Dalmatian Italians
Dalmatian Italians are an Italian national minority in the region of Dalmatia (today part of Croatia). In the 1840s, during the Austrian rule of the Dalmatia Provence, the ethnic group started to suffer from a trend of decreasing numbers and only around 1,000 of the group remain.
History
Roman Dalmatia
Roman Dalmatia was fully latinized by 476 AD when the Western Roman Empire disappeared, according to scholar Theodor Mommsen in his book "The Provinces of the Roman Empire". More recent theories have suggested that this would apply to cities and towns, whilst in the country side this would not have been the case.
During the Barbarian invasions of the 6th and 7th century, [1] Eurasian Avars allied with certain Slavic tribes and [2][3] invaded and plundered Byzantine-Roman Dalmatia. This eventually led to the settlement of different Slavic tribes in the Balkans.
The original Roman population endured within the coastal cities[4] and in the inhospitable Dinaric Alps (later known as "Morlachs" or Vlachs).
The Dalmatian cities retained their Romanic culture and Latin language in cities such as Zadar (Jadera/Zara), Split (Spalatum/Spalato), Dubrovnik (Ragusa) and Trogir (Trau). These areas developed their own vulgar Latin, the Dalmatian language, a now extinct Romance language.[5] Many coastal cities and towns or the region (politically part of the Byzantine Empire)[6] maintained political, cultural and economic links with the Italian peninsula through the Adriatic sea. Communications with the mainland were difficult because of the Dinaric Alps.
Due to the sharp orography [7] of Dalmatia communications between the different Dalmatian cities occurred mainly through the sea. This helped Dalmatian cities to develop a unique Romance culture, despite the mostly Slavicized mainland.
During the late Middle ages the population did slowly start to merge with the Slavic peoples of Dalmatia. This process was most evident in the coastal and island regions of Dalmatia.
Zadar (Zara)
The chapter below is taken from the Secret Dalmatia Blog site, it is written by Alan Mandic.
| “ | The Italian majority in Zadar was first hurt by the Allied bombings and then chased away by the communist rule. In those terrible times, many people were looking for all sorts of revenges: from personal to national and many of Zadar’s Italians perished.[8][9][10][11] Some say that bones of many are still in one of the caves of Levrnaka in Kornati, many managed to escape and leave their beloved city for good, some stayed and formed a small Italian community. Among those who went from their homes were Ottavio Missoni (fashion designer born in Dubrovnik). [12] | ” |
External links
References
- ^ A London Encyclopaedia: Or Universal Dictionary of Science, Art, Literature (p48)
- "In the latter ages of the Roman Empire this country suffered frequently from in-roads of Barbarians..."
- ^ The Changing Face of Dalmatia: Archaeological and Ecological Studies in a Mediterranean landscape by John Chapman, Robert Shiel & Sime Batovic
- "In chapters 29 and 30, two similar accounts are given for the fall of nearby Salona to the Avars and Slavs ..."
- ^ The Italians of Dalmatia: From Italian Unification to World War One by Luciano Monzali (p5)
- ^ The Illyrians by John Wilkes (p269)
- ^ Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe by Glanville Price (p377)
- ^ University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies The Slavonic and East European Review-The Slavonic Latin Symbiosis in Dalmatia during the Middle Ages by Victor Novak
- ^ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>"Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911 Edition): Orography". 2010. Retrieved 2010-11-22. Check date values in:
|date=(help)- "OROGRAPHY: That part of physical geography which deals with the geological formation, the surface features and description of mountains. The terms "oreography," "orology" and "oreology" are also sometimes used.
- ^ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>""Yugoslavia." Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Ed. Dinah L. Shelton. Gale Cengage, 2005. eNotes.com. 2006. 24 Nov, 2010". 2010. Retrieved 2010-11-25. Check date values in:
|date=(help)- "Native German and Hungarian communities, seen as complicit with wartime occupation, were brutally treated; tantamount in some cases to ethnic cleansing. The Volksdeutsch settlements of Vojvodina and Slavonia largely disappeared. Perhaps 100,000 people—half the ethnic German population in Yugoslavia—fled in 1945, and many who remained were compelled to do forced labor, murdered, or later ransomed by West Germany. Some 20,000 Hungarians of Vojvodina were killed in reprisals. Albanian rebellions in Kosovo were suppressed, with prisoners sent on death marches towards the coast. An estimated 170,000 ethnic Italians fled to Italy in the late 1940s and 1950s. (All of these figures are highly approximate.)"
- ^ Ethnic Conflict: Causes, Consequences, and Responses by Karl Cordell & Stefan Wolff (p181)
- ^ Refugees in the Age of Total War by Anna Bramwell. (p 137)
- ^ A Tragedy Revealed The Story of the Italian Population of Istria & Dalmatia by Arrigo Petacco & Konrad Eisenbichler. (p81)
- ^ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>"Zadar – The postcards from the past". 2010. Retrieved 2010-11-25. Check date values in:
|date=(help)
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