Vis (island)

Vis was inhabited by the time of the Neolithic period. In the 4th century BC, the Greek tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius the Elder, founded the colony Issa on the island.[1][2] A town on an island of the same name was settled by Illyrians, who were under the domination of Liburni from the 8th to the 6th centuries B.C. At the beginning of the 4th century B.C. the island was colonized by Syracusan Greeks as part of a plan of Dionysios the Elder to control the Adriatic. During the 3rd century Issa founded the emporia Tragurion (Traù, now Trogir) and Epetion (Stobreč) on the Illyrian mainland. Its predominance in the region lasted until the first Illyro-Roman war 229-219 B.C. when it became a pawn in the battles of greater powers. In the civil war it sided with Pompey and consequently lost its privileges and autonomy in 47 B.C. when it was reduced to the rank of an oppidum civium Romanorum and was dependent on the newly founded colony at Salona. As a polis, Issa minted its own money, and these coins of many types had wide circulation. The town, situated on a slope on the W side of a large bay, was defended by strong Hellenistic walls, still visible in an irregular quadrangle (265 x 360 m) that enclosed an area of 9.8 ha. The street grid and foundations of houses have been found. The necropolis has yielded many pieces of pottery, including some from South Italy. The wall of the cavea of the theater, built in the Roman period, is incorporated into the present Franciscan Monastery. It could seat about 3000 persons. Inscriptions, statues, coins, and pottery are preserved in the archaeological museums at Split and Zagreb. Later, it became an independent polis, and even minted its own money and founded its own colonies, the most notable of which was Aspálathos (the modern-day city of Split).

In the 1st century BC, the island was held by the Liburnians.[3]

Until 1797, the island was under the rule of the Republic of Venice. During this time large settlements developed along the coastline (Comisa (now Komiža) and Lissa (now Vis)). Administratively, the island of Lissa was for centuries bound to the island of Lesina, now named Hvar. The Venetian influence is still recognizable in architecture found on the island, and some vocabulary of the Croatian dialect spoken locally is Venetian in origin.

After the short-lived Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, with Italian as the official language, the island was ruled by the Austrian Empire from 1814. In official Austrian (Habsburg) administration, as with other places in Dalmatia up until 1909, it maintained its Italian name of Lissa,[4] Most of the inhabitants speaking Veneto da mar.[5] In the Austrian census of 1910, out of 10,107 inhabitants (10,041 citizens), 9,939 responded that their language is Croatian (98.9%), with just 92 declared to be Italian-speakers (0.9%).[6] (After the end of World War I, it was under Italian rule again in the period from 1918 to 1921, according to the provisions of the 1915 Treaty of London, before it was ceded to Kingdom of Yugoslavia as part of the 1920 Treaty of Rapallo.

The sea to the north of the island was the location of two battles:

• on 13 March 1811, a small Royal Navy squadron under the command of Captain William Hoste, defeated a larger French squadron in the Battle of Lissa (1811)
• on 20 July 1866, the smaller Austrian fleet, under Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff, attacked the Italian fleet, under Admiral Carlo Pellion di Persano, defeating the larger Italian force and sinking the Italian ironclad Re d'Italia in the Battle of Lissa (1866).

Vis was at one point the site of the general headquarters of Marshal Josip Broz Tito, the leader of the Yugoslav Partisan resistance movement. It was occupied by Italy between 1941 and 1943, then was liberated by the Partisans and held by a British flotilla in 1943–44. At the end of World War II the island returned to Yugoslavia. During the war the island was mined. Allied fighter planes were based at a small airfield that was also used for emergency landings of Allied bombers, including an American B-24 flown by George McGovern. No. 6 Squadron RAF extensively used the airfield as a forward operating base, flying Hawker Hurricane Mk IV fighter aircraft, from May 1944 to February 1945.[7][8]

During World War II, a crate of the Armed Services Editions of paperback books was dropped by parachute along with other supplies on to Vis Island off the coast of Yugoslavia. The books were then read aloud to the partisans by English speaking soldiers who translated the books as they read them.[9]

Early in July 1944, the novelist Evelyn Waugh flew with Randolph Churchill from Bari, Italy, to Vis as part of the British military mission to Yugoslavia.[10] There they met Marshal Tito.[10] Waugh and Churchill returned to Bari before flying back to Yugoslavia to begin their mission, but their aeroplane crash-landed, both men were injured, and their mission was delayed for a month.[11][12][13]

During WWII the island was also home to 1435 Squadron of the RAF flying Mark IX Spitfires in ground support of allied troops fighting in Italy.

After the war, the Yugoslav People's Army used the island as one of its main naval bases until abandoning the base in 1989.[14] After Croatia became independent in 1991, its navy did not reclaim most of the facilities, and the many abandoned buildings are being used for civilian purposes and tourism, including tunnels, bunkers and a secret submarine base.[14] In 2008, 34 mines left over from World War II were cleared from the island.

In 2017 the movie Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again was filmed on location on Vis.[15]

In 2019 GEOPARK Vis archipelago became a member of UNESCO Global Geoparks.[16]

• Churchill, Winston (1997). His Father's Son: The Life of Randolph Churchill. London: Orion. ISBN 978-1-85799-969-3.
• Lovell, Mary S. (5 April 2012). The Churchills: A Family at the Heart of History – from the Duke of Marlborough to Winston Churchill. Abacus. ISBN 978-0-349-11978-6.
• Soames, Mary (2003). Clementine Churchill. London: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-60741-4.