Tesla

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Hundred years ago Lika didn't have Istro-Romanians. Romanians have been assimilated hundreds of years ago before Tesla was born. There are places in Bosnia still called Romanija, Vlasenica, Vla�ić, etc., but non of the population there considers themselves to be of Romanian origin. The are either Serbs,  Bosniaks, or Croats. They speak South Slavic language.

Look what I have found:

It is said that the Ottomans brought with them nomadic Vlachs (Morlacchi or Wallachs, etc.) to settle land depopulated by either the plague or those who had fled or died during the Ottoman invasion. The majority of these Vlachs of the Orthodox faith were mostly assimilated into Croatian civilization by the 18th century, between Istria and Dubrovnik, and throughout the Lika, Dalmatia and other parts of Croatia. Often these Orthodox settlers along the Adriatic coast had been deliberately forced to inland Croatia by Venice and its Allies, during and after the Ottoman retreat (for example, the Uskoks of Senj).

If these Vlachs had been of Serbian ancestry as claimed, why is it that the land where they originated from was known as 'Turkish Croatia'? In addition, if these migrating Vlachs had been exclusively of mixed Serbian ancestry as claimed by their propagandists it is unlikely that they would have been at the centre of the enlightenment debate.

After all, the Vlachs were the virtuous so-called 'noble savages' romanticized by Rousseau. In conflict with Rousseau, Voltaire cited the 'Morlaque' of Dalmatia as an example of people who had a lowly place in the development of enlightened civilization. 

 .....

In one of many sources which allude to the true ethnicity of the original Orthodox in Croatia, Larry Wolff (in Venice and the Slavs) writes that "The heterogeneous Orthodox society of Zadar included Montenegrin officers and Sarajevo merchants ... and (others) from Corfu and Crete. The Venetians were concerned to reduce foreign influence on Orthodox Dalmatians, including the Morlacchi".

The presence of Vlachs is established in history, philosophy, novels, decrees or statutes, and place names on genuine original maps.

On October 5, 1630 Statuta Valachorum ('Law of the Vlachs') under Hapsburg King Ferdinand II acknowledged that the Vlachs would not be subject to the Croatian leadership but would instead be soldiers in the military cordon subject to the King; and in 17th century Venice a statute re Morlacchi.

Place names such as Latinski Islam or Grcki Islam or the Vlasko More, as well the existence of former Greek or Eastern rite churches in Croatia testify to the existence and identity of the Vlachs and other Orthodox people in Croatia.

The Vlachs spoke an old vulgar Latin language and used the Latin script and this is no doubt why only five per cent of Misha Glenny's so-called-Krajina Serbs could read the Cyrillic script, something Glenny incorrectly attributed to an alleged Croatian government policy instead of to their non-Serbian ancestry.

......

Likewise in Sarajevo, or Zadar or Lika, the churches now called Serbian Orthodox were originally known as Greek Orthodox churches which had been built or converted to accommodate the Eastern Orthodox faith to the various settlers therein.

The church of St. Ilijah in Zadar (St. Elias) once served the Greek Orthodox community there and not the Serbs. 

...

St. Ilijah only came under the Serbian Dalmatian Eparchy at the end of the 19th century. According to the above-mentioned author Wolff, Obradovic, a visiting Serbian-born pioneer of Serbian nationalism in Croatia, was preaching in Zadar in 1771 to the 'Schismatic' Orthodox community, but was denied settlement in Skradin because Venetian authorities did not want a 'foreign' influence on the Orthodox Dalmatians and Morlacchi.

If the Orthodox settlements there had been Serbian then how would the situation arise that a visiting Serbian priest would be called a 'foreigner' by the Venetian authorities? If the so-called slavicized Orthodox were under 'foreign' threat from a visiting Serb, it is not likely that they were at that point in time of mixed Serbian origin.

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According to the book about the life of Pavlinovic, a 19th century Croatian priest, on the topic of the Orthodox faith in Croatia, the Orthodox peoples of Croatia were not Serbian.

According to Pavlinovic, the Orthodox in Croatia were members of the old Croatian Greek Orthodox church from the early middle ages, for example, Vlachs or Romanians, Greeks, and other merchants who had assimilated into Croatian society under the Habsburg dynasty.

........

To sum up, the Orthodox Minorities in Croatia include:

- descendants of original inhabitants of Pannonia or Dalmatia, the first Croatian settlers,

- descendants of Croatian Catholics who willingly or forcibly were converted to Orthodoxy,

- descendants of Orthodox Vlahs (introduced by Ottomans into Croatia)

- descendants of Orthodox Straddiotti (merchants originating from Turkish occupied Greece under Venetian era),

-other descendants of Czech, Greek, Russian, Romanian, Macedonian, Ukrainian or other Eastern European immigrants; and amongst this latter group Serbs are only one ethnic group who came.

http://newgeneration.croatianherald.com/History/tabid/99/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/971/Croatian-History.aspx