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Cognitive bias

A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, and irrationality.

While cognitive biases may initially appear to be negative, some are adaptive. They may lead to more effective actions in a given context. Furthermore, allowing cognitive biases enables faster decisions which can be desirable when timeliness is more valuable than accuracy, as illustrated in heuristics. Other cognitive biases are a "by-product" of human processing limitations, resulting from a lack of appropriate mental mechanisms (bounded rationality), the impact of an individual's constitution and biological state (see embodied cognition), or simply from a limited capacity for information processing. Research suggests that cognitive biases can make individuals more inclined to endorsing pseudoscientific beliefs by requiring less evidence for claims that confirm their preconceptions. This can potentially distort their perceptions and lead to inaccurate judgments.

A continually evolving list of cognitive biases has been identified over the last six decades of research on human judgment and decision-making in cognitive science, social psychology, and behavioral economics. The study of cognitive biases has practical implications for areas including clinical judgment, entrepreneurship, finance, and management.

Overview
The notion of cognitive biases was introduced by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972 and grew out of their experience of people's innumeracy, or inability to reason intuitively with the greater orders of magnitude. Tversky, Kahneman, and colleagues demonstrated several replicable ways in which human judgments and decisions differ from rational choice theory. Tversky and Kahneman explained human differences in judgment and decision-making in terms of heuristics. Heuristics involve mental shortcuts which provide swift estimates about the possibility of uncertain occurrences. Heuristics are simple for the brain to compute but sometimes introduce "severe and systematic errors." For example, the representativeness heuristic is defined as "The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood" of an occurrence by the extent of which the event "resembles the typical case."

The "Linda Problem" illustrates the representativeness heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1983 ). Participants were given a description of "Linda" that suggests Linda might well be a feminist (e.g., she is said to be concerned about discrimination and social justice issues). They were then asked whether they thought Linda was more likely to be (a) a "bank teller" or (b) a "bank teller and active in the feminist movement." A majority chose answer (b). Independent of the information given about Linda, though, the more restrictive answer (b) is under any circumstance statistically less likely than answer (a). This is an example of the "conjunction fallacy". Tversky and Kahneman argued that respondents chose (b) because it seemed more "representative" or typical of persons who might fit the description of Linda. The representativeness heuristic may lead to errors such as activating stereotypes and inaccurate judgments of others (Haselton et al., 2005, p. 726).

Critics of Kahneman and Tversky, such as Gerd Gigerenzer, alternatively argued that heuristics should not lead us to conceive of human thinking as riddled with irrational cognitive biases. They should rather conceive rationality as an adaptive tool, not identical to the rules of formal logic or the probability calculus. Nevertheless, experiments such as the "Linda problem" grew into heuristics and biases research programs, which spread beyond academic psychology into other disciplines including medicine and political science.

Types
Biases can be distinguished on a number of dimensions. Examples of cognitive biases include -
 * Biases specific to groups (such as the risky shift) versus biases at the individual level.
 * Biases that affect decision-making, where the desirability of options has to be considered (e.g., sunk costs fallacy).
 * Biases, such as illusory correlation, that affect judgment of how likely something is or whether one thing is the cause of another.
 * Biases that affect memory, such as consistency bias (remembering one's past attitudes and behavior as more similar to one's present attitudes).
 * Biases that reflect a subject's motivation, for example, the desire for a positive self-image leading to egocentric bias and the avoidance of unpleasant cognitive dissonance.

Other biases are due to the particular way the brain perceives, forms memories and makes judgments. This distinction is sometimes described as "hot cognition" versus "cold cognition", as motivated reasoning can involve a state of arousal. Among the "cold" biases,

 * some are due to ignoring relevant information (e.g., neglect of probability),
 * some involve a decision or judgment being affected by irrelevant information (for example the framing effect where the same problem receives different responses depending on how it is described; or the distinction bias where choices presented together have different outcomes than those presented separately), and
 * others give excessive weight to an unimportant but salient feature of the problem (e.g., anchoring).

As some biases reflect motivation specifically the motivation to have positive attitudes to oneself. It accounts for the fact that many biases are self-motivated or self-directed (e.g., illusion of asymmetric insight, self-serving bias). There are also biases in how subjects evaluate in-groups or out-groups; evaluating in-groups as more diverse and "better" in many respects, even when those groups are arbitrarily defined (ingroup bias, outgroup homogeneity bias).

Some cognitive biases belong to the subgroup of attentional biases, which refers to paying increased attention to certain stimuli. It has been shown, for example, that people addicted to alcohol and other drugs pay more attention to drug-related stimuli. Common psychological tests to measure those biases are the Stroop task and the dot probe task.

Individuals' susceptibility to some types of cognitive biases can be measured by the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) developed by Shane Frederick (2005).

List of biases
The following is a list of the more commonly studied cognitive biases:

Practical significance
Many social institutions rely on individuals to make rational judgments.

The securities regulation regime largely assumes that all investors act as perfectly rational persons. In truth, actual investors face cognitive limitations from biases, heuristics, and framing effects.

A fair jury trial, for example, requires that the jury ignore irrelevant features of the case, weigh the relevant features appropriately, consider different possibilities open-mindedly and resist fallacies such as appeal to emotion. The various biases demonstrated in these psychological experiments suggest that people will frequently fail to do all these things. However, they fail to do so in systematic, directional ways that are predictable.

In some academic disciplines, the study of bias is very popular. For instance, bias is a wide spread and well studied phenomenon because most decisions that concern the minds and hearts of entrepreneurs are computationally intractable.

Cognitive biases can create other issues that arise in everyday life. One study showed the connection between cognitive bias, specifically approach bias, and inhibitory control on how much unhealthy snack food a person would eat. They found that the participants who ate more of the unhealthy snack food, tended to have less inhibitory control and more reliance on approach bias. Others have also hypothesized that cognitive biases could be linked to various eating disorders and how people view their bodies and their body image.

It has also been argued that cognitive biases can be used in destructive ways. Some believe that there are people in authority who use cognitive biases and heuristics in order to manipulate others so that they can reach their end goals. Some medications and other health care treatments rely on cognitive biases in order to persuade others who are susceptible to cognitive biases to use their products. Many see this as taking advantage of one's natural struggle of judgement and decision-making. They also believe that it is the government's responsibility to regulate these misleading ads.

Cognitive biases also seem to play a role in property sale price and value. Participants in the experiment were shown a residential property. Afterwards, they were shown another property that was completely unrelated to the first property. They were asked to say what they believed the value and the sale price of the second property would be. They found that showing the participants an unrelated property did have an effect on how they valued the second property.

Cognitive biases can be used in non-destructive ways. In team science and collective problem-solving, the superiority bias can be beneficial. It leads to a diversity of solutions within a group, especially in complex problems, by preventing premature consensus on suboptimal solutions. This example demonstrates how a cognitive bias, typically seen as a hindrance, can enhance collective decision-making by encouraging a wider exploration of possibilities.

Reducing
Because they cause systematic errors, cognitive biases cannot be compensated for using a wisdom of the crowd technique of averaging answers from several people. Debiasing is the reduction of biases in judgment and decision-making through incentives, nudges, and training. Cognitive bias mitigation and cognitive bias modification are forms of debiasing specifically applicable to cognitive biases and their effects. Reference class forecasting is a method for systematically debiasing estimates and decisions, based on what Daniel Kahneman has dubbed the outside view.

