Julian March
The Julian March, also called Julian Venetia, is an area of southern Central Europe which is currently divided among Croatia, Italy, and Slovenia. The term was coined in 1863 by the Italian linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, a native of the area, to demonstrate that the Austrian Littoral, Veneto, Friuli, and Trentino shared a common Italian linguistic identity. Ascoli emphasized the Augustan partition of Roman Italy at the beginning of the Empire, when Venetia et Histria was Regio X.
The term was later endorsed by Italian irredentists, who sought to annex regions in which ethnic Italians made up most of the population: the Austrian Littoral, Trentino, Fiume and Dalmatia. The Triple Entente promised the regions to Italy in the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in exchange for Italy's joining the Allied Powers in World War I. The secret 1915 Treaty of London promised Italy territories largely inhabited by Italians in addition to those largely inhabited by Croats or Slovenes; the territories housed 421,444 Italians, and about 327,000 ethnic Slovenes.
A contemporary Italian autonomous region, bordering on Slovenia, is named Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
Etymology
The term "Julian March" is a partial translation of the Italian name "Venezia Giulia", coined by the Italian historical linguist Graziadio Ascoli, who was born in Gorizia. The term "March" in "Julian March" refers to a medieval European designation for a borderland or frontier district, more specifically, a buffer zone between different realms.In an 1863 newspaper article, Ascoli focused on a wide geographical area north and east of Venice which was under Austrian rule; he called it Triveneto. Ascoli divided Triveneto into three parts:
- Euganean Venetia, made up of Italy's Veneto region and most of the territory of Friuli
- Tridentine Venetia : the present Italian region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol
- Julian Venetia : "Gorizia, Trieste and Istria... including the land between the Venetia in the strict sense of the term, the Julian Alps, and the sea"
The term "Venezia Giulia" did not catch on immediately, and began to be used widely only in the first decade of the 20th century. It was used in official administrative acts by the Italian government in 1922–1923 and after 1946, when it was included in the name of the new region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
History
Early Middle Ages to the Republic of Venice
At the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Migration Period, the area had linguistic boundaries between speakers of Latin and the Germanic- and Slavic-language speakers who were moving into the region. Germanic tribes first arrived in present-day Austria and its surrounding areas between the fourth and sixth centuries. They were followed by the Slavs, who appeared on the borders of the Byzantine Empire around the sixth century and settled in the Eastern Alps between the sixth and eighth centuries. In Byzantine Dalmatia, on the east shore of the Adriatic Sea, several city-states had limited autonomy. The Slavs retained their languages in the interior, and local Romance languages continued to be spoken on the coast.Beginning in the early Middle Ages, two main political powers shaped the region: the Republic of Venice and the Habsburg. During the 11th century, Venice began building an overseas empire to establish and protect its commercial routes in the Adriatic and southeastern Mediterranean Seas. Coastal areas of Istria and Dalmazia were key parts of these routes since Pietro II Orseolo, the Doge of Venice, established Venetian rule in the high and middle Adriatic around 1000. The Venetian presence was concentrated on the coast, replacing Byzantine rule and confirming the political and linguistic separation between coast and interior. The Republic of Venice began expanding toward the Italian interior in 1420, acquiring the Patriarchate of Aquileia.
The Habsburg held the March of Carniola, roughly corresponding to the central Carniolan region of present-day Slovenia, since 1335. During the next two centuries, they gained control of the Istrian cities of Pazin and Rijeka-Fiume, the port of Trieste, Gradisca and Gorizia.
Republic of Venice to 1918
The region was relatively stable from the 16th century to the 1797 fall of the Republic of Venice, which was marked by the Treaty of Campo Formio between Austria and France. The Habsburgs gained Venetian lands on the Istrian Peninsula and the Quarnero islands, expanded their holdings in 1813 with Napoleon's defeats and the dissolution of the French Illyrian provinces. Austria gained most of the republic's territories, including the Adriatic coast, Istria and portions of present-day Croatia.Habsburg rule abolished political borders which had divided the area for almost 1,000 years. The territories were initially assigned to the new Kingdom of Illyria, which became the Austrian Littoral in 1849. This was established as a crown land of the Austrian Empire, consisting of three regions: the Istrian peninsula, Gorizia and Gradisca, and the city of Trieste.
