THE "ROMANCE" BRIDGE BETWWEN ITALY & ROMANIA

 The historical "bridge" between Romanians and Dalmatian Italians

There was a continuum of romance speaking populations in Europe at the end of the Western Roman Empire, from Portugal and Spain to France and Italy: this continuum reached the Balkans until the Danube river delta, from Italian Istria until the Romanian Dobrugia.

But actually there it is a "hole" of this continuum in the area that was former Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia), because of the Slav invasions that happened during the early Middle Ages. However for many centuries this hole between Italy and Romania was partially occupied by a kind of "bridge" of neolatin populations (usually called "Vlachs", a word from latin 'vallum', meaning 'people of the Roman vallum' near the barbarian borders of the Western Roman empire) during the late Middle Ages until the Renaissance centuries. These Vlachs lived in the mountains of the western Balkans, but were slowly "assimilated" by the Slavs and actually they have practically disappeared, leaving only some evidences of themselves in the names of the Balkan topography & history (like "Romanija", "Stari Vlah", etc..).

Map showing the remains of the "Bridge" (Romanija Planina & Stari Vlah) in the XIII century, between the neolatin territories of Ragusa Republic & Spalato of the Dalmatian Italians and those of the Valko (Vojvodina) & Kucso (Timok)

Indeed Ilona Czamańska wrote in "Vlachs and Slavs in the Middle Ages and Modern Era” (Res Historica, 41, (Lublin, 2016), 19) that: "The majority of Serbs from the Republika Srpska of modern Bosnia is of Vlach origin, as well as the majority of the population from Bosnia and Herzegovina in general." This fact is clearly related to the historical bridge -now disappeared- that existed until the Middle Ages between the romance speaking Romanians and the Italian populations in Dalmatia and Istria.

The following are excerpts -related to this "bridge"- from an essay written by Octavian Ciobanu (Professor of Iasu University) and titled "The Heritage of Western Balkan Vlachs":

A lot of Latin or Vlach place names still resist until today in Western Balkans. Jirecek wrote about the Vlach impressive presence in Montenegro, Herzegovina and Dalmatia in a period which lasted from the XIIIth to the XVIth centuries.The Serbian documents from the 12th to the 15th centuries revealed a large number of Vlach placenames and Vlach personal names which are still in use by the Slavs of the Western Balkans. The Romanian character of the language of these Vlachs is generally recognized.

According to Stelian Brezeanu, among the toponyms attesting the presence of the Romanic element in the region, there are two that have an importance: Palaioblacoi and Stari Vlah. Palaioblacoi is attested in Thessaly (later Μεγάλη Βλαχία/Megali Vlahia) and the second toponym, Stari Vlah, is attested in the Medieval Serbia and in Herzegovina: “It was a region inside of the Kingdom of the Nemanids that attached the Kopaonik Mountains to the Romanija Mountains, around the city of Sarajevo. That region had as centre the Drina and the Lim rivers valley.”

Next to Stari Vlah it is Romanija. This area has the mountain still called Romanja.Therefore, the region of Stari Vlah belonged to a more extended area, intensively romanised at the end of the antiquity.Ştefan Stareţu writes that “it is clear that Stari Raska comes from Stari Vlaska, with a rothacism, and Raska from Vlaska (this is exemplified by the double name of Banat, as Vlaska or Raska)”. He also advances a hypothesis: “The Serbs and Vlachs are probably a single ethnic substance, constructed in the Balkan Peninsula as a unity in the 8th-14th century.”

Furthermore, according to Ilona Czamańska the Vlach population was already established in the western Balkans during the migration of Slavs. But she pointed out that both ethnic groups occupying the same land were not in conflict. Slavs, as farmers, occupied lands in the valleys, which were suitable for them, while Vlachs exploited mountains. Slavs, next to agriculture, also engaged in breeding, but did not practice transhumance pastoralism, which was the domain of the Vlachs. For the Slavs the land and the right to its cultivation and ownership was most important, for the Vlachs the ownership of land did not matter as long as the mountains were common property. The element, which bound their community together, was not the land, but family relationships and the sense of belonging to the same "clan".

In the Middle Ages the Vlachs lived in most of the mountain areas in the western Balkans up to the Adriatic coast. In the Middle Ages, the territory between the rivers Lim and Drina in the west, and Raska and Studenica in the east, was called “Old Wallachia” (Stari Vlah), and the Orthodox Church province of the Rasca – “eparchy Old Wallachian”.

In the Serbia of the Nemanjić dinasty (1166-1371) and the states that have later arisen on its ruins, the Vlachs created a fairly closed community because of their special privileged status, in contrast to the rest of Slavic peasant population. Mixed marriages with representatives of other social classes, especially the peasant population, were very difficult here. Despite that, here the processes of Slavisation and assimilation proceeded very quickly. It was also facilitated because of the vanishing of the areas where the Vlach shepherds could wander, because of the distribution of the mountain areas to particular owners. Vlachs defended themselves against dependence for example by buying pastures, which resulted in their definitive transition to semi-sedentary and sedentary life.

The Knez and provincial governors (often Vlach ones) became major landowners, entering the group of nobles and even the aristocracy of Serbia. Among the Slavic Balkan rulers many had Vlach roots – most probably the families Balšić, Hrvatinić – Kosača, and perhaps also Mrnjavcević. Already the earliest records of the names of the Vlachs as well as the names of localities preserved in the sources of the 13th century show a hybrid combination of Vlach and Slav element. Even then, many Vlach names were Slavic, often with Romanian endings (i.e. Dragul, Radul and Bogdan and afterwards even Milutin, Vukašin and Momcil).