Similar to Gigerenzer (1996), Haselton et al. (2005) state the content and direction of cognitive biases are not "arbitrary" (p. 730). Moreover, cognitive biases can be controlled. One debiasing technique aims to decrease biases by encouraging individuals to use controlled processing compared to automatic processing. In relation to reducing the FAE, monetary incentives and informing participants they will be held accountable for their attributions have been linked to the increase of accurate attributions. Training has also shown to reduce cognitive bias. Carey K. Morewedge and colleagues (2015) found that research participants exposed to one-shot training interventions, such as educational videos and debiasing games that taught mitigating strategies, exhibited significant reductions in their commission of six cognitive biases immediately and up to 3 months later.

Cognitive bias modification refers to the process of modifying cognitive biases in healthy people and also refers to a growing area of psychological (non-pharmaceutical) therapies for anxiety, depression and addiction called cognitive bias modification therapy (CBMT). CBMT is sub-group of therapies within a growing area of psychological therapies based on modifying cognitive processes with or without accompanying medication and talk therapy, sometimes referred to as applied cognitive processing therapies (ACPT). Although cognitive bias modification can refer to modifying cognitive processes in healthy individuals, CBMT is a growing area of evidence-based psychological therapy, in which cognitive processes are modified to relieve suffering from serious depression, anxiety, and addiction. CBMT techniques are technology-assisted therapies that are delivered via a computer with or without clinician support. CBM combines evidence and theory from the cognitive model of anxiety, cognitive neuroscience, and attentional models.

Cognitive bias modification has also been used to help those with obsessive-compulsive beliefs and obsessive-compulsive disorder. This therapy has shown that it decreases the obsessive-compulsive beliefs and behaviors.

Common theoretical causes of some cognitive biases
Bias arises from various processes that are sometimes difficult to distinguish. These include:

 * Bounded rationality — limits on optimization and rationality
 * Prospect theory
 * Evolutionary psychology — Remnants from evolutionary adaptive mental functions.
 * Mental accounting
 * Adaptive bias — basing decisions on limited information and biasing them based on the costs of being wrong
 * Attribute substitution — making a complex, difficult judgment by unconsciously replacing it with an easier judgment
 * Attribution theory
 * Salience
 * Naïve realism
 * Cognitive dissonance, and related:
 * Impression management
 * Self-perception theory
 * Information-processing shortcuts (heuristics), including:
 * Availability heuristic — estimating what is more likely by what is more available in memory, which is biased toward vivid, unusual, or emotionally charged examples
 * Representativeness heuristic — judging probabilities based on resemblance
 * Affect heuristic — basing a decision on an emotional reaction rather than a calculation of risks and benefits
 * Emotional and moral motivations deriving, for example, from:
 * The two-factor theory of emotion
 * The somatic markers hypothesis
 * Introspection illusion
 * Misinterpretations or misuse of statistics; innumeracy.
 * Social influence
 * The brain's limited information processing capacity
 * Noisy information processing (distortions during storage in and retrieval from memory). For example, a 2012 Psychological Bulletin article suggests that at least eight seemingly unrelated biases can be produced by the same information-theoretic generative mechanism. The article shows that noisy deviations in the memory-based information processes that convert objective evidence (observations) into subjective estimates (decisions) can produce regressive conservatism, the belief revision (Bayesian conservatism), illusory correlations, illusory superiority (better-than-average effect) and worse-than-average effect, subadditivity effect, exaggerated expectation, overconfidence, and the hard–easy effect.

Individual differences in cognitive biases
People do appear to have stable individual differences in their susceptibility to decision biases such as overconfidence, temporal discounting, and bias blind spot. That said, these stable levels of bias within individuals are possible to change. Participants in experiments who watched training videos and played debiasing games showed medium to large reductions both immediately and up to three months later in the extent to which they exhibited susceptibility to six cognitive biases: anchoring, bias blind spot, confirmation bias, fundamental attribution error, projection bias, and representativeness.

Individual differences in cognitive bias have also been linked to varying levels of cognitive abilities and functions. The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) has been used to help understand the connection between cognitive biases and cognitive ability. There have been inconclusive results when using the Cognitive Reflection Test to understand ability. However, there does seem to be a correlation; those who gain a higher score on the Cognitive Reflection Test, have higher cognitive ability and rational-thinking skills. This in turn helps predict the performance on cognitive bias and heuristic tests. Those with higher CRT scores tend to be able to answer more correctly on different heuristic and cognitive bias tests and tasks.

Age is another individual difference that has an effect on one's ability to be susceptible to cognitive bias. Older individuals tend to be more susceptible to cognitive biases and have less cognitive flexibility. However, older individuals were able to decrease their susceptibility to cognitive biases throughout ongoing trials. These experiments had both young and older adults complete a framing task. Younger adults had more cognitive flexibility than older adults. Cognitive flexibility is linked to helping overcome pre-existing biases.

Criticism
Cognitive bias theory loses the sight of any distinction between reason and bias. If every bias can be seen as a reason, and every reason can be seen as a bias, then the distinction is lost.

Criticism against theories of cognitive biases is usually founded in the fact that both sides of a debate often claim the other's thoughts to be subject to human nature and the result of cognitive bias, while claiming their own point of view to be above the cognitive bias and the correct way to "overcome" the issue. This rift ties to a more fundamental issue that stems from a lack of consensus in the field, thereby creating arguments that can be non-falsifiably used to validate any contradicting viewpoint.

Gerd Gigerenzer is one of the main opponents to cognitive biases and heuristics. Gigerenzer believes that cognitive biases are not biases, but rules of thumb, or as he would put it "gut feelings" that can actually help us make accurate decisions in our lives. His view shines a much more positive light on cognitive biases than many other researchers. Many view cognitive biases and heuristics as irrational ways of making decisions and judgements.

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Closed set

In geometry, topology, and related branches of mathematics, a closed set is a set whose complement is an open set. In a topological space, a closed set can be defined as a set which contains all its limit points. In a complete metric space, a closed set is a set which is closed under the limit operation. This should not be confused with a closed manifold.

Equivalent definitions
By definition, a subset $$A$$ of a topological space $$(X, \tau)$$ is called  if its complement $$X \setminus A$$ is an open subset of $$(X, \tau)$$; that is, if $$X \setminus A \in \tau.$$ A set is closed in $$X$$ if and only if it is equal to its closure in $$X.$$ Equivalently, a set is closed if and only if it contains all of its limit points. Yet another equivalent definition is that a set is closed if and only if it contains all of its boundary points. Every subset $$A \subseteq X$$ is always contained in its (topological) closure in $$X,$$ which is denoted by $$\operatorname{cl}_X A;$$ that is, if $$A \subseteq X$$ then $$A \subseteq \operatorname{cl}_X A.$$ Moreover, $$A$$ is a closed subset of $$X$$ if and only if $$A = \operatorname{cl}_X A.$$

An alternative characterization of closed sets is available via sequences and nets. A subset $$A$$ of a topological space $$X$$ is closed in $$X$$ if and only if every limit of every net of elements of $$A$$ also belongs to $$A.$$ In a first-countable space (such as a metric space), it is enough to consider only convergent sequences, instead of all nets. One value of this characterization is that it may be used as a definition in the context of convergence spaces, which are more general than topological spaces. Notice that this characterization also depends on the surrounding space $$X,$$ because whether or not a sequence or net converges in $$X$$ depends on what points are present in $$X.$$ A point $$x$$ in $$X$$ is said to be a subset $$A \subseteq X$$ if $$x \in \operatorname{cl}_X A$$ (or equivalently, if $$x$$ belongs to the closure of $$A$$ in the topological subspace $$A \cup \{ x \},$$ meaning $$x \in \operatorname{cl}_{A \cup \{ x \}} A$$ where $$A \cup \{ x \}$$ is endowed with the subspace topology induced on it by $$X$$ ). Because the closure of $$A$$ in $$X$$ is thus the set of all points in $$X$$ that are close to $$A,$$ this terminology allows for a plain English description of closed subsets:

 * a subset is closed if and only if it contains every point that is close to it.

