Istrian Italians
Istrian Italians are an ethnic group from the Adriatic region of Istria in modern northwestern Croatia and southwestern Slovenia. Istrian Italians descend from the original Latinized population of Roman Histria, from the Venetian-speaking settlers who colonized the region during the time of the Republic of Venice, from the local Croatian people who culturally assimilated, and from colonization between the two world wars.
While nationalization processes were still underway, in 19th century Istria the west side of the peninsula had a majority of Italian language and Romance verniculars speakers, while Croatian language was spoken by the majority in the central and eastern regions and on the islands, and Slovene in the north. Italian language was the official language in the territories of the former Venetian Republic, which encouraged many Istrians to identify as Italians, in spite of their mother tongue and ethnic origins. Italian speaking population made up about a third of the population in 1900, and 36% in 1910. The Italian population growth was followed by a stark decline during the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus, with estimates of those who left ranging from 163,000, to 230,000 and 350,000. A significant Italian minority still lives in the Croatian County of Istria and in Slovenian Istria, where they are granted minority rights. According to the official Slovenian and Croatian censuses conducted in 2001 and 2002 respectively, they number around 22,000.
Throughout history, Istrian Italians exerted a vast and significant influence on Istria, especially cultural and architectural. The number of people resident in the Croatian part of Istria declaring themselves to be Italian nearly doubled between 1981 and 1991, i.e. before and after the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
History
Early period
Historian Theodor Mommsen wrote that Istria was fully romanized in the 5th century AD.Between 500 and 700 AD, Slavs settled in Southeastern Europe, and their number ever increased, and with the Ottoman invasion Slavs were pushed from the south and east. This led to Italic people becoming ever more confined to urban areas, while some areas of the countryside were populated by Slavs, with exceptions in western and southern Istria which remained fully Romance-speaking.
By the 11th century, most of the interior mountainous areas of northern and eastern Istria were inhabited by South Slavs, while the Romance population continued to prevail in the south and west of the peninsula. Linguistically, the Romance inhabitants of Istria were most probably divided into two main linguistic groups: in the north-west, the speakers of a Rhaeto-Romance language similar to Ladin and Friulian prevailed, while in the south, the natives most probably spoke a variant of the Dalmatian language.
One modern claim suggests the original language of the romanized Istrians survived the invasions, this being the Istriot language which was spoken by some near Pula. Republic of Venice influenced the neolatins of Istria for many centuries from the Middle Ages until 1797, until conquered by Napoleon: Capodistria and Pola were important centres of art and culture during the Italian Renaissance. Other historians have attributed the ancient language of romanized Istrians as being the Istro-Romanian.
Venetian era
In the 14th century, epidemics such as the Black Death decimated in those years the Istrian population, which was still mostly of Romance ethnicity. As a consequence of depopulation, Venice started settling Slavic communities to repopulate the interior areas of the peninsula. These were mostly Čakavian and partially Štokavian speaking South Slavs from Dalmatia and present-day Montenegro.At the same time, settlers from the Veneto region were used to resettle the towns. This caused a language shift of the local Romance population who replaced the old Romance languages with the Venetian language. Only in the extreme south of the peninsula did the original Istrian Romance language survive: under strong Venetian influences it transformed itself into the modern Istriot language. Until the early 19th century, Dalmatian continued to be spoken on the island of Veglia / Krk, and a dialect of Friulian in the town of Muggia: both became extinct in the mid 19th century, replaced by Venetian.
In 1374 Because of the implementation of a treaty of inheritance, central and eastern Istria fell to the House of Habsburg, while Venice continued to control the northern, western and south-eastern portion of the peninsula, including the major coastal towns of Capodistria / Koper, Parenzo / Poreč, Rovigno / Rovinj, Pola / Pula, Fianona / Plomin, and the interior towns of Albona / Labin and Pinguente / Buzet. This created a dichotomy that characterized Istria until the late 18th century. The Venetian culture and language left a profound impact on Venetian Istria. By the Baroque and Enlightenment periods, Istrian Italians were completely integrated into the wider Italian culture via their belonging to the Republic of Venice. The towns of Venetian Istria became almost exclusively Venetian-speaking, and Venetian Italian was the language of commerce, culture and administration. Nevertheless, significant numbers of South Slavic speakers continued to dwell in the rural areas of Venetian Istria, especially in the north of the province and on the border with Austrian Istria.
On the other hand, interior and eastern Istria were included in the Central European cultural sphere and were dominated by a feudal culture. By the late 18th century, the vast majority of Austrian Istria were Slavic speakers.