Starting from the 14th century the term “Vlach” began to lose its ethnical meaning in favour of a societal meaning in the areas of Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In these areas the Vlachs were strongly mixed with the Slavic population and the name “Vlach” was frequently used interchangeably with the term “Slav”.

In the "bridge", Slavisation (in fact Serbisation) of the Vlachs was also encouraged by the period of the Ottoman rule. As Orthodox, Vlachs belonged to the same millet as Serbs, and after the reconstruction of the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć they were subordinated to civil authority of the Serbian patriarch. Thus, Vlachs were integrated with Serbs very quickly, especially that the religious affiliation was the main identifier. The persons who belonged to the Serbian Orthodox Church were called by the name of Serbs, not only in the lands which were traditionally Serbian, also in Bosnia. This process was intensified by the fact that many Vlachs abandoned their activities, especially since enclosed social classes did not exist in the Ottoman state.

Actually -according to Marian Wenzel- the majority of the population from Bosnia and Herzegovina in general is of Vlach origin.

Map showing the location (with small points) of the 'Stecci', medieval funerary monuments, in an area that is very similar to the one of the "historical bridge". Note that the easternmost 'Stecci' are located in Serbia's "Stari Vlah" and the westernmost are near the Republic of Venice's Zara area (linking -as a kind of "bridge" through Serbia and Bosnia/Herzegovina- western Romania and Italy's Dalmatia)

Indeed the medieval Vlachs (called often Aromanians) of Herzegovina are considered authors of the famous funerary monuments with petroglyphs (usually called "Stecci") from Herzegovina and surrounding countries. The theory of the Vlach origin of these 'Stecci' was proposed by Bogumil Hrabak (1956) and Marian Wenzel and more recently was supported by the archeological and anthropological researches of skeleton remains from the graves under these 'Stećci'. For Wenzel the Vlachs did not continue to create other 'Stecci' since their conversion -in the sixteenth century- to moslem religion because of Turks domination.

The theory is much older and was first proposed by Arthur Evans in his work "Antiquarian Researches in Illyricum" (1883): while doing research with Felix von Luschan on 'Stecci' graves around Konavle, he found that a large number of skulls were not of Slavic origin but similar to older romanised Illyrian population, as well as noting that Ragusa memorials recorded those parts inhabited by the Vlachs until the 15th century. In other words: these 'Stecci' made by neolatins confirm the existence of this "bridge" betweeen Dalmatia and "Stari Vlah"

Last but not least, we have to remember that in the area of southern Croatia and internal Dalmatia these Vlachs -who were present in the early Middle Ages- were called 'Maurovlachs', or 'Morlachs'(Morlacchi) by the Italians, and they relatively quickly succumbed to Slavisation and Catholic faith. They differentiated themselves from the rest of society through their social status, which took on a special meaning in these lands. In the 17th and 18th centuries the term 'Morlachs' determined both Slavisised Vlachs from the area of Dalmatia, as well as Croatian peasants who were mixed with Dalmatian Italians (and who actually speak a croatian dialect -called "Chacavian"- that has more than 50% of words loaned from latin & romance languages).

Map showing the actual 'neolatin gap' between Italy and Romania, that from Istria & Dalmatia reached western Romania's Timok region trough Herzegovina, Romanija and Stari Vlah.

In a few final words: The neolatin "bridge" (between Italy and Romania) existed from the barbarian invasions until the first Renaissance centuries, remaining in a few isolated mountain areas until the XVIII century: it seems to have disappeared with the end of the "Repubblica di Venezia" and the beginning of the 'nationalism' in the Balkans. But if we include in the "bridge" also the Dalmatian Italians of coastal Dalmatia, we must remember that the last speaker of this autochtonous Dalmatian language (Tuone Udaina) died in 1898 in Veglia (actual Krk) and so the "bridge" remains survived in some way until the XIX century's end.

However -according to Italian historians like Della Volpe- a legacy of this "bridge" can be seen in the existence of the Republic of Bosnia & Herzegovina, populated mainly by descendants of the romanised populations who created the worldwide famous "Stecci" (read for further information on the Stecci: https://www.scribd.com/doc/34362364/Marian-Wencel-UKRASNI-MOTIVI-NA-STE%C4%86CIMA ).

MAPS SHOWING THE ROMANCE  DISAPPEARANCE

in Serbia:

THE GERMAN/AUSTRIAN ASSIMILATION OF THE RHAETO-ROMANCE LANGUAGES

In the Alps region there it is an area (formerly very huge) populated by neolatin populations that survives assimilation only in three small territories: in Switzerland (Canton Grisons) and in Italy (Trentino-AltoAdige & Friuli). In these areas are spoken respectively: Romansh, Ladin and Friulan, the languages actually of more than 800000 inhabitants in Switzerland and Italy.

 

Map of the Roman "Italia Annonaria" (northern Italy) around 476 AD, showing that it included Raetia I & II until the Danube river, with the fully Romanized populations that were living in what is actual southern Germany, eastern Switzerland and western Austria.