In terms of net convergence, a point $$x \in X$$ is close to a subset $$A$$ if and only if there exists some net (valued) in $$A$$ that converges to $$x.$$ If $$X$$ is a topological subspace of some other topological space $$Y,$$ in which case $$Y$$ is called a of $$X,$$ then there  exist some point in $$Y \setminus X$$ that is close to $$A$$ (although not an element of $$X$$), which is how it is possible for a subset $$A \subseteq X$$ to be closed in $$X$$ but to  be closed in the "larger" surrounding super-space $$Y.$$ If $$A \subseteq X$$ and if $$Y$$ is topological super-space of $$X$$ then $$A$$ is always a (potentially proper) subset of $$\operatorname{cl}_Y A,$$ which denotes the closure of $$A$$ in $$Y;$$ indeed, even if $$A$$ is a closed subset of $$X$$ (which happens if and only if $$A = \operatorname{cl}_X A$$), it is nevertheless still possible for $$A$$ to be a proper subset of $$\operatorname{cl}_Y A.$$ However, $$A$$ is a closed subset of $$X$$ if and only if $$A = X \cap \operatorname{cl}_Y A$$ for some (or equivalently, for every) topological super-space $$Y$$ of $$X.$$

Closed sets can also be used to characterize continuous functions: a map $$f : X \to Y$$ is continuous if and only if $$f\left( \operatorname{cl}_X A \right) \subseteq \operatorname{cl}_Y (f(A))$$ for every subset $$A \subseteq X$$; this can be reworded in plain English as: $$f$$ is continuous if and only if for every subset $$A \subseteq X,$$ $$f$$ maps points that are close to $$A$$ to points that are close to $$f(A).$$ Similarly, $$f$$ is continuous at a fixed given point $$x \in X$$ if and only if whenever $$x$$ is close to a subset $$A \subseteq X,$$ then $$f(x)$$ is close to $$f(A).$$

More about closed sets
The notion of closed set is defined above in terms of open sets, a concept that makes sense for topological spaces, as well as for other spaces that carry topological structures, such as metric spaces, differentiable manifolds, uniform spaces, and gauge spaces.

Whether a set is closed depends on the space in which it is embedded. However, the compact Hausdorff spaces are "absolutely closed", in the sense that, if you embed a compact Hausdorff space $$D$$ in an arbitrary Hausdorff space $$X,$$ then $$D$$ will always be a closed subset of $$X$$; the "surrounding space" does not matter here. Stone–Čech compactification, a process that turns a completely regular Hausdorff space into a compact Hausdorff space, may be described as adjoining limits of certain nonconvergent nets to the space.

Furthermore, every closed subset of a compact space is compact, and every compact subspace of a Hausdorff space is closed.

Closed sets also give a useful characterization of compactness: a topological space $$X$$ is compact if and only if every collection of nonempty closed subsets of $$X$$ with empty intersection admits a finite subcollection with empty intersection.

A topological space $$X$$ is disconnected if there exist disjoint, nonempty, open subsets $$A$$ and $$B$$ of $$X$$ whose union is $$X.$$ Furthermore, $$X$$ is totally disconnected if it has an open basis consisting of closed sets.

Properties
A closed set contains its own boundary. In other words, if you are "outside" a closed set, you may move a small amount in any direction and still stay outside the set. This is also true if the boundary is the empty set, e.g. in the metric space of rational numbers, for the set of numbers of which the square is less than $$2.$$

 * Any intersection of any family of closed sets is closed (this includes intersections of infinitely many closed sets)
 * The union of closed sets is closed.
 * The empty set is closed.
 * The whole set is closed.

In fact, if given a set $$X$$ and a collection $$\mathbb{F} \neq \varnothing$$ of subsets of $$X$$ such that the elements of $$\mathbb{F}$$ have the properties listed above, then there exists a unique topology $$\tau$$ on $$X$$ such that the closed subsets of $$(X, \tau)$$ are exactly those sets that belong to $$\mathbb{F}.$$ The intersection property also allows one to define the closure of a set $$A$$ in a space $$X,$$ which is defined as the smallest closed subset of $$X$$ that is a superset of $$A.$$ Specifically, the closure of $$X$$ can be constructed as the intersection of all of these closed supersets.

Sets that can be constructed as the union of countably many closed sets are denoted Fσ sets. These sets need not be closed.

Examples

 * The closed interval $$[a, b]$$ of real numbers is closed. (See for an explanation of the bracket and parenthesis set notation.)
 * The unit interval $$[0, 1]$$ is closed in the metric space of real numbers, and the set $$[0, 1] \cap \Q$$ of rational numbers between $$0$$ and $$1$$ (inclusive) is closed in the space of rational numbers, but $$[0, 1] \cap \Q$$ is not closed in the real numbers.
 * Some sets are neither open nor closed, for instance the half-open interval $$[0, 1)$$ in the real numbers.
 * Some sets are both open and closed and are called clopen sets.
 * The ray $$[1, +\infty)$$ is closed.
 * The Cantor set is an unusual closed set in the sense that it consists entirely of boundary points and is nowhere dense.
 * Singleton points (and thus finite sets) are closed in T1 spaces and Hausdorff spaces.
 * The set of integers $$\Z$$ is an infinite and unbounded closed set in the real numbers.
 * If $$f : X \to Y$$ is a function between topological spaces then $$f$$ is continuous if and only if preimages of closed sets in $$Y$$ are closed in $$X.$$

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Closed set


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Infrastructure bias

In economics and social policy, infrastructure bias is the influence of the location and availability of pre-existing infrastructure, such as roads and telecommunications facilities, on social and economic development.

In science, infrastructure bias is the influence of existing social or scientific infrastructure on scientific observations.

In astronomy and particle physics, where the availability of particular kinds of telescopes or particle accelerators acts as a constraint on the types of experiments that can be done, the data that can be retrieved is biased towards that which can be obtained by the equipment.

Procedural bias, related to infrastructure bias, is shown by a case of irregular genetic sampling of Bolivian wild potatoes. A 2000 report of previous studies' sampling found that 60% of samples had been taken near towns or roads, where 22% would be the average, had the samples been taken at random (or from equidistant points, or at specifically varying distances from towns, representative of the average terrain density).

title: Infrastructure bias


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Talk:Electoral reform

Electoral Reform Act of 2015
Consider looking into this. It started as findings from Occupy working group on electoral reform in 2011, morphed into an 11 point proposal based on information harvested from a wide number of stakeholders as shown at http://bigbatusa.org, and recently has been in a book that made #1 at Amazon in Civics Kindle, briefly, Open Power: Electoral Reform Act of 2015 - Open Source Activist Tool-Kit. The home page tiny url /OpenPower has been blocked for reasons beyond my comprehension, further confirming my view that Wikipedia suffers from too many abusers.

