8. The Ninth Century: Chroati Ex Machina
The appearance of Croat identity in the 9th century has been explained by two recent approaches - the migrationist, which redated the Croat migration date from the 7th to the late 8th/early 9th centuries, or the lonely position of Mužic, who saw the establishment of the Croat polity as a rise of the indigenous elites. The period after 750 brought significant political changes into the global perspective of the post-Roman world, which all significantly affected the political and social situation in early-medieval Dalmatia. A very important change was the recovery and return of the Byzantines into the Adriatic, after their Adriatic possessions were threatened by the loss of Ravenna and Istria. Even at first sight it is apparent that global social and political trans- formations in the late 8th and early 9th centuries strongly affected Dalmatia.Keywords: Croat identity; early-medieval Dalmatia; post-Roman world