engleski

The tradition of sericulture on Croatian territory through history: the Konavle case

The production of silk, the airy fabric which cools the skin during the heat of summer, began in ancient China. Unlike today, only kings, nobles and other wealthy individuals wore silk. The Chinese closely guarded the secret of its production for millennia, up until the year 522, when several missionaries surreptitiously transported a few silkworm eggs to Constantinople. That marked the beginning of silk production in Europe. One of the first European countries which adopted the breeding of the silkworm and grew mulberry trees in Dalmatia, where, by all accounts, silk production began as early as the 11th century. Croatian sericulture reached its peak in the 18th century, due to the support of the Court in Vienna. Dazzled by the luxurious beauty of silk and driven by a desire that Austrian nobility and elite citizens be dressed as extravagantly as the nobles on the French court, the empress Maria Theresa supported the development of sericulture throughout the Monarchy. As an appropriate place for the production of silk on Croatian territory, the Habsburg Monarchy selected the well-organized Military Frontier. Numerous housing cooperatives and frontiersmen began the production of silk. Very soon Croatian silk became the most prestigious and was of the highest quality in the entire Habsburg Monarchy. However, during the Napoleonic wars, the Court in Vienna stopped supporting the development of sericulture, which rapidly began to stagnate. Soon all the silk mills in north-western Croatia stopped their production, apart from the ones in Zagreb and Varaždin. The sericulture in Dalmatia, where the regions of Zadar, Konavle and Kotor (which was a part of Dalmatia at the time) were at the forefront, suffered a similar fate. However, the silk production in Konavle continued until the 1960s, when tourism and the possibility of a fast and easy profit completely supplanted it. After the Croatian War of Independence, the production of silk in Konavle has been revitalized. A few Croatian scientists (historians, ethnologists, forestry engineers and others) have written about silk production in Croatia. Using recent literature and unexplored archival sources this paper aims to give an overview of Croatian sericulture through the ages to show, on the example of Konavle, the status of sericulture today and the possibilities of its development with regards to tourism.

Sericulture ; Breeding of the Silkworm ; Mulberry Trees ; Silk Entrepreneurship ; Agro-Tourism ; Croatia ; Dalmatia ; Konavle

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