Robert Steele 68.98.139.15 (talk) 18:43, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

 * Can you give some reliable source coverage of the campaign/proposals? Bondegezou (talk) 21:51, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Electoral reform in Canada
A page on electoral reform in Canada now exists. Is this the right name or should it be "Canadian electoral reform", "U.S. electoral reform", etc.? Please pick one!
 * Electoral reform in New Zealand is in the same format. --LeftyG 09:08, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure who wrote the section on electoral reform in Canada, but it was riddled with factual inaccuracies and a few spelling errors to boot. 1. The Liberals did not promise to implement Instant Runoff Voting, they promised to investigate numerous electoral reform options (including IRV and proportional systems) 2. The author's claim that the all-party committee will not arrive at consensus, describing moves towards Instant Runoff Voting at the municipal level as "more hopeful," and the comparison between Fair Vote Canada (a well known electoral reform NGO) and "CoVote" (whatever that is) indicate clear and unacceptable bias.

I too have a bias in this debate (towards proportional representation), but Wikipedia articles should never be skewed so blatantly. As such, I rewrote the entire section and unlike the last author provided sources. Chris-Gilmore77 (talk) 10:14, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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title: Talk:Electoral reform


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Dalmatia

Dalmatia (Dalmacija ; Dalmazia ; see names in other languages) is one of the four historical regions of Croatia, alongside Central Croatia, Slavonia, and Istria, located on the east shore of the Adriatic Sea in Croatia.

Dalmatia is a narrow belt stretching from the island of Rab in the north to the Bay of Kotor in the south. The Dalmatian Hinterland ranges in width from fifty kilometres in the north, to just a few kilometres in the south; it is mostly covered by the rugged Dinaric Alps. Seventy-nine islands (and about 500 islets) run parallel to the coast, the largest (in Dalmatia) being Brač, Pag, and Hvar. The largest city is Split, followed by Zadar, Šibenik, and Dubrovnik.

The name of the region stems from an Illyrian tribe called the Dalmatae, who lived in the area in classical antiquity. Later it became a Roman province (with much larger territory than modern region), and as result a Romance culture emerged, along with the now-extinct Dalmatian language, later largely replaced with related Venetian and Italian, which were mainly spoken by the Dalmatian Italians. With the arrival of the Sclaveni (South Slavs) to the area in the late 6th and early 7th century, who eventually occupied most of the coast and hinterland, Slavic and Romance elements began to intermix in language and culture.

After the medieval Kingdom of Croatia, in which most of Dalmatia resided, entered a personal union with Hungary in 1102, its cities and lands were often conquered by, or switched allegiance to, the kingdoms of the region during the Middle Ages. At one time, most of Dalmatia came under rule of the Republic of Venice, which controlled most of Dalmatia between 1420 and 1797 as part of its State of the Sea, with the exception of the small but stable Republic of Ragusa (1358–1808) in the south. Between 1815 and 1918, it was a province of the Austrian Empire known as the Kingdom of Dalmatia. After the Austro-Hungarian defeat in World War I, Dalmatia was split between the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which controlled most of it, and the Kingdom of Italy, which held several smaller parts. After World War II, the People's Republic of Croatia as a part of Yugoslavia took complete control over the area. Following the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Dalmatia became part of the Republic of Croatia.

Name
The regional name Dalmatia originates from Dalmatae, the name of the Illyrian, Balkan tribe who were the original inhabitants of the region, and from which the later toponym, Delminium, is derived. It is considered by some to be connected to the Albanian dele and its variants which include the Gheg form delmë, meaning "sheep", and to the Albanian term delmer, "shepherd",   although there is lack of compelling evidence in ancient literary sources that Delmatae is derived from a word meaning "sheep". According to Vladimir Orel, the Gheg form delmë hardly has anything in common with the name of Dalmatia because it represents a variant of dele with *-mā, which is ultimately from proto-Albanian *dailā. The ancient name Dalmana, derived from the same root, testifies to the advance of the Illyrians into the middle Vardar, between the ancient towns of Bylazora and Stobi. The medieval Slavic toponym Ovče Pole ("plain of sheep" in South Slavic) in the nearby region represents a related later development. According to István Schütz, in Albania, Delvinë represents a toponym linked to the root *dele.

The form of the regional name Dalmatia and the respective tribal name Dalmatae are later variants as is already noted by Appian (2nd century AD). His contemporary grammarian Velius Longus highlights in his treatise about orthography that the correct form of Dalmatia is Delmatia, and notes that Marcus Terentius Varro who lived about two centuries prior to Appian and Velius Longius, used the form Delmatia as it corresponded to the chief settlement of the tribe, Delminium. The toponym Duvno is a derivation from Delminium in Croatian via an intermediate form *Delminio in late antiquity. Its Latin form Dalmatia gave rise to its current English name. In the Venetian language, once dominant in the area, it is spelled Dalmàssia, and in modern Italian Dalmazia. The modern Croatian spelling is Dalmacija, and the modern Serbian Cyrillic spelling is Далмација.

Dalmatia is referenced in the New Testament at, therefore the name has been translated in many of the world's languages.

Definition
In antiquity, the Roman province of Dalmatia was much larger than the present-day Split-Dalmatia County, stretching from Istria in the north to modern-day Albania in the south. Dalmatia signified not only a geographical unit, but was an entity based on common culture and settlement types, a common narrow eastern Adriatic coastal belt, Mediterranean climate, sclerophyllous vegetation of the Illyrian province, Adriatic carbonate platform, and karst geomorphology.

Modern area

Today, Dalmatia is a historical region only, not formally instituted in Croatian law. Its exact extent is therefore uncertain and subject to public perception. According to Lena Mirošević and Josip Faričić of the University of Zadar:

"...the modern perception of Dalmatia is mainly based on the territorial extent of the Austrian Kingdom of Dalmatia, with the exception of Rab, which is geographically related to the Kvarner area and functionally to the Littoral–Gorski Kotar area, and with the exception of the Bay of Kotor, which was annexed to another state (Montenegro) after World War I. Simultaneously, the southern part of Lika and upper Pounje, which were not part of Austrian Dalmatia, became part of Zadar County. From the present-day administrative and territorial point of view, Dalmatia comprises the four Croatian littoral counties with seats in Zadar, Šibenik, Split, and Dubrovnik."

