Original scientific paper
Summary: A century of administration on an island: the island’s seat Krk, castles / municipalities, the cadastral survey and municipal boundaries
Anton Bozanić
Abstract
Given the considerable ambiguities on the functioning of island administration over the past centuries that arise in any conversation or deliberations about local matters, I deemed it useful to gather data from generally well-known historical materials and local provisions and consolidate in a single place the primary facts on public governance and administration on Krk and local communities, beginning from the oldest times and continuing to the present. The historical data undoubtedly testify to the town of Krk as the island’s seat already since Antiquity, and over time castles or municipalities emerged at individual parts of the island, to which the surrounding territory belonged. Castles, and within them individual communities and villages, knew the extent of the boundaries of their possessions, which particularly came to the fore in the 15th century, when new settlers from the mainland came to sparsely populated areas. Among other things, the right to use of the commons to pasture livestock and cut wood, known among the local people as komunada, engendered a sense of belonging to a castle or community among the common people. Another important indicator of belonging to a certain place could be gleaned from the payment of taxes or the church tithe. The well-established, longstanding practice of functioning in six insular municipal seats was disrupted by the Napoleonic government, which reduced the number of municipalities to four, but this administration was not maintained for long. An important step in administering the island was taken by the Austrian authorities with their land survey and the creation of a real property cadastre and land registers. The cadastral districts became the foundation for the creation of new municipal seats. After some initial confusion, the tried-and-tested model with six municipalities was restored, and each of them encompassed several cadastral or tax districts. At the end of the 19th century, Punat became independent, so the island moved from six to seven municipal seats. After the Second World War, the former municipalities were abolished and the unified Municipality of Krk was created for the entire island. After the establishment of the Republic of Croatia, the system of seven administrative units was revived, although the boundaries of the former municipalities were partially altered. The current administrative structure with the town of Krk and six municipalities has improved the island’s overall development. Since this topic is rather board, I shall not delve into details here, particularly with regard to individual smaller communities that were attached to one or another larger seat over the course of history, rather the objective is to provide a general overview of centuries of administration on the island of Krk.
Keywords
Krk – seat of the island; castles; municipalities; cadastral districts; komunada; boundaries; borders
Hrčak ID:
284439
URI
Publication date:
3.3.2020.
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