These languages (sometimes called "dialects") are living relics, echoes of the Roman Empire that have survived for two millennia tucked away in the mountain strongholds of Switzerland and Italy (but disappeared in southern Germany and recently in Austria). They are a testament to the power of geography to both preserve and isolate culture, and their story is a compelling drama of identity, history, and the fight for survival.

When the Romans conquered the Alpine region known as Raetia, the local Celtic and Rhaetic peoples gradually adopted the language of their conquerors: Vulgar Latin. For centuries, this Alpine Latin evolved in relative isolation, separated by formidable mountain barriers from the developing Romance languages in what would become France and Italy. This isolation allowed a unique set of linguistic features to develop and solidify. 

The result is a group of languages that don’t fit neatly into the Italo-Romance (Italian) or Gallo-Romance (French) families. Instead, they form a kind of linguistic bridge between them, sharing features of both while retaining their own distinct character.The very idea of them being a unified “family” was a subject of fierce academic debate known as the Questione Ladina (“Ladin Question”). 

It was the pioneering Italian linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli who, in 1873, first convincingly argued that Romansh, Ladin, and Friulian were not simply dialects of Italian but remnants of a once-widespread "Latin Continuum" that stretched across the Alps. He and other linguists calculated that approximately:

• 1)Romansh is 66% Romance & 33% German
• 2)Ladin is 75% Romance & 25% German
• 3)Friulan is 85%Romance,9%German,6%Slav

HISTORY

Since the 3rd century, the Latinization of the Cisalpine, Alpine, and Transalpine lands in the vast triangle between Lake Constance, the Danube, and Istria was an established reality, while in the Dolomite & Alto Adige mountain area it was only completed towards the end of the Roman Western Empire with the decisive contribution of Christian preaching.

In the provinces of the Roman Empire south of the Danube called "Noricum" and "Rhaetia", the Latinized inhabitants did not completely disappear when the barbarian invasions devastated the region. Many were exterminated and others took refuge in Italy, but some survived in the Alps mountains.

Those who lived in Rhaetia gave rise to the Ladin and Rhaeto-Romance languages ​​of Switzerland and northern Italy, but those of Noricum survived only a few centuries until the time of Charlemagne (but in southern Austria survived cities like Aguntum -actual Dolsach near Lienz- possibly until the late ninth century).

That is to say, the Ladin/Rhaeto-Romance language exists today, but the Romance language of Noricum (which roughly coincides with present-day Austria) has disappeared. The explanation seems to be that Noricum and, in general, present-day central and eastern Austria were more exposed than Switzerland to the devastating invasions of the Huns of Attila and later of the Avars.

The following are brief essays about the two areas were Germanization has been more assimilative & successful: eastern Switzerland and Italian Alto Adige:

Switzerland (Romansh)

During the Middle Ages, there were now-extinct Rhaeto-Romance populations in northern Switzerland and in Austria/Bavaria, in areas called: Walchental, Wakhen, Walchengag, Wakhensef, and Winkhen. For example Saltzburg (Austria) was called with the Roman name "Iuvavum" until 740 AD, showing that it was populated by a few remaining neoromanized  citizens until the mid-eight century.

Map showing the decrease of areas populated by people of Romansh language from 700 to 2000 AD

Romansh in the early Middle Ages was spoken over a much wider Swiss area, stretching north into the present-day swiss  cantons of Glarus and St. Gallen, to the Walensee in the northwest, and Rüthi and the Alpine Rhine Valley in the northeast.

Additionally in the east, most of modern-day Austria's Vorarlberg were Romansh-speaking, as were parts of Tirol. 

The northern areas, called Lower Raetia, became German-speaking by the 12th century; and by the 15th century, the Rhine Valley of St. Gallen and the areas around the Walensee were entirely German-speaking. This language shift was a long, drawn-out process, with larger, central towns adopting German first, while the more peripheral areas around them remained Romansh-speaking longer. 

The shift to German language was caused in particular by the influence of the local German-speaking élites (with the help of the local church priests) and secondarily by German-speaking immigrants from the north, with the lower and rural classes retaining Romansh longer. If interested read https://web.archive.org/web/20131104161427/http://www.liarumantscha.ch/data/media/pdf/facts_figures/facts_figures_english.pdf.

Furthermore, until the time of Napoleon, Rhaeto-Romance was spoken in some areas of the Austrian Vorarlberg, while in the Val Venosta of the Italian "Alto Adige" (called also "South Tirol") there were Ladin/Rhaeto-Romance communities until the end of the 19th century.

Currently in the Canton Grisons in southeastern Switzerland, exists the Romansh -with its own literature and many dialects- that is considered the fourth official language of Switzerland (with German, French and Italian) and is the primary language of 60000 inhabitants. It is fragmented into five main dialects (Sursilvan, Sutsilvan, Surmiran, Puter, and Vallader). In the 1980s, a standardized written form, Rumantsch Grischun, was created to unify the language for official use, a move that remains controversial among speakers of the individual dialects. 

Map of actual (2020) Raetho-Romance languages

Alto Adige (Ladin)

Around the year 1000, the ethnic composition of Alto Adige was predominantly Romance/Ladin, with a slowly increasing but still scarce Germanic presence (mainly Bavarians) in the more inland areas.