"Dalmatia" is therefore generally perceived to extend approximately to the borders of the Austrian Kingdom of Dalmatia. However, due to territorial and administrative changes over the past century, the perception can be seen to have altered somewhat with regard to certain areas, and sources conflict as to their being part of the region in modern times:

 * The Bay of Kotor area in Montenegro. With the subdivision of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia into oblasts in 1922, the whole of the Bay of Kotor from Sutorina to Sutomore was granted to the Zeta Oblast, so that the border of Dalmatia was formed at that point by the southern border of the former Republic of Ragusa. The Encyclopædia Britannica defines Dalmatia as extending "to the narrows of Kotor" (i.e. the southernmost tip of continental Croatia, the Prevlaka peninsula). Other sources, however, such as the Treccani encyclopedia and the Rough Guide to Croatia still include the Bay as being part of the region.
 * The island of Rab, along with the small islands of Sveti Grgur and Goli Otok, were a part of the Kingdom of Dalmatia and are historically and culturally related to the region, but are today associated more with the Croatian Littoral, due to geographical vicinity and administrative expediency.
 * Gračac municipality and northern Pag. A number of sources express the view that "from the modern-day administrative point of view", the extent of Dalmatia equates to the four southernmost counties of Croatia: Zadar, Šibenik-Knin, Split-Dalmatia, and Dubrovnik-Neretva.    This definition does not include the Bay of Kotor, or the islands of Rab, Sveti Grgur, and Goli Otok. It also excludes the northern part of the island of Pag, which is part of the Lika-Senj County. However, it includes the Gračac municipality in Zadar County, which was not a part of the Kingdom of Dalmatia and is not traditionally associated with the region (but instead the region of Lika).

Culture and ethnicity
The inhabitants of Dalmatia are culturally subdivided into two groups. The urban families of the coastal cities, commonly known as Fetivi, are culturally akin to the inhabitants of the Dalmatian islands (known derogatorily as Boduli). The two are together distinct, in the Mediterranean aspects of their culture, from the more numerous inhabitants of the Hinterland. Referred to (sometimes derogatorily) as the Vlaji, their name originated from the Vlachs with whom they have no ethnic connection. According to the Austrian census, they constituted 18.5% of the population in 1857, which decreased to 17.4% by 1900. They formed 19.9% in the 1830-1850 period.

The former two groups (inhabitants of the islands and the cities) historically included many Venetian and Italian speakers, many of whom identified as Dalmatian Italians (especially after the Italian unification). Their presence, relative to those identifying as Croats, decreased dramatically over the course of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. The Italian speakers (Italians and italophone Croats) constituted (according to the Italian linguist Matteo Bartoli) nearly one third of Dalmatians in the second half of the 18th century. According to the Austrian census it had decreased to 12.5% in 1865 and 3.1% in 1890. There remains, however, a strong cultural, and, in part, ancestral heritage among the natives of the cities and islands, who today almost exclusively identify as Croats, but retain a sense of regional identity. This same regional identity and heritage is displayed in the Hinterland, where the architectural and cultural legacy remains evident in many villages and towns that have a distinct Mediterranean style.

Geography and climate
Most of the land area is covered by the Dinaric Alps mountain range running from north-west to south-east. The hills and mountains lie parallel to the coast, which gave rise to the geographic term Dalmatian concordant coastline. On the coasts the climate is Mediterranean, while further inland it is moderate Mediterranean. In the mountains, winters are frosty and snowy, while summers are hot and dry. To the south winters are milder. Over the centuries many forests have been cut down and replaced with bush and brush. There is evergreen vegetation on the coast. The soils are generally poor, except on the plains where areas with natural grass, fertile soils, and warm summers provide an opportunity for tillage. Elsewhere, land cultivation is mostly unsuccessful because of the mountains, hot summers, and poor soils, although olives and grapes flourish. Energy resources are scarce. Electricity is mainly produced by hydropower stations. There is a considerable amount of bauxite.

The largest Dalmatian mountains are Dinara, Mosor, Svilaja, Biokovo, Moseć, Veliki Kozjak, and Mali Kozjak. The regional geographical unit of historical Dalmatia–the coastal region between Istria and the Bay of Kotor–includes the Orjen mountains with the highest peak in Montenegro, 1894 m. In present-day Dalmatia, the highest peak is Dinara (1913 m), which is not a coastal mountain, while the highest coastal Dinaric mountains are on Biokovo (Sv. Jure, 1762 m) and Velebit (Vaganski vrh, 1757 m), although the Vaganski vrh itself is located in Lika-Senj County.

The largest Dalmatian islands are Brač, Korčula, Dugi Otok, Mljet, Vis, Hvar, Pag and Pašman. The major rivers are Zrmanja, Krka, Cetina, and Neretva.

The Adriatic Sea's high water quality, along with the immense number of coves, islands, and channels, makes Dalmatia an attractive place for nautical races, nautical tourism, and tourism in general. Dalmatia also includes several national parks that are tourist attractions: Paklenica karst river, Kornati archipelago, Krka river rapids, and Mljet island.

Administrative division
The area of Dalmatia roughly corresponds to Croatia's four southernmost counties, listed here north to south:

Antiquity
Dalmatia's name is derived from the name of an Illyrian tribe called the Dalmatae who lived in the area of the eastern Adriatic coast in the 1st millennium BC. It was part of the Illyrian Kingdom between the 4th century BC and the Illyrian Wars (220, 168 BC) when the Roman Republic established its protectorate south of the river Neretva. The name "Dalmatia" was in use probably from the second half of the 2nd century BC and certainly from the first half of the 1st century BC, defining a coastal area of the eastern Adriatic between the Krka and Neretva rivers. It was slowly incorporated into Roman possessions until the Roman province of Illyricum was formally established around 32–27 BC. In 9 AD, the Dalmatians raised the last in a series of revolts together with the Pannonians, but it was finally crushed and, in 10 AD, Illyricum was split into two provinces, Pannonia and Dalmatia, which spread into larger area inland to cover all of the Dinaric Alps and most of the eastern Adriatic coast.

The historian Theodor Mommsen wrote in his book, The Provinces of the Roman Empire, that all Dalmatia was fully romanized by the 4th century AD. However, analysis of archaeological material from that period has shown that the process of Romanization was rather selective. While urban centers, both coastal and inland, were almost completely romanized, the situation in the countryside was completely different. Despite the Illyrians being subject to a strong process of acculturation, they continued to speak their native language, worship their own gods and traditions, and follow their own social-political tribal organization which was adapted to Roman administration and political structure only in some necessities.

The fall of the Western Roman Empire, with the beginning of the Migration Period, left the region subject to Gothic rulers Odoacer and Theodoric the Great. They ruled Dalmatia from 480 to 535 AD, when it was restored to the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire by Justinian I.

Middle Ages

In the Early Middle Ages, the territory of the Byzantine province of Dalmatia reached in the North up to the river Sava, and was part of the Praetorian prefecture of Illyricum. In the middle of the 6th and the beginning of the 7th century began the Slavic migration, which caused the Romance-speaking population, descendants of Romans and Illyrians (speaking Dalmatian), to flee to the coast and islands. The hinterland, semi-depopulated by the Barbarian Invasions, Slavic tribes settled. The Slavs alongside Avars by 619 brought to ruin the capital Salona (an event that allowed for the settlement of the nearby Diocletian's Palace in Spalatum), Asseria, Varvaria, Burnum, Scardona, Epidaurum and Acruvium (resulting with the foundation of Kotor), and Epidaurum (resulting with the foundation of Ragusa). The arrived tribes of Croats, Serbs and other Slavs founded sclaviniae Croatia, Pagania, Zachlumia, Travunia and Konavle (also small region of Bosnia, with Duklja in near Praevalitana and Serbia in Dalmatia, Praevalitana and Moesia).