Napoleonic era
In 1797, during the Napoleonic Wars, the Republic of Venice was dissolved. After the Treaty of Campo Formio Austria occupied the Venetian part of the peninsula. Istria was included in the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy from 1805 to 1809, and successively in the Illyrian Provinces from 1809.After a short French interim, Austria reconquered the whole peninsula in 1813, and unified it into a single province. As a result, Istrian Italians became a minority in the new administrative unit, although they maintained their social and part of their political power.
From the Middle Ages to the 19th century, Italian and Slavic communities in Istria had lived peacefully side by side because they did not know the national identification, given that they generically defined themselves as "Istrians", of "Romance" or "Slavic" culture.
Austrian period
Although the incorporation into the Austrian Empire caused deep changes in the political assets of the region, it did not alter the social balance. Venetian-speaking Istrian Italians continued to dominate the region both culturally and economically. In the first half of the 19th century, the use of the Venetian language even extended to some areas of former Austrian Istria, like the town of Pazin / Pisino. The Austrian censuses detected a gradual but constant rise of Italian speakers both in numerical and proportional terms: in 1848, around a third of Istrians were Italian speakers.From the early 19th century onward, the local Croats and Slovenes engaged in a national revival, demanding linguistic and national rights that challenged the supremacy of the Italian language and culture in Istria. The Croatian-Slovene national movement gained force only in the second part of the 19th century, causing a clash with a parallel nationalist movement of the Istrian Italians.
Many Istrian Italians looked with sympathy towards the Risorgimento movement that fought for the unification of Italy. However, after 1866, when the Veneto and Friuli regions were ceded by the Austrians to the newly formed Kingdom of Italy, Istria remained part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, together with other Italian-speaking areas on the eastern Adriatic. This triggered the gradual rise of Italian irredentism among many Italians in Istria, who demanded the unification of the Austrian Littoral, Fiume and Dalmatia with Italy.
Under Austrian rule in the 19th century, it included a large population of Italians, Croats, Slovenes, some Vlachs/Istro-Romanians and even a few Montenegrins. The Italians in Istria supported the Italian Risorgimento: as a consequence, the Austrians saw the Italians as enemies and favoured the Slav communities of Istria During the meeting of the Council of Ministers of 12 November 1866, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria outlined a wide-ranging project aimed at the Germanization or Slavization of the areas of the empire with an Italian presence:
File:VenetianDalmatia1797.jpg|thumb|400px|Austrian linguistic map from 1896. In green the areas where Slavs were the majority of the population, in orange the areas where Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians were the majority of the population. The boundaries of Venetian Dalmatia in 1797 are delimited with blue dots.
This tension created - by some claims - a "huge" emigration of Italians from Istria before World War I, reducing their percentage inside the peninsula inhabitants.
A limited tension with the Austrian state did not in fact stop the rise of the use of the Italian language, in the second part of the 19th century, when the population of predominantly Italian-speaking towns in Istria rose dramatically: in the part of Istria that eventually became part of Croatia, the first Austrian census from 1846 found 34 thousand Italian speakers, alongside 120 thousand Croatian speakers. Until 1910, the proportion changed: there were 108 thousand Italian speakers and 134 thousand Croatian speakers. Vanni D'Alessio notes, the Austrian surveys of the language of use "overestimated the diffusion of the socially dominant languages of the empire... The capacity of assimilation of the Italian language suggests that amongst those who declared themselves Italian speakers in Istria, there were people whose mother tongue was different." D'Alessio notes even the people who immigrated from non-Croatian and non-Italian parts of the Habsburg Empire tended to use Italian, after living in Istrian towns long enough. Contrasting the claims of a "huge emigration" of Italians from Istria, D'Allesio writes about an important influx of immigrants from the Kingdom of Italy to Istria, during the last decades of the Austrian rule.
In the same period, the Istrian Slovenes and Croats, who represented around three-fifths of the Istrian population, increased their demands for national and linguistic emancipation. The result was the intensification of the ethnic strife between the two groups, although it was limited to institutional battles and it rarely manifested in violent forms.
Indeed, in 1910, the ethnic and linguistic composition was completely mixed and the Italians were reduced to a minority, although still significant. According to the Austrian census results, out of 404,309 inhabitants in the "Margravate of Istria", 168,116 spoke Croatian, 147,416 spoke Italian, 55,365 spoke Slovene, 13,279 spoke German, 882 spoke Romanian, 2,116 spoke other languages and 17,135 were non-citizens, which had not been asked for their language of communication.
Excluding the almost exclusively Croatian-speaking areas that were annexed to Yugoslavia after WWI, Istria had 39% of Italian speakers, 37% of Croatian, and 14.7% Slovene speakers.
Until the end of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the bourgeois Italian national liberal elites retained much of the political control in Istria.