Italian irredentism

File:Italia irredenta 1939.jpg

Territories around the actual Republic of Italy claimed as Irredent by nationalistic organizations (In clockwise order from north):
Istria-Venezia Giulia (in actual Slovenia and Croatia)
Dalmatia (in actual Croatia and Montenegro)
Ionian islands (in Greece)
Malta (Malta)
Corsica (France)
Nizzardo (France)
Savoia (France)
Ticino (Switzerland)

Italia Irredenta (Unredeemed Italy) was an Italian nationalist opinion movement that emerged after Italian unification. It advocated irredentism among the Italian people as well as other nationalities who were willing to become Italian and as a movement is also known as Italian irredentism. Not a formal organization, it was just an opinion movement that claimed that Italy had to reach its "natural borders". Similar patriotic and nationalistic ideas were common in Europe in the 19th century.

Italian irredentism obtained an important result after World War I, when Italy gained Trieste, Gorizia, Istria and the city of Zadar . Fascist irredentism added to Italy (temporarily during WWII) Corsica, Nizzardo and most of Dalmatia, while occupied militarily Savoia and the Ionian islands.

Origins

The movement had for its avowed purpose the emancipation of all Italian lands still subject to foreign rule after Italian unification. The Irredentists took language as the test of the alleged Italian nationality of the countries they proposed to emancipate, which were Trentino, Trieste, Dalmatia, Istria, Gorizia, Ticino, Nizza, Corsica and Malta.

Initial Irredentism in the XIX century

One of the first "Irredentists" was Giuseppe Garibaldi, who in 1859, as deputy for his native Nizza in the Piedmontese parliament at Turin, attacked Cavour for ceding Nice to Napoleon III (in order to get French help and approval for the Italian Unification). The Irredentism grew in importance in Italy in the next years.

On July 21, 1878, a noisy public meeting was held at Rome with Menotti Garibaldi (the son of unification leader Giuseppe Garibaldi) as chairman of the forum, and a clamour was raised for the formation of volunteer battalions to conquer the Trentino. Benedetto Cairoli, then Prime Minister of Italy, treated the agitation with tolerance. It was, however, mainly superficial, because the mass of the Italians had no wish to launch on a dangerous policy of adventure against Austria, and still less to attack France for the sake of Nice and Corsica, or Britain for Malta.

One consequence of the Irredentist ideas outside of Italy was the assassination plot organized against the Emperor Francis Joseph in Trieste in 1882, which was detected. Guglielmo Oberdan (a Triestine and thus Austrian citizen) was executed. When the Irredentist movement became troublesome to Italy through the activity of Republicans and Socialists, it was subject to effective police control by Agostino Depretis.

Irredentism faced a setback when the French occupation of Tunis in 1881 started a crisis in French–Italian relations. The government entered into relations with Austria and Germany, which took shape with the formation of the Triple Alliance in 1882.

Consequences of Irredentism

Italy signed the London Pact and entered World War I with the intention of gaining those territories perceived as being Italian under foreign rule; several Austro-Hungarian citizens of Italian ethnicity fought within the Italian forces against Austria-Hungary to free their lands. Some, such as Cesare Battisti, Nazario Sauro, Damiano Chiesa, Fabio Filzi, were captured and executed. The outcome of the First World War and the consequent settlement of the Treaty of Saint-Germain ensured Italy some of its claims, in accordance with the Treaty of London of 1915, including many (but not all) of the aims of the Italia irredenta party, incorporating Trento, Bolzano, Trieste and Istria. [1]

In Dalmatia, despite the treaty of London, only the city of Zadar/Zara (with some Dalmatian islands) was assigned to Italy.

The ethnically Italian city of Fiume (Rijeka) in northern Dalmatia was the subject of claim and counter-claim (see Italian Regency of Carnaro, Treaty of Rapallo, 1920 and Treaty of Rome, 1924).

The stand taken by Gabriele D