The main ethnic groups present were:

Ladin-Romance populations: They were the predominant group, descendants of the Rhaeto-Roman populations that had inhabited the region since Roman times. Their language, Ladin, was widely spoken before the significant subsequent Germanization. They were a "continuum"  romance population, linking the Romansh with the Friulans (from actual Switzerland to actual Friuli-Venezia Giulia) and their main cities were Bolzano, Merano and Bressanone. The Alto Adige area south of Chiusa Pass and Bolzano was fully romance speaking and famous for the wine production with significant commerce with the Po/Adige valley since Roman times (it was later included in the Napoleon 's kingdom of Italy).

Germanic populations (Bavarians): The Germanic presence, particularly of the Bavarian tribes, dated back to the migrations of the 6th century, but until the 11th century it was a minority mainly concentrated in the northern valleys and along the borders. It was with the Ottonian dynasty (after the year 1000) that a more significant impetus began towards the "in-depth" Germanization of the upper Adige basin, a process that was initially slow and gradual. The epidemic of the “Black Death” which struck hard the whole of Europe in the middle of the fourteenth century (beginning in 1348) led to the collapse of the romance population, which was filled in part by an influx of German settlers from regions in which the disease had a lesser impact. After 1363 all the area of Alto Adige (that in German language was called "Tirol" -name taken from the ladin village that Dante called "Tiralli", north of Merano) went to the Habsburg and the process of Germanization became very strong. These Habsburgs, intensified the process of Germanization through their feudal lords and their ecclesiastics, who, being owners of enormous estates, transplanted German settlers. In addition, Habsburg rule facilitated the immigration of merchants from Germany to urban centers south of the Brenner Pass.

Maria Theresa, the Habsburg empress who damaged the existence of the romance Ladins in AltoAdige and is loved by the Austrians.

Entire valleys of Alto Adige which were still Ladin, and the major part of the Val Venosta, which had spoken a neo-Latin language until the beginning of the eighteenth century, were Germanized by force during the Maria Theresia reign (that lasted from 1740 to 1780). First, the Habsburg  authorities imposed a series of repressive measures, which required the exclusive use of German in a number of fields: in public meetings, in church sermons, in confession and in general pastoral activity, etc. Second, discriminatory measures were promoted against those who spoke Ladin in their own home and family life, limiting their rights, such as the possibility of exercising certain professions or even of contracting marriages. Third, many customs characteristic of the Ladins were banned, again in order to make them lose their identity. Fourth, the Empress Maria Theresa in person issued a secret decree, which required the Germanization of Ladin surnames in South Tyrol, using the clergy to carry out this work, who were loyal to the empire and imposed the German language. Even today there are many Ladin surnames Germanized through the addition of an –er ending (as happened to Elemunt, which became Elemunter, or Melaun, which became Melauner), or by a translation into German (for example, changing Costalungia to Kastlunger, Granruac to Großrubatscher, etc.).

Most of Val Venosta was thus Germanized under the government of the sovereigns Maria Theresa and -later- Joseph II, who are regarded by Austrian nationalists as the more open and tolerant sovereigns of the house of Austria. The Ladins who managed to resist such Germanizing pressure were gradually assimilated during the nineteenth century, so that very few Romansh groups remained in Val Venosta at the beginning of the nineteenth century. An enthusiastic supporter of the Germanization of the Ladins and the Romansh before the Theresian era was the abbot of Marienberg Abbey (Abbey of Monte Maria) in upper Val Venosta, Mathias Lang.

Similar Germanizing behaviours were common to the activity of the government of Maria Theresa, who was responsible for initiatives similar to those described above, or even worse, in different parts of the empire, such as in Bohemia, Croatia, Hungary and Romania. The Empress also issued an edict in which she authorized the abduction of children born to Gypsy (and to poor Ladin) families, in order to enlarge the German sphere and render it Austrian in culture: the cases of authorized abductions were many thousands.

The Ladin is actually spoken in the Alto Adige

 valleys of northern Italy, in the Dolomites and

 north of Trento (and also in the province of Udine,

 near the Tagliamento River, in northeast Italy). It is

 estimated that around 50,000 people speak this

 Rhaeto-Romance as a first or second language

 (excluding the Friulian speakers of northern Italy,

 who are more than half a million).

Furthermore. it is important to note that the scholar Piccottini asserts that an extinct "Austrian Romance language" (spoken for some centuries -after the Roman empire fall- in central & southern Austria, like in Aguntum) belongs to the Rhaeto-Romance group (or at least was a proto-Rhaeto-Romance language), based on its geographical proximity to the current Romansh/Ladin/Friulian areas in the Swiss-Italian Alps. He even believes that it assimilated some words from the pre-Roman Raetic language, especially in Austrian Tirol.

Indeed, in the Tirolean region of western Austria, between Innsbruck and Vaduz (the name of the capital of Liechtenstein comes from the Neo-Latin word "avadutz," meaning aqueduct in Romansh), Rhaeto-Romance was also spoken until the time of the French Revolution.

The Alto Adige line of haplogroup "R1b-U152"

Map of R1b-U152 in western Europe (it coincides approximately with West Roman Empire)

In all the Tirolean & Austrian propaganda against the Italian Alto Adige there it is always a reference to the fact that this territory is considered to have been ALWAYS a German speaking area, that the Italian fascism (of Tolomei et al) wanted to Italianize after WW1. But the Austrian Tiroleans always forget in their writings that only in the last four/five centuries before 1918 the romance language have become a minority language in what is now called Alto Adige.

