Maurovlachoi, meaning "Black Latins" (from , mauro, meaning "dark", "black"), that is "Black Vlachs". Lucius based his theory on the Doclean Chronicle, which he published and promoted. He explained that the choice made by the Venetians to use this name was made to distinguish the Morlachs from the White Latins, who would have been the inhabitants of the former Roman coastal cities of Dalmatia. This theory has had a strong echo in Romanian historiography, and Romanian scholars such as and Ela Cosma have suggested that the term "Morlachs" also meant "Northern Vlachs", derived from the Indo-European practice of indicating cardinal directions by colors. Petar Skok suggested that while the Latin maurus is derived from the Greek μαύρος ("dark"), the diphthongs au > av indicates a specific Dalmato-Romanian lexical remnant.
The other theory, mostly suggested by Croatian historiography of the previous centuries, states that Morlachs means "Vlachs near the sea", from the Serbo-Croatian more ("sea"), and vlah ("vlach"). The first reference to this theory comes from the 18th-century priest Alberto Fortis, who wrote extensively about the Morlachs in his book Viaggio in Dalmazia ("Journey to Dalmatia", 1774).
Origin and culture
thumb|200px|Morlach musicians from [[Solin|Salona (in modern Croatia), Théodore Valerio, 1864]]
The Morlachs are first mentioned in Dalmatian documents from the 14th century, but after the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia in 1463 and especially from the 16th century onwards, "Morlach" was used by the Venetians to refer usually to the Ottoman population from the Dalmatian hinterland, across the border from Venetian Dalmatia, regardless of their ethnic, religious or social belonging. While their name could imply some relation to the Romance-speaking Vlachs, travel accounts from the 17th and 18th century attest that the Morlachs were linguistically Slavs. The same travel accounts indicate that the Morlachs were mostly of the Eastern Orthodox faith, though some were also Roman Catholic. According to Romanian historian Dana Caciur, in Venetian eyes the Morlach community could represent a mixture of Vlachs, Croats, Serbs, Bosnians and other people as long as they shared lifestyle.
They made their living as shepherds and merchants, as well as soldiers. They neglected agricultural work, usually did not have gardens and orchards besides those growing naturally, and had for the time old farming tools, Lovrić explaining it as: "what our ancestors did not do, neither will we". Morlach families had herds numbering from 200 to 600, while the poorer families around 40 to 50, from which they received milk, and made various dairy products.
Contemporary I. Lovrić said that the Morlachs were Slavs who spoke better Slavic than the Ragusans (owing to the growing Italianization of the Dalmatian coast). Boško Desnica (1886–1945), after analysing Venetian papers, concluded that the Venetians undifferentiated the Slavic people in Dalmatia and labeled the language and script of the region as "Illirico" (Illyrian) or "Serviano" ["Serbian", particularly when referring to the language of the Morlachs or Vlachs in Dalmatia]. Language, idiom, characters/letters are always accompanied by the adjective Serb or Illyrian, when it is a matter of the military always is used term "cavalry (cavalleria) croata", "croato", "militia (milizia) croata" while the term "Slav" (schiavona) was used for the population. Lovrić made no distinction between the Vlachs/Morlachs and the Dalmatians and Montenegrins, whom he considered Slavs, and was not at all bothered by the fact that the Morlachs were predominantly Orthodox Christian. Fortis noted that there was often conflict between the Catholic and Orthodox Morlachs. Croatian Roman Catholic bishop Mile Bogović concluded based on records of that time that the entire population along the Ottoman-Venetian border in Dalmatia was designated Morlachs, the only difference within the community was religious affiliation.
thumb|Morlach peasant women from around [[Spalato (in modern Croatia), 1864]]
In his book, Viaggio in Dalmazia, Fortis presented the poetry of the Morlachs, publishing several specimen of Morlach songs. Fortis spotted the physical difference between Morlachs; those from around Kotor, Sinj and Knin were generally blond-haired, with blue eyes, and broad faces, while those around Zadvarje and Vrgorac were generally brown-haired with narrow faces. They also differed in nature. Although they were often seen by urban dwellers as strangers and "those people" from the periphery, in 1730 provveditore Zorzi Grimani described them as "ferocious, but not indomitable" by nature, Edward Gibbon called them "barbarians", and Fortis praised their "noble savagery", moral, family, and friendship virtues, but also complained about their persistence in keeping to old traditions. He found that they sang melancholic verses of epic poetry related to the Ottoman occupation, accompanied with the traditional single-stringed instrument called gusle. Fortis gave translation of folk song Hasanaginica at the end of his book. Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen identified the cultural traits of the Morlachs as being part of the South Slavic and Serb ethnotype. Fortis' work started a literary movement in Italian, Ragusan and Venetian literature: Morlachism, dedicated at the Morlachs, their customs and several other aspects of them.
History
Early history
The use of Morlachs is first attested in 1344, when Morolacorum are mentioned in lands around Knin and Krbava during the conflict between the counts of the Kurjaković and Nelipić families. The first mention of the term Morlachs is simultaneous with the appearance of Vlachs in the documents of Croatia in the early 14th century; in 1321, a local priest on the island of Krk granted land to the church ("to the lands of Kneže, which are called Vlach"), while in 1322 Vlachs were allied with Mladen Šubić at the battle in the hinterland of Trogir. According to Mužić in those early documents there is no identifiable differentiation between the terms Vlach and Morlach. In 1352, in the agreement in which Zadar sold salt to the Republic of Venice, Zadar retained part of the salt that Morlachi and others exported by land. In 1362, the Morlachorum, settled, without authorization, on lands of Trogir and used it for pasture for a few months. In the Statute of Senj dating to 1388, the Frankopans mentioned Morowlachi and defined the amount of time they had for pasture when they descended from the mountains. In 1412, the Murlachos captured the Ostrovica Fortress from Venice. In August 1417, Venetian authorities were concerned with the "Morlachs and other Slavs" from the hinterland, who were a threat to security in Šibenik. Authorities of Šibenik in 1450 gave permission to enter the city to Morlachs and some Vlachs who called themselves Croats who were in the same economic and social position at that time.
According to historian Fine Jr., the early Vlachs probably lived on Croatian territory even before the 14th century, being the progeny of romanized Illyrians and pre-Slavic Romance-speaking people. Kosovan historian Zef Mirdita (1936–2016) regarded pastoralism as specific to ethnic Romance Vlachs.