The Italian-Austrian war of 1866, followed by the passage of what was then known as Veneto to Italy, did not directly affect the Littoral; however, a small community of Slavic speakers in northeastern Friuli became part of the Kingdom of Italy. Otherwise, the Littoral lasted until the end of the Austrian Empire in 1918.
The Italians in Julian March supported the Italian Risorgimento: as a consequence, the Austrians saw the Italians as enemies and favored the Slav communities of Julian March. 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:
Istrian Italians were more than 50% of the total population of Istria for centuries, while making up about a third of the population in 1900.
Kingdom of Italy (1918–1943)
The Kingdom of Italy annexed the region after World War I according to the Treaty of London and later Treaty of Rapallo, comprising most of the former Austrian Littoral, south-western portions of the former Duchy of Carniola, and the current Italian municipalities of Tarvisio, Pontebba and Malborghetto Valbruna which had been Carinthian. The annexed areas included many partially or fully Slovene or Croat areas. The island of Krk and the municipality of Kastav, which had formerly been part of the Austrian Littoral, became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.Rijeka-Fiume, which had enjoyed special status within the Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen, became an independent city-state in the Treaty of Rapallo: the Free State of Fiume. It was abolished following the 1924 Treaty of Rome and divided between Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
The new provinces of Gorizia, Trieste, Pola and Fiume were created. Tarvisio, Pontebba, Malborghetto Valbruna, and the westernmost part of the former Littoral around Cervignano del Friuli remained part of Udine after 1927.
Italians lived primarily in cities and along the coast, and Slavs inhabited the interior. Fascist persecution, "centralising, oppressive and dedicated to the forcible Italianisation of the minorities", caused the emigration of about 105,000 Slovenes and Croats from the Julian March—around 70,000 to Yugoslavia and 30,000 to Argentina. Several thousand Dalmatian Italians moved from Yugoslavia to Italy after 1918, many to Istria and Trieste.
In response to the Fascist Italianization of Slovene areas, the militant anti-Fascist organization TIGR emerged in 1927. TIGR co-ordinated Slovene resistance against Fascist Italy until it was dismantled by the secret police in 1941, and some former members joined the Yugoslav Partisans. The Slovene Partisans emerged that year in the occupied Province of Ljubljana, and spread by 1942 to the other Slovene areas which had been annexed by Italy twenty years earlier.
German occupation and resistance (1943–1945)
After the Italian armistice of September 1943, many local uprisings took place. The town of Gorizia was temporarily liberated by partisans, and a liberated zone in the Upper Soča Valley known as the Kobarid Republic lasted from September to November 1943. The German Army began to occupy the region and encountered severe resistance from Yugoslav partisans, particularly in the lower Vipava Valley and the Alps. Most of the lowlands were occupied by the winter of 1943, but Yugoslav resistance remained active throughout the region and withdrew to the mountains.In the aftermath of the fall 1943 Italian armistice, the first of what became known as the Foibe massacres occurred. The Germans established the Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral, officially part of the Italian Social Republic but under de facto German administration, that year. Many areas, were controlled by the partisan resistance, which was also active on the Karst Plateau and interior Istria. The Nazis tried to repress the Yugoslav guerrillas with reprisals against the civilian population; entire villages were burned down, and thousands of people were interned in Nazi concentration camps. However, the Yugoslav resistance took over most of the region by the spring of 1945.
Italian resistance in the operational zone was active in Friuli and weaker in the Julian March, where it was confined to intelligence and underground resistance in the larger towns. In May 1945, the Yugoslav Army entered Trieste; over the following days, virtually the entire Julian March was occupied by Yugoslav forces. Retaliation against real political opponents occurred, primarily to the Italian population.