The area around Bolzano has always been the most populated in Alto Adige with a huge romance speaking community; and in Napoleon times it was united to his Kingdom of Italy because ethnically romance speaking. Furthermore the valley "Venosta" west of Merano until the second half of the Settecento (XVIII century) was populated mostly by Ladins.

These facts -together with the existence of Ladins in Val Gardena and surroundings even now- clearly explains why Tolomei and other Italian academics & historians considered that the German-speaking Tiroleans were not an autochthonous population in the Alto Adige region.

The Italian irredentist Tolomei looked as a reference for the "re-italianization" of Alto adige to the process of assimilation done in France after WW1 with the former mostly German speaking Alsace-Lorraine regions. He was well esteemed by the French authorities: in 1935 Tolomei -promoted to "Senator of the Kingdom of Italy"- received the "Légion d'honneur" from the "République française". The award motivation was: "In giving you this high distinction, the Government of the French Republic has taken care to recognize the outstanding services that you have rendered to the Latinity before, during and after the war (...) with your action in the Alto Adige defense outpost of the Latin block against Germanism".

Tolomei correctly pinpointed that the Germanization was huge north of Merano and Bolzano, but in the val Venosta area it has only happened since the century before the French Revolution and in the Bolzano area only since the XIX century. So he indicated that there was an approximate line related to the presence of less or more than 20% of blonde hair in the population, that clearly divided in two the Alto Adige: north of the line there were people mostly German speaking since the Middle Ages, while south of the line the presence of romance population was evident in the darker hair of most people.

Curiously in recent years the genetic studies have confirmed this line, with the genetic signature of the haplogroup "R1b-U152". Indeed the ancient Romans, from the original founders of Rome to the patricians of the Roman Republic, should have been essentially R1b-U152 people. See the above map for further understanding, showing the orange line (related to 33% of the population) of the haplogroup "R1b-U152" that is similar to the one of the 20% blonde hairs in the population (north of the line the habitants are more blonde and Germanized, while south are less -because more than the 33% of the total population has this kind of haplogroup- like in northern Italy).

Finally we must remember in detail -also graphically- the biggest process of (often forced) German assimilation that happened in the alpine northern region of Italian Alto Adige. Here it is a good "precise" map of the ethnicity in the Alto Adige in 1900, showing in red the areas of Romance language and in blue those German speaking:

It is noteworthy to pinpoint that it is possible to see in the map that there were areas of Alto Adige with a majority of Italians/Ladins (in red), that now have disappeared, like around Salorno, Merano and near Switzerland (for example, in Val Venosta -near the Switzerland border- until the 1820s was spoken the "Romansh language"). The following is an interesting essay about this forced assimilation:

(read:also  Archivio Alto Adige; Italiani a Merano e dintorni nell'Ottocento)

The Forced Germanization of the Italian Val Venosta

One of the last Ladin areas to pass to the German language was the Upper Val Venosta (Vinschgau). It was not a voluntary transition from Ladin to a new language, but a forced assimilation which is not often cited or discussed in Tyrolean historiography; indeed, it is often ignored. In the past, Tyrolean historiography was mainly focused on attempting to demonstrate the long history of German culture in South Tyrol from the conquest of the Bavarii onward. Even today, this attitude does not seem to have changed much among German authors.

However, in the 14th and 15th centuries Romansh was the only language used in the court of Glorenza (Glurns). This is an irrefutable sign that the population was exclusively Romansh and monolingual. Up to that time there were many cultural, social and economic contacts with the neighboring people of Müstair and the Engadine, who spoke the same language, which has left an impact on the local culture (architecture, toponymy). The Val Venosta, moreover, belonged to the diocese of Chur.

Around 1600, Romansh in the Val Venosta was in a position very similar to that of Ladin in the Val Gardena today, in other words quite strong. Until about 1620 the Abbey of Monte Maria (Marienberg) called upon the Capuchins of Müstair to preach to the people in Romansh. This demonstrates that the population of the Val Venosta was hardly bilingual at that time.

In 1898 a German historian wrote:

“The Val di Mazia (near Malles Venosta) was still Romansh in the 1600's, and even a century later Romansh was still very common in the Val Venosta. It has already been mentioned that Tubre in the Val Monastero passed to the German language only about 70 years ago, while in nearby Müstair (in Switzerland) Ladin is still spoken today, and even in Stelvio at the beginning of the 19th century there were still people who spoke Ladin.” [1]

“Tubre was cleansed of the Romansh language only after 1750”, says an old history book. [2] The use of the term ‘cleansed’ (German: geräumt) demonstrates quite well the attitude of the Germans at that time. Indeed, the Romansh language was wiped out as a result of a prohibition against using the language. The German language was required for meetings, while the Ladin language was prohibited. Likewise the employment of Romansh maids and servants was prohibited, Romansh customs were prohibited, and even marriages with Romansh people were prohibited. The main promoter of these prohibitions was the abbot of Marienberg Abbey, Mathias Lang, infamous for his fanaticism.

The motive or excuse for this Germanization was the Reformation: it was feared that Protestant ideas could penetrate Catholic Tyrol through the Romansh language (“barbaric Romansh”, as it was also called), since the inhabitants of the neighboring Grisons are partly Protestant. It is of little importance that the prohibition of the language was said to be motivated by these fears. The truth is that when the leader does not understand the language of his subjects, the use of this language is criminalized.