In the early 9th century, the Eastern Adriatic coast including Dalmatia was the scene of the sphere of influence struggle between the Frankish and Byzantine Empire, but although the Byzantines have retained supremacy, Dalmatia became a meeting place between the West and the East. The meaning of the administrative-geographical term "Dalmatia" by 820 shrank to the coastal cities and their immediate hinterland - Byzantine theme of Dalmatia. Its cities were the Romance-speaking Dalmatian city-states and remained influential as they were well fortified and maintained their connection with the Byzantine Empire. The original name of the cities was Jadera (Zadar; capital of the theme), Spalatum (Split), Crepsa (Cres), Arba (Rab), Tragurium (Trogir), Vecla (Krk), Ragusium (Dubrovnik) and Cattarum (Kotor). The language and the laws were initially Latin, but after a few centuries they developed their own neo-Latin language (the "Dalmatico"), that lasted until the 19th century. The cities were maritime centres with a huge commerce mainly with the Italian peninsula and with the growing Republic of Venice. The Latin and Slavic communities were somewhat hostile at first, but as the Croats became Christianized this tension increasingly subsided. A degree of cultural mingling soon took place, in some enclaves stronger, in others weaker, as Slavic influence and culture was more accentuated in Ragusa, Spalatum, and Tragurium.

In the first half of the 10th century, Croatia was elevated to a kingdom by Duke Tomislav who also extended his influence further southwards to Zachlumia. As an ally of the Byzantine Empire, the King was given the status of Protector of Dalmatia, and became its de facto ruler. In the subsequent period, the rulers of Croatia exerted influence over Dalmatian cities and islands, occasionally taking control such as the conquest of Zadar in the mid-11th century. Chronicler Thomas the Archdeacon relates that Stephen Držislav took the title "King of Dalmatia and Croatia", and that all subsequent rulers styled themselves in such manner. Petar Krešimir IV of Croatia expanded his rule to permanently incorporate Dalmatian cities and islands by 1069. Upon the death of King Demetrius Zvonimir of Croatia by the end of 1080s, the state entered a period of anarchy and would result in Hungarians under Coloman of Hungary taking control over former Dalmatian possessions along with the rest of the state by 1102.

In the High Medieval period, the Byzantine Empire was no longer able to expand its power consistently in Dalmatia, and was finally rendered impotent so far west by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The Republic of Venice, on the other hand, was in the ascendant, while the Croatia became increasingly influenced by Hungary to the north, being absorbed into it via personal union in 1102. Thus, these two factions became involved in a struggle in this area, intermittently controlling it as the balance shifted. During the reign of King Emeric, the Dalmatian cities separated from Hungary by a treaty. A consistent period of Hungarian rule in Dalmatia was ended with the Mongol invasion of Hungary in 1241. The Mongols severely impaired the feudal state, so much so that that same year, King Béla IV had to take refuge in Dalmatia, as far south as the Fortress of Klis. The Mongols attacked the Dalmatian cities for the next few years but eventually withdrew without major success.

At the beginning of the 14th century and until 1322, the Dalmatian cities were under the control of the noble Šubić family which held them until they were defeated at the Battle of Bliska by a coalition of nobles, Dalmatian cities and royal troops loyal to Charles I of Hungary.

In the south, due to its protected location, Kotor became a major city for the salt trade. The area was prosperous during the 14th century under the rule of Emperor of the Serbs Dušan the Mighty, who encouraged law enforcement, which helped the Bay of Kotor to become a safe place for doing business. In 1389, Tvrtko I, the founder of the Kingdom of Bosnia, was able to control the Adriatic littoral between Kotor and Šibenik, and even claimed control over the northern coast up to Rijeka, and his own independent ally, Republic of Ragusa. This was only temporary, as Hungary and the Venetians continued their struggle over Dalmatia after Tvrtko's death in 1391. By this time, the whole Hungarian and Croatian Kingdom was facing increasing internal difficulties, as a 20-year civil war ensued between the Capetian House of Anjou from the Kingdom of Naples, and King Sigismund of the House of Luxembourg. During the war, the losing contender, Ladislaus of Naples, sold his "rights" on Dalmatia to the Republic of Venice for a mere 100,000 ducats. The much more centralized Republic came to control the coast and near hinterland of Dalmatia by the year 1420, it was to remain under Venetian rule for 377 years (1420–1797).

Early modern period

Dalmatia was first and finally sold to the Republic of Venice in 1409 but Venetian Dalmatia was not fully consolidated from 1420. The Republic of Venice in 1420 controlled coastal part of Dalmatia, with the southern enclave, the Bay of Kotor, being called Venetian Albania. Venetian was the commercial lingua franca in the Mediterranean at that time, and it heavily influenced Dalmatian and to a lesser degree coastal Croatian and Albanian.

The southern city of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) became de facto independent in 1358 through the Treaty of Zadar when Venice relinquished its suzerainty over it to Louis I of Hungary. In 1481, Ragusa switched allegiance to the Ottoman Empire. This gave its tradesmen advantages such as access to the Black Sea, and the Republic of Ragusa was the fiercest competitor to Venice's merchants in the 15th and 16th centuries.

In the early 16th century, most of the Dalmatian hinterland which was controlled by the Hungarian-Croatian Kingdom was lost to the Ottoman Empire by the 1520s when was formed Croatian vilayet which became incorporated into the Sanjak of Klis after the Siege of Klis (1537), and decades later into the Bosnia Eyalet. With the fall of the Hungarian-Venetian border in Dalmatia, Venetian Dalmatia now directly bordered with the Ottoman Dalmatia. Venetians still perceived this inner hinterland as once part of Croatia, calling it as "Banadego" (lands of Ban i.e. Banate). The Republic of Venice was also one of the powers most hostile to the Ottoman Empire's expansion, and participated in many wars against it, but also promoted peace negotiations and cultural and religious coexistence and tolerance.

Since the 16th century Slavicized Vlachs, Serbs and other South Slavs arrived both as martolos in Ottoman service and refugees fleeing from Ottoman territory to the Military Frontier and Venetian Dalmatia. As the Ottomans took control of the hinterland, many Christians took refuge in the coastal cities of Dalmatia. In the Ottoman Dalmatia many people converted to Islam to get freedom and privileges. The border between the Dalmatian hinterland and the Ottoman Bosnia and Herzegovina greatly fluctuated until the Morean War, when the Venetian capture of Knin and Sinj set much of the borderline at its current position.

After the Great Turkish War and the Treaty of Passarowitz, more peaceful times made Dalmatia experience a period of certain economic and cultural growth in the 18th century, with the re-establishment of trade and exchange with the hinterland. This period was abruptly interrupted with the fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797. Napoleon's troops stormed the region and ended the independence of the Republic of Ragusa as well, saving it from occupation by the Russian Empire and Montenegro.

In 1805, Napoleon created his Kingdom of Italy around the Adriatic Sea, annexing to it the former Venetian Dalmatia from Istria to Kotor. In 1808, he annexed the just conquered Republic of Ragusa to the Kingdom. A year later, in 1809, he removed the Venetian Dalmatia from his Kingdom of Italy and created the Illyrian Provinces, which were annexed to France, and named Marshal General Jean-de-Dieu Soult the Duke of Dalmatia.

