Croatia had close ties with the Habsburg Empire. After the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 the Croatian lands came under Hungarian jurisdiction. What is now Croatia was divided into several areas. There was the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia and the Kingdom of Dalmatia. And today's Croatia has a part what was then known as Austrian Littoral, but that area was given to Italy after WW1. Before WW1 broke out there were ideas of making a Tripartite Empire, making a Croatian state equal in status to Austria and Hungary. Actually Archduke Franz Ferdinand supported this. He was assassinated in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo and this gave an impuls to anti-Serbianism. The assassination of the archduke was the direct cause of the outbreak of the First World War.