Thus the Upper Val Venosta was Germanized. Despite the methods adopted — methods which anticipated those later used for the assimilation of minorities in the 20th century — the extinction of the Ladin language did not have such a rapid success. According to glottologists, Romansh-speakers still lived in the Upper Val Venosta in the 1820's. Today there are still many testimonies of Ladin heritage in the region: it can be observed in the local dialect, as well as in many toponyms.

MAPS SHOWING THE ASSIMILATION

The Romansh area during Charlemagne rule in the IX century.

Rhaeto-Romance languages now & 1200 years ago

Two maps of Swiss Canton Grisons showing: 

1) in the first (above) for 1860, in yellow the linguistic area of the German language, while in violet the Romansh area. 

2) in the second (bottom) for 2010, the increased German language (yellow color) in former areas of Romansh

Conclusion 

The Rhaeto-Romance linguistic group occupied an area which in the medieval past included (using current geographical terminology) the Grisons, Alto Adige, Friuli, the eastern Alps, southern Bavaria and western Austria. Today, however, it includes only the small Romansh-speaking community in the Grisons, the even smaller community of Ladins on the Italian side of the Alps, and the Friulians. Note that the gradual disappearance of Raetians occurred due to extermination and forced assimilations performed by Germanics. In fact, all of current Austria, the eastern Alps, and a good part of the central Swiss Alps were linguistically Rhaeto-Romance before the arrival of these invaders; except for the small Romansh community in Switzerland, the Raetians beyond the Alps became extinct. Even the Italian Alto Adige was latinophone, while today the Ladins survive only in a very small area (Badia, Gardena, Fassa, Livinallongo, Ampezzano) and are reduced to a few tens of thousands of people. 

The only area in which the Rhaeto-Romance peoples have not experienced significant reductions (with the exception of what happened recently in the Italian Venezia Giulia/Istria during WW2) is, not coincidentally, that of Friuli, which, although bordering with the Germanic and Slavic world, remained (thanks mainly to the Republic of Venice until Napoleon times) mostly unscathed by the phenomena of Germanization and Slavicization which swept through the majority of this Alpine area. It is significant that today among the approximately 810,000 Rhaeto-Romance people in existence, 700,000 live in Friuli, while the Ladins and the Romansh are respectively about 50,000 and 60,000 units.

This true genocide, cultural but also in part physical in the phase of the barbarian invasions of the Middle Ages, saw the areas of Rhaeto-Romance population gradually eroded (like a tide hitting the Alps).

THE BRITISH SUBMARINES IN THE MEDITERRANEAN BATTLE DURING WW2

Great Britain began the war in 1939 with a fleet of 57 submarines, the exact same number as the Germans. The Royal Navy produced quite a large number of different classes of boats but three would be most prominent; the S, T, and U-class boats of which the most famous is probably the "T-class". 

    A "T-Class" british submarine: the "HMS Thorn"

Like the Italians, who had a very large submarine force (more than one hundred in summer 1940: 115 in total, of which only 84 were operational), the British opted for reliability rather than innovation. For instance, like the Italians, they stuck to the old-fashioned impact fuse for their torpedoes rather than the more sophisticated magnetic fuses used by the Germans and Americans. This made them less effective but, unlike both Germany and America, Britain did not have to go through a period of having unreliable or totally faulty weapons while the bugs were worked out of this new technology. Rather, the British compensated for the weaker destructive power of the impact fuses (in which the brunt of the explosion is focused away from the target) by having boats that packed a larger punch than those of any other navy. 

British "T-class" submarines were the best and were built to fire an astonishing 10 torpedoes at a time which, British naval engineers reasoned, would more than make up for the drawbacks of their fuses as well as the less advanced targeting systems of British boats. If ten torpedoes are fired at a single target, one or more will almost have to hit it. 

British submarine success was to be found mainly in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, where British submarines would have their biggest impact on the world war two. 

The largest threat, obviously, was the powerful Italian navy and the extensive coverage over the Mediterranean by the Italian air force. However, due to the shortage of fuel and their industrial inability to keep up with any significant rate of attrition, the Italian surface navy would be forced to remain on the defensive. 

British "T-class" submarines began to operate in the Mediterranean from September 1940 onward. This was the theatre in which the T class were most heavily engaged in operations and correspondingly suffered proportionately heavy losses.

Operations in the Mediterranean posed several substantial challenges for British submarines and the T class in particular. Firstly, the Italian Regia Marina, almost uniquely among the Axis navies, had devoted a substantial amount of resources and training to anti-submarine warfare. Equipped with their own version of sonar, the ecogoniometro (ECG), possessing excellent escort vessels, and making extensive use of mines, the Italians were to prove the most successful of the Axis powers at destroying Allied submarines.

Indeed in the Mediterranean, Italian submarines during WW2 sank 21 merchantmen and 13 enemy warships for a total of more than 100,000 tons; in addition, they were often used for carrying the crews and human torpedoes (nicknamed "Maiali") of the "Decima Flottiglia MAS" (which sank warships totalling 78,000 tons and 20 merchant ships totalling 130,000 tons).

