Morlachs
Exonym for a rural Christian community in the Dalmatian Hinterland.
The term Morlachs was an exonym for a rural Christian community found in Herzegovina, Lika, and the Dalmatian Hinterland. It first described a bilingual Vlach pastoralist group in Croatia’s mountains between the late 1300s and early 1500s. Later, until the 1600s, it referred only to Slavic-speaking people—both Orthodox and Catholic—living on either side of the Venetian-Ottoman border in the Dalmatian Hinterland. By the late 1700s, the exonym lost its ethnic meaning and became derogatory. It has since been revived as a topic in social and cultural anthropology.
Etymology
The word Morlach derives from the Italian Morlacco, used by Venetians since the 15th century for Vlachs from Dalmatia. The form Morovlah appears in Dubrovnik records in the mid-14th century, while the abbreviated Morlah, Morlak or Murlak is found in both Dubrovnik and Venice archives in the 15th century. Two main theories explain the term's origin. The first, proposed by 17th-century Dalmatian historian Johannes Lucius, derives Morlach from Byzantine Greek Μαυροβλάχοι (Maurovlachoi), meaning "Black Vlachs" (from μαύρο, "dark"), to distinguish them from the "White Latins" of the Roman coastal cities. This theory has been echoed in Romanian historiography, with scholars such as Cicerone Poghirc and Ela Cosma suggesting it also meant "Northern Vlachs" via Indo-European color-direction practice. Petar Skok noted that the diphthong au > av indicates a Dalmato-Romanian lexical remnant.
Origin and culture
Travel accounts from the 17th and 18th centuries attest that the Morlachs were linguistically Slavs, mostly Eastern Orthodox though some were Roman Catholic. According to Romanian historian Dana Caciur, in Venetian eyes the Morlach community could represent a mixture of Vlachs, Croats, Serbs, Bosnians and others as long as they shared a lifestyle. They made their living as shepherds, merchants and soldiers, neglected agriculture, and had old farming tools.
History
According to Mužić, there is no identifiable differentiation between the terms Vlach and Morlach in those early documents. In 1412, the Murlachos captured Ostrovica Fortress from Venice.
Legacy
During the Enlightenment and Romantic eras, outsiders viewed the Morlachs as the ultimate example of primitive Slavic life and the embodiment of a pastoral, idyllic world called Arcadia Morlacchia. By the early 1900s, still considered relics of a rough past and a term for savagery, they might have inspired H. G. Wells’s fictional Morlocks. Thomas Graham Jackson described Morlach women as half-savages. In the Balkans, the word became an insult for mountain dwellers and backward folk, and the Morlachs themselves came to dislike it. An Italian cheese, Morlacco—also called Morlak, Morlach, Burlach, or Burlacco—took its name from the Morlach herders and woodsmen who made it around Monte Grappa. The surname Morlacchi still exists in Italy.
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