Napoleon's rule in Dalmatia was marked with war and high taxation, which caused several rebellions. On the other hand, French rule greatly contributed to Croatian national revival (the first newspaper in Croatian was published then in Zadar, Il Regio Dalmata – Kraglski Dalmatin), the legal system and infrastructure were finally modernized somewhat in Dalmatia, and the educational system flourished. French rule brought a lot of improvements in infrastructure; many roads were built or reconstructed. Napoleon himself blamed Marshal of the Empire Auguste de Marmont, the governor of Dalmatia, that too much money was spent. However, in 1813, the Habsburgs once again declared war on France and, by the following year, had restored control over Dalmatia.

From the Middle Ages to the 19th century, Italian and Slavic communities in Dalmatia had lived peacefully side by side because they did not know the national identification, given that they generically defined themselves as "Dalmatians", of "Romance" or "Slavic" culture.

19th century

At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Dalmatia was granted as a province to the Emperor of Austria. It was officially known as the Kingdom of Dalmatia.

In 1848, the Croatian Parliament (Sabor) published the People's Requests, in which they requested among other things the abolition of serfdom and the unification of Dalmatia and Croatia. The Dubrovnik municipality was the most outspoken of all the Dalmatian communes in its support for unification with Croatia. A letter was sent from Dubrovnik to Zagreb with pledges to work for this idea. In 1849, Dubrovnik continued to lead the Dalmatian cities in the struggle for unification. A large-scale campaign was launched in the Dubrovnik paper L'Avvenire (The Future) based on a clearly formulated programme: the federal system for the Habsburg territories, the inclusion of Dalmatia into Croatia and the Slavic brotherhood. The President of the Council of Kingdom of Dalmatia was Baron Vlaho Getaldić.

In the same year, the first issue of the Dubrovnik almanac appeared, Flower of the National Literature (Dubrovnik, cvijet narodnog književstva), in which Petar Preradović published his noted poem "Pjesma Dubrovniku" (Poem to Dubrovnik). This and other literary and journalistic texts, which continued to be published, contributed to the awakening of the national consciousness reflected in efforts to introduce the Croatian language into schools and offices, and to promote Croatian books. The Emperor Franz Joseph brought the March Constitution which prohibited the unification of Dalmatia and Croatia and also any further political activity with this end in view. The political struggle of Dubrovnik to be united with Croatia, which was intense throughout 1848–49, did not succeed at that time.

Many Dalmatian Italians looked with sympathy towards the Risorgimento movement that fought for the unification of Italy. However, after 1866, when the Veneto and Friuli regions were ceded by the Austrians to the newly formed Kingdom Italy, Dalmatia remained part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, together with other Italian-speaking areas on the eastern Adriatic. This triggered the gradual rise of Italian irredentism among many Italians in Dalmatia, who demanded the unification of the Austrian Littoral, Fiume and Dalmatia with Italy. The Italians in Dalmatia supported the Italian Risorgimento: as a consequence, the Austrians saw the Italians as enemies and favored the Slav communities of Dalmatia.

During the meeting of the Council of Ministers of 12 November 1866, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria outlined a wide-ranging project aimed at the Germanization or Slavization of the areas of the empire with an Italian presence:

"His Majesty expressed the precise order that action be taken decisively against the influence of the Italian elements still present in some regions of the Crown and, appropriately occupying the posts of public, judicial, masters employees as well as with the influence of the press, work in South Tyrol, Dalmatia and Littoral for the Germanization and Slavization of these territories according to the circumstances, with energy and without any regard. His Majesty calls the central offices to the strong duty to proceed in this way to what has been established."

Dalmatia, especially its maritime cities, once had a substantial local ethnic Italian population (Dalmatian Italians), making up 33% of the total population of Dalmatia in 1803,  but this was reduced to 20% in 1816. According to Austrian censuses, the Dalmatian Italians formed 12.5% of the population in 1865, but this was reduced to 2.8% in 1910. In Dalmatia there was a constant decline in the Italian population, in a context of repression that also took on violent connotations.

The Italian population in Dalmatia was concentrated in the major coastal cities. In the city of Split in 1890 there were 1,969 Dalmatian Italians (12.5% of the population), in Zadar 7,423 (64.6%), in Šibenik 1,018 (14.5%), in Kotor 623 (18.7%) and in Dubrovnik 331 (4.6%). In other Dalmatian localities, according to Austrian censuses, Dalmatian Italians experienced a sudden decrease: in the twenty years 1890-1910, in Rab they went from 225 to 151, in Vis from 352 to 92, in Pag from 787 to 23, completely disappearing in almost all the inland locations.

While Slavic-speakers made up 80-95% of the Dalmatia populace, only Italian language schools existed until 1848, and due to restrictive voting laws, the Italian-speaking aristocratic minority retained political control of Dalmatia. Only after Austria liberalized elections in 1870, allowing more majority Slavs to vote, did Croatian parties gain control. Croatian finally became an official language in Dalmatia in 1883, along with Italian. Yet minority Italian-speakers continued to wield strong influence, since Austria favored Italians for government work, thus in the Austrian capital of Dalmatia, Zara, the proportion of Italians continued to grow, making it the only Dalmatian city with an Italian majority.

In 1861 was the meeting of the first Dalmatian Assembly, with representatives from Dubrovnik. Representatives of Kotor came to Dubrovnik to join the struggle for unification with Croatia. The citizens of Dubrovnik gave them a festive welcome, flying Croatian flags from the ramparts and exhibiting the slogan Ragusa with Kotor. The Kotorans elected a delegation to go to Vienna; Dubrovnik nominated Niko Pucić, who went to Vienna to demand not only the unification of Dalmatia with Croatia, but also the unification of all Croatian territories under one common Sabor. During this period, the Habsburgs carried out an aggressive anti-Italian policy through a forced Slavization of the region.

20th century
Dissolution of Austria-Hungary.png after the Treaty of Saint Germain (1919) and the Treaty of Trianon (1920)

{{legend|#EB955C|Empire of Austria in 1914}} {{legend|#FAF0EE|Kingdom of Hungary in 1914|outline=silver}} {{legend|#92A2CB|Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1914}}]]In 1905, a dispute arose in the Austrian Imperial Council over whether Austria should pay for Dalmatia. It has been argued that in the conclusion of the April Laws is written "given by Banus Count Keglevich of Bužim", which explained the historical affiliation of Dalmatia to Hungary. Two years later Dalmatia elected representatives to the Austrian Imperial Council.

Until 1909, both Italian and Croatian were recognized as official languages in Dalmatia. After 1909, Italian lost its official status, thus it could no longer be used in the public and administrative sphere.

Dalmatia was a strategic region during World War I that both Italy and Serbia intended to seize from Austria-Hungary. Italy joined the Triple Entente Allies in 1915 upon agreeing to the Treaty of London that guaranteed Italy the right to annex a large portion of Dalmatia in exchange for Italy's participation on the Allied side. From 5–6 November 1918, Italian forces were reported to have reached Vis, Lastovo, Šibenik, and other localities on the Dalmatian coast. By the end of hostilities in November 1918, the Italian military had seized control of the entire portion of Dalmatia that had been guaranteed to Italy by the Treaty of London and by 17 November had seized Rijeka as well. In 1918, Admiral Enrico Millo declared himself Italy's Governor of Dalmatia. Famous Italian nationalist Gabriele D'Annunzio supported the seizure of Dalmatia, and proceeded to Zadar in an Italian warship in December 1918. However, in spite of the guarantees of the Treaty of London to Italy of a large portion of Dalmatia and Italian military occupation of claimed territories of Dalmatia, during the peace settlement negotiations of 1919 to 1920, the Fourteen Points of Woodrow Wilson that advocated self-determination of nations took precedence, with Italy only being permitted to annex Zadar from Dalmatia, while the rest of Dalmatia was to be part of Yugoslavia.