History during WW2

The first British submarine success in the Mediterranean was, due to confusion over their status, the sinking of a French sloop. While screening a convoy, the submarine "HMS Phoenix" spotted the main Italian fleet, leading to a fairly significant engagement, but the Phoenix was then sunk by an Italian torpedo boat on July 16, 1940. On the final day of the July month, "HMS Oswald" was sunk by an Italian destroyer off the coast of Messina. As the Germans had done in the North Sea, Italian shore installations used radio direction-finding (the "idrofono") to locate the British submarine and the Italian destroyers then moved in for the kill (read with google translator from Italian: https://www.ocean4future.org/savetheocean/archives/35220).

Morale fell as British submarine losses continued and though successes did increase when the government in London authorized the use of unrestricted submarine warfare, the latter half of 1940 was fairly disastrous for the Royal Navy boats. 

While sinking less than 1% of Italian shipping to North Africa, Britain had lost nine submarines, five at the hands of the Italian navy and the rest to air attack or mines. At one point, Britain was reduced to only five operational submarines in the full Mediterranean!

 Clearly, something had to be done. Italian shipping losses had been extremely light in 1940, warships were not engaged and overall Italian superiority in the central Mediterranean had been maintained. 

It was a gloomy time as the British came to grips with the fact that, despite what Allied propaganda had told them, their enemy was a formidable one. 

Photo of the Italian "torpediniera Pegaso", that on 6 August 1942 destroyed with deep charges the British submarine HMS Thorn. This torpedo boat was one of the most successful AXIS anti-submarine warships of World War II. It never surrendered to the Allies, preferring to do a scuttling in Spanish Minorca island on 09/09/1943

However, the British did what they have traditionally done; learned from their mistakes and adapted.

As with the Germans (or the Japanese for that matter), Italian underwater detection gear was not good. The British knew this and so finally came to appreciate that, other than aircraft, the primary way their boats were being located was by radio direction-finding. 

The British responded by ordering their subs to maintain radio silence unless communication was absolutely necessary. The British also ultimately adopted the practice of keeping their boats submerged throughout the daylight hours if at all possible, only surfacing at night. This reduced their mobility of course but also made them much less likely to be detected by lookouts on ship or shore or by patrolling Italian aircraft. 

The Admiralty also sent many more submarines to Malta such as 10 new U-class boats in early 1941. With a greater respect for their enemy, more care given to stealth and increased use of mines, British successes began to pick up. In February of 1941 "HMS Upright" attacked and sank the Italian cruiser "Armando Diaz" in a surface attack at night, the biggest victory British submarines had yet had in the Mediterranean.

In March 1941, "HMS Rorqual" laid a minefield, sent two freighters to the bottom and then sank the Italian submarine "Capponi". The same month, another British boat, the "P31", made a successful attack on a large freighter using Asdic (sonar) alone, earning the commander the DSO. 

The following month also saw the beginning of a string of victories for the man who would be the most successful British submarine commander of World War II, Lt. Comm. Malcolm D. Wanklyn of "HMS Upholder". He sank a freighter in April off Tunisia and two more on May 1, beginning what would be a very successful career, albeit a short one. Sadly, Wanklyn was killed in action in 1942 by the Italian navy but by that time had managed to sink 21 Axis vessels, earning the Victoria Cross. 

Because of men like him, things were turning around for the British war under the waves. In the first half of 1941 they managed to sink about 130,000 tons of Axis shipping while losing only two submarines, both to Italian minefields. Still, the rate of success was slow at less than two ships a month. Furthermore, of the shipping interdicted by the Allies, including the movement of Rommel’s Afrika Korps to Libya, less than 5% was lost to British submarines.

However, the British were steadily improving and were aided by two significant events:1) the invasion of the Soviet Union, which meant the redeployment of enemy air forces and 2) the breaking of Axis codes, which allowed the British to have up to date information on Italian naval movements. 

The British also very cleverly took care to move aircraft into the area of Italian convoys before the submarines arrived to make their attack so that the Axis high command would assume the RAF had spotted their ships and not catch on to the fact that their codes had been broken. This allowed for more British submarines successes going forward. 

In September of 1941 the boats at Malta were organized into the Tenth Submarine Flotilla and the “Fighting Tenth” would prove the most successful British submarine force of the war, though also the one with the highest casualty rate.

Having inside information (from Italian antifascist organizations) on when and wear Italian supply convoys would be sailing, the British were able to post their submarines in picket lines in front of the enemy. 

In so doing, the British boats began to really bite into the Axis war effort, sinking four Italian troopships (with some hundreds of Italian soldiers killed) in a few weeks and badly damaging the new Italian battleship "Vittorio Veneto", which was attacked by "HMS Urge" and put out of action for over three months. 

In the second half of 1941 the British lost six submarines but received 13 new boats and, in that time, managed to take a significant toll on Axis shipping (which was critical to the North African war effort). In the desert, logistics were paramount and when the supplies flowed, Rommel advanced; when they did not, the Italo-German forces fell back. 

The losses were serious enough to compel the Germans to dispatch some of their own U-boats to the Mediterranean, adding a new and dangerous foe for the British to deal with: proven when the German "U-81" managed to sink the only British aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean, "HMS Ark Royal", in November 1941. 

Moreover, German and Italian air attacks on Malta proved to be devastating, eventually wiping out the RAF defenders, forcing the withdrawal of many ships and damaging three submarines.

Nonetheless, the British boats continued to put up a terrific fight with "HMS Upholder" sinking the Italian submarine "St Bon" in January of 1942 and "HMS Unbeaten" sinking the German submarine "U-374" not long after. In March 1942 the "Upholder" sent another Italian submarine, the "Tricheco", to the bottom off Brindisi. 

