THE EXTERMINATION OF ITALIANS IN THE DALMATIA ISLANDS (STARTED BY THE HABSBURG & FULLY COMPLETED BY THE CROATS) - PART 1
During the second half of this July month I want to continue my article written 3 months ago and research in detail the extermination of the Italians in the Dalmatian islands (Lissa, Lagosta, etc...), an ethnocide started by the Habsburg and completed by the Croats.
Historically the disappearance started with the barbarian invasions (of the Avars and Slavs) of the eight century, that forced the autochthonous population of the Roman Dalmatians to take refuge in the Dalmatian islands and in some city-islands near the coast (like Ragusa, Trau and Zara, now called Dubrovnik, Trogir and Zadar). These "Adriatic" areas were nearly all romance-speaking until the "Duecento" (XIII century), when started the Ottoman invasion of the Balkan peninsula. Since then the Republic of Venice -that ruled the region until the Dinaric Alps for many centuries- was forced to accept many refugees (mostly Slavs, but also a lot of Slavicized Vlachs called "Morlachs") from the Muslim conquered regions of the western Balkans and soon the newly arrived become majority in the coastal region. When Napoleon conquered the Republic of Venice in 1797, the Italian linguist Bartoli calculated that in the "Dalmatian Venetia" more than two thirds of the population was Croatian speaking (with pockets of Serbian speaking areas): the Dalmatian Italians were a minority of less than 33% of the total Dalmatian population and were concentrated in the main cities. Because of higher fertility rate and further emigration toward the relatively rich and developed Dalmatian coast from the poor inland mountain regions, the Slavs in the first half of the XIX century become more than 80% of the Dalmatian population. The Austrian census done in 1857 registered -south of the Quarnero islands (Cherso, Lussino, Veglia and Arbe, now called Chres, Losinj, Krk and Rab)- 45,000 Dalmatian Italians (nearly all in the islands and in the main cities, where they were the majority in some towns like Zara and Veglia) and 369,310 Slavs: the romance speaking population of coastal Dalmatia & its islands was reduced to less than 20%! ((https://books.google.cl/books?id=r60EAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA38&dq=%C3%96sterreichisches+K%C3%BCstenland&as_brr=1&hl=de#v=onepage&q&f=false )
Since then started to appear the Croatian nationalism, soon in fight with the Italian nationalism: in one century and half of wars and political battles of every kind the Dalmatian Italians disappeared (being reduced in the Croatian census of 2011 to a few hundreds in an area that has nearly one million inhabitants!). This fact has originated the suspicion that the disappearance of the Dalmatian Italians could be related to an "ethnocide" (read in Italian: http://www.mlhistria.altervista.org/storiaecultura/testiedocumenti/tesiscaglioni/tesi.htm).
The exodus of Dalmatian Italians during WW2: the photo shows Dalmatian Italian families from the outskirts of Spalato going toward the ship that will bring them to Venice in September 1943.
The cities on the coast (mainly Zara/Zadar & Spalato/Split) were populated by the most educated and instructed Dalmatian Italians and so are the only that still have Italians residents living there in 2023.
But the islands were populated by poor sailors and farmers and now have no more Italians living there, because all have been reduced to emigrate or to be "assimilated" by the croatian majority (let's remember that it is very difficult to force a "graduated" to change ethnicity for him and/or his descendants!). This is the case -for example- of Lissa/Vis, a central dalmatian island that -according to the Lieutenant Colonel George Duncan Robertson, who occupied Lissa in 1812 for the British empire- was "populated by very friendly but also extremely poor venetian speaking people" (please read https://www.jstor.org/stable/44229394): now the island has no more romance speaking inhabitants
The only exceptions are the northern dalmatian islands that were inside the Kingdom of Italy from 1918 until 1947: Cherso/Kres & Lussino/Lusinj (where there are -still now- a few dozen Italians). For example, from Lissa/Vis (please read my
https://researchomnia.blogspot.com/2014/09/lissa-perfect-ethnic-cleansing-of-local.html) to Lagosta/Lastovo (
https://researchomnia.blogspot.com/2013/08/lagosta-perfect-ethnic-cleansing.html) all the italian speaking population of these islands has TOTALLY disappeared!
Excerpts from the book "Esodi diItaliani dalla Dalmazia" of Carlo Cipriani:
.... In 1880 with the support of austrian military force it fell the Italian administration of Spalato/Split. And in the elections held only in 1882, the frauds and a menacing military presence ensured that the Croatian party won; in this city -that was becoming the largest Dalmatian city- all Italian-language schools were closed. The same happened later in all the other cities: little by little the Italians came excluded from all administrations: italian young people had to study in schools with croatian language whereas previously there were schools in Croatian and in Italian. Dalmatians Italians had, where they succeeded for economic reasons, to open private language schools in Italian for their children.
.....In 1909, the Italian language was banned in all dalmatians offices. Only the city of Zara/Zadar managed to maintain a city administration and schools in Italian until 1916. A series of activities completed the Italian presence with societies and clubs, especially sports, which cemented the citizens' italian national spirit. But as these events developed, more and more emigration began for large number of Italian Dalmatians.
.......In the second half of the 19th century started a migration towards the north of the western Adriatic: Trieste, Fiume, Venice and towards the Americas. In part it had the same economic reasons which, in those decades, drove the emigrations from all of Europe, but for the Italian Dalmatians, especially after 1870, perhaps it was added unknowingly a national aspect for the impossibility of educating their children in Italian language, which was possible to do in other places of the Empire. In some cases the abandonment of Dalmatia was motivated by explicit national reasons, as happened to the journalist Arturo Colautti, who in 1880 was attacked by a group of soldiers and had to flee to the Kingdom of Italy. Many Italian Dalmatians declared themselves to live in peace as Croatians, while continuing to speak Italian at home and in public; the evident sign of this emigration and of not publicly declaring oneself Italian, is the progressive decrease of Italians in censuses: from nearly 55,000 (12.5% of the population) in 1865 to 18,000 (2.7% of the population) in 1910.
......At the end of world war 1, the hostility of the president of the USA and the rivalry of the French meant that Italy saw its rights to the Italian territories of the northern and eastern Adriatic contested. The Kingdom of Italy had to confront itself with the newborn Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes - SHS- (the citizens of this kingdom up to a few weeks before had previously fought against Italy), for the territories of the eastern Adriatic, which also in large part had been occupied by Italian troops after 4 November 1918. The incapacity of the Italian rulers of the time meant that with the Treaty of Rapallo of 1920, Dalmatia was left to the SHS Kingdom, except for the city of Zara and the islet of Làgosta. The Dalmatian Italians were faced with a triple choice: move to Italy, remain in Dalmatia with Italian citizenship, remain in Dalmatia becoming yugoslavs. This choice divided the families and everyone made a different decision, however we cannot establish with certainty how many Italians remained and how many emigrated; summary calculations speak of at least 3,500 emigrants in Italy and about 7,000 Dalmatians who remained with Italian citizenship in Dalmatia which passed to Yugoslavia until 1920. There was then a certain amount of Italian Dalmatians who hadn't had the courage to leave houses, relatives, interests and who took Yugoslav citizenship to live in peace: it was estimated 300 on the island of Veglia/Krk and about 3,000 in Spalato/Split, but there is no indication for the other locations (obviously the 15,000 and more Dalmatians of Zara are not calculated).
.......One of the problems of the emigrants was the imminent departure organized in a very short time time on the impetus of the Foreign Minister, who showed himself sensitive to requests of yugoslav people. The Italian government of the pro-Yugoslavs, Giolitti and Sforza, in February 1921 established that the cession of Dalmatia occupied by Italy to Yugoslavia would take place in three phases: outermost areas on April 1, 1921, Sebenico/Šibenik district and southern islands on April 21, the Zara/Zadar district successively. The people had to give in in a few days the properties, pack up the household goods and leave for unknown destinations in search of work and a new accommodation. In some cases, such as the abandonment of Sebenico/Šibenik, of the islands of Arbe/Rab, Veglia/Krk and Cursola/Korcula, the dates were suddenly brought forward by a few days throwing the Italians who were leaving into panic and chaos. As far as the Royal Italian Government implemented some support measures, life as refugees was not easy and for years many found themselves moving from one place to another in Italy in search of an accommodation. Life was no easier for the remaining Italian Dalmatians. Those that had Italian citizenship they encountered difficulties in their work, especially the free professionals, in dealings with local authorities and had problems with schools children in smaller towns. The same difficulty also faced those who had accepted to become Yugoslav citizens; the ban was added to the lack of Italian schools for young people of Yugoslav citizenship even if of Italian nationality, when they wanted to attend the few Italian schools left in operation. Then, there was the moral aspect of being culturally Italian, but forced to renounce it in order to survive.
.......Some dalmatian italian families were forced to split up in 1920: it is noteworthy to remember the Tartaglia with Ivo Slavic mayor of Split and his brother Renato who moved to Trieste; the Bettizas with Marino who opted for Yugoslavia while Vincenzo and John chose Italy. Little by little things stabilized even if, gradually, in a quiet flow, many Italian Dalmatians left Dalmatia, until the outbreak of World War II. The Italian Dalmatians living in Yugoslavia indeed had many work and life difficulties. Meanwhile in the city of Zara annexed to the Kingdom of Italy lived a compact Italian community of about 20,000 people and another thousand were on the island of Lagosta (that was also officially part of the Kingdom of Italy until 1947).
.......The terrible violences that happened during WW2 (Foibe, Zara bombing, etc...) caused a new strong wave of refugees. In 1955–1956 of the more than twenty thousand Italians who lived in Zara before the war world 2, there were only a few dozen left.........."
....to be continued the next month "PART 2" with sections (translated in english) of the book written after WW1 in italian by Federico Pagnacco and titled "Italiani di Dalmazia"....
Bibliography:
1- "Italiani di Dalmazia" of Federico Pagnacco (
https://www.openstarts.units.it/server/api/core/bitstreams/83f515c0-b586-4f2f-9eea-5747dbc4f2ee/content)
2- "Esodi di Italiani dalla Dalmazia" of Carlo Cipriani (
file:///C:/Temp/Esodi_di_Italiani_dalla_Dalmazia_e_.pdf)
3- "LUSSINO, DICEMBRE 1944: OPERAZIONE "ANTAGONISE" of William Klinger (
https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/369584)
4- "Gli internati militari italiani: dai Balcani, in Germania e nell’Urss.1943-1945" of Maria Teresa Giusti
https://ricerca.unich.it/retrieve/handle/11564/702656/159303/Gli%20internati%20militari%20italiani%3A%20dai%20Balcani%2C%20in%20Germania%20e%20nell%27Urss.%201943-1945.pdf
5- "La Gran Bretagna e la questione Jugoslava (1941-1947", of Rosario Milano (
https://www.academia.edu/18588898/La_Gran_Bretagna_e_la_questione_jugoslava_1941_1947_?email_work_card=title)
The bibliography is very good but it is in Italian.Can be translated in plain English?Thanks anyway
ReplyDeleteFollowing your request, "B", in my August issue I am translating in plain english some excerpts of Federico Pagliacco's book.
Delete