At the end of World War I, the Austrian Empire disintegrated, and Dalmatia was again split between the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) which controlled most of it, and the Kingdom of Italy which held small portions of northern Dalmatia around Zadar and the islands of Cres, Lošinj, and Lastovo. Italy entered World War I in a territorial gamble, mostly to gain Dalmatia. But Italy got only a small part of its pretensions, so Dalmatia mostly stayed Yugoslav.

Despite the fact that there were only a few thousand Italian-speakers in Dalmatia after the constant decrease that occurred in previous decades, Italian irredentists continued to lay claim to all of Dalmatia. In 1927 Italy signed an agreement with the Croatian fascist, terrorist Ustaše organization. The Ustaše agreed that once they gained power, they will cede to Italy additional territory in Dalmatia and the Bay of Kotor, while renouncing all Croatian claims to Istria, Rijeka, Zadar and the Adriatic Islands.

In 1922, the territory of the former Kingdom of Dalmatia was divided into two provinces, the Oblast of Split and the Oblast of Dubrovnik. In 1929, the Littoral Banovina, a province of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, was formed. Its capital was Split, and it included most of Dalmatia and parts of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina. The southern parts of Dalmatia were in Zeta Banovina, from the Bay of Kotor to Pelješac peninsula including Dubrovnik. In 1939, Littoral Banovina was joined with Sava Banovina (and with smaller parts of other banovinas) to form a new province named the Banovina of Croatia. The same year, the ethnic Croatian areas of the Zeta Banovina from the Bay of Kotor to Pelješac, including Dubrovnik, were merged with a new Banovina of Croatia.

During World War II, in 1941, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria occupied Yugoslavia, redrawing their borders to include former parts of the Yugoslavian state. A new Nazi puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), was created. With the Treaties of Rome, the NDH agreed to cede to Italy Dalmatian territory, creating the Governatorate of Dalmatia, from north of Zadar to south of Split, with inland areas, plus nearly all the Adriatic islands and Gorski Kotar. Italy then annexed these territories, while all the remainder of southern Croatia, including the entire coast, were placed under Italian occupation. Italy also appointed an Italian, Prince Aimone, Duke of Aosta, as king of Croatia.

Italy proceeded to Italianize the annexed areas of Dalmatia. Place names were Italianized, and Italian was made the official language in all schools, churches and government administration. All Croatian cultural societies were banned, while Italians took control of all key mineral, industrial and business establishments. Italian policies prompted resistance by Dalmatians, many joined the Partisans. This led to further Italian repressive measures - shooting of civilian hostages, burning of villages, confiscation of properties. Italians took many civilians to concentration camps - altogether, some 80,000 Dalmatians, 12% of the population, passed through Italian concentration camps.

Many Croats moved from the Italian-occupied area and took refuge in the satellite state of Croatia, which became the battleground for a guerrilla war between the Axis and the Yugoslav Partisans. Following the surrender of Italy in 1943, much of Italian-controlled Dalmatia was liberated by the Partisans, then taken over by German forces in a brutal campaign, who then returned control to the puppet Independent State of Croatia. Vis Island remained in Partisan hands, while Zadar, Rijeka, Istria, Cres, Lošinj, Lastovo and Palagruža became part of the German Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland. The Partisans liberated Dalmatia in 1944, and with that Zadar, Rijeka, Istria, Cres, Lošinj, Lastovo and Palagruža became reunited with Croatia. After 1945, most of the remaining Dalmatian Italians fled the region (350,000 Italians escaped from Istria and Dalmatia in the Istrian-Dalmatian exodus). Currently there are only 300 Dalmatian Italians in the Croatian Dalmatia and 500 Dalmatian Italians in coastal Montenegro. After World War II, Dalmatia became part of the People's Republic of Croatia, part of the Federative People's Republic of Yugoslavia.

The territory of the former Kingdom of Dalmatia was divided between two federal republics of Yugoslavia and most of the territory went to Croatia, leaving only the Bay of Kotor to Montenegro. When Yugoslavia dissolved in 1991, those borders were retained and remain in force. During the Croatian War of Independence, most of Dalmatia was a battleground between the Government of Croatia and the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), which aided the proto-state of Serbian Krajina, with much of the northern part of the region around Knin and the far south around, but not including, Dubrovnik being placed under the control of Serb forces. Croatia did regain the southern territories in 1992 but did not regain the north until Operation Storm in 1995. After the war, a number of towns and municipalities in the region were designated Areas of Special State Concern.

Cities by population
Other large towns include Biograd, Kaštela, Sinj, Solin, Omiš, Knin, Metković, Makarska, Trogir, Ploče, and Imotski.
 * 1) Split (161,312)
 * 2) Zadar (70,829)
 * 3) Šibenik (42,589)
 * 4) Dubrovnik (41,671)

title: Dalmatia


text:
FastTrack

FastTrack is a peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol that was used by the Kazaa, Grokster, iMesh and Morpheus file sharing programs. FastTrack was the most popular file sharing network in 2003, and used mainly for the exchange of music MP3 files. The network had approximately 2.4 million concurrent users in 2003. It is estimated that the total number of users was greater than that of Napster at its peak.

History
The FastTrack protocol and Kazaa were created and developed by Estonian programmers of BlueMoon Interactive headed by Jaan Tallinn, the same team that later created Skype. After selling it to Niklas Zennström from Sweden and Janus Friis from Denmark, it was introduced in March 2001 by their Dutch company Consumer Empowerment. It appeared during the end of the first generation of P2P networks – Napster shut down in July of that year. There are three FastTrack-based networks, and they use mutually incompatible versions of the protocol. The most popular clients on each are Kazaa (and its variations), Grokster, and iMesh. For more information about the various lawsuits surrounding Kazaa and Sharman Networks, see Kazaa.

Technology
FastTrack uses supernodes to improve scalability.

To allow downloading from multiple sources, FastTrack employs the UUHash hashing algorithm. While UUHash allows very large files to be checksummed in a short time, even on slow weak computers, it also allows for massive corruption of a file to go unnoticed. Many people, as well as the RIAA, have exploited this vulnerability to spread corrupt and fake files on the network.

The FastTrack protocol uses encryption and was not documented by its creators. The first clients were all closed source software. However, initialization data for the encryption algorithms is sent in the clear and no public key encryption is used, so reverse engineering was made comparatively easy. In 2003, open source programmers succeeded in reverse-engineering the portion of the protocol dealing with client-supernode communication, but the supernode-supernode communication protocol remains largely unknown.

Clients
The following programs are or have been FastTrack clients:
 * Kazaa and variants
 * KCeasy (requires the gIFT-fasttrack plugin)
 * Grokster
 * iMesh
 * Morpheus, until 2002
 * Apollon - KDE-Based
 * giFT-FastTrack – a giFT plugin
 * MLDonkey, a free multi-platform multi-network file sharing client

title: FastTrack