However, the Germans had developed better detection gear and shared this with the Italians to great effect. The Italian torpedo boat "Circe" took out two British submarines using the new gear. 

The Italians also made ever greater use of minefields and this, combined with the sinking of the British minesweepers, ultimately made Malta untenable as a naval base. The island was ripe for the picking, however, it was saved by German Field Marshal Rommel who convinced the high command to call off the invasion in favor of his attack into Egypt. At one point only 12 British submarines were on hand in the area and the Royal Navy was more stretched than ever with the Empire of Japan now menacing the British Empire in the Far East. Many of the boats previously stationed in Malta had been transferred from Asia, which was now also under attack.

Dogged determination proved effective though and despite the reduction in numbers in April of 1942, British submarines sank 117,000 tons of Axis shipping along with the Italian cruiser "Bande Nere" (sunk by "HMS Urge"), a destroyer and six Axis submarines. It amounted to only 6% of the materials being sent to Rommel in North Africa but, due to the withdrawal from Malta, was significantly more than what the RAF had managed to intercept. 

British submarines were also being used to carry cargo to keep Malta alive as Italian naval forces prevented much of the surface convoys from landing their supplies. To fight back against this, British submarines were dispatched to prowl outside the main anchorages of the Italian fleet, to attack when possible but also to warn the high command of when they were moving out. The result was a fierce fight for control of the Central Mediterranean with wins and losses for both sides.

 However, the need for Axis air power on the Russian front gave the British some breathing room and soon more and more Royal Navy subs were posted to the Mediterranean with new flotillas organized in Gibraltar and Beirut.

The British war effort was also aided by the fact that the increasingly critical fuel shortages meant that the main Italian battlefield was forced to stay in port most of the time.

This, combined with the determination of British air and naval forces, meant that Malta was able to be built back up and more Axis shipping to North Africa was sunk.

 In October of 1942, even while preparing for the invasion of French North Africa, British submarines still sank 12 enemy ships and one destroyer. When the Axis powers began moving men and supplies into Tunsia to counter the arrival of the Americans, British submarines accounted for 16 ships lost while the RAF took out even more. 

Their actions were making it ever more difficult for the Axis forces in North Africa to be maintained much less take offensive action. By 1943 the Gibraltar flotilla moved to Algeria, Allied air power dominated the Mediterranean and the Axis shipping lanes were devastated with British submarines accounting for 33 Axis ships. I

n early 1943 the subs destroyed more ships at sea than any other force, surpassed only by Allied aircraft whose successes included ships in port.

Axis power was receding in the Mediterranean and the British boats were at the forefront of the naval victory thanks to men like Comm. J. W. Linton of "HMS Turbulent" who was killed in action after sinking 90,000 tons of enemy shipping and an Italian destroyer. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. 

Comm. George Hunt of "HMS Ultor" sank more Axis ships than any other British submarine commander at 30 for which he earned the DSO with bar twice. Comm. Ben Bryant was similarly decorated for sinking over 20 Axis vessels as well as numerous warships. 

With the capture of Sicily by the Allies, the naval war was practically over but, while outpaced by the air forces, Allied submarines, mostly British, accounted for roughly half of all Axis naval losses in the Mediterranean.

Overall, the British submarine force made a significant contribution to the defeat of Germany, Italy and Japan. Early on, they suffered some serious losses and learned some hard lessons against the Germans in the North Sea and the Italians in the Mediterranean. 

However, they adapted and came roaring back, taking a considerable toll on Axis warships and plaguing the supply lines keeping Rommel and his Italo-German forces in the field in North Africa. One of, if not the most decisive factor in the successful British defense of Egypt was Rommel’s lack of sufficient fuel and supplies and the British submarine force played a major part in that.

Photo of the "Leonardo Da Vinci", the most successful Italian submarine in World War II, that sunk 121000 tons of Allied ships and was going to be prepared to attack New York port in summer 1943. But this submarine was sunk on 23 May 1943 by the escorts of British convoy KMF 15. There were no survivors. Leonardo da Vinci was the top scoring non-German submarine of the entire war. (read my: https://researchomnia.blogspot.com/2025/10/tentatives-of-italian-attacks-over-new.html )

In 1943 at Italy's surrender the "Regia Marina" had only 34 submarines operational, having lost 92 vessels in action (over two-thirds of their number), while 3,021 men of the Italian submarine service were lost at sea during the war.

a large num

ber of different classes of boats but three would be most prominent; the S, T, and U-class boats of which the most famous is probably the T-class. Like the Italians, who had a very large submarine force, the British opted for reliability rather than innovation. For instance, like the Italians, they stuck to the old-fashioned impact fuse for their torpedoes rather than the more sophisticated magnetic fuses used by the Germans and Americans. This made them less effective but, unlike both Germany and America, Britain did not have to go through a period of having unreliable or totally faulty weapons while the bugs were worked out of this new technology. Rather, the British compensated for the weaker destructive power of the impact fuses (in which the brunt of the explosion is focused away from the target) by having boats that packed a larger punch than those of any other navy. British T-class submarines were built to fire an astonishing 10 torpedoes at a time which, British naval engineers reasoned, would more than make up for the drawbacks of their fuses as well as the less advanced targeting systems of British boats. If ten torpedoes are fired at a single target, one or more will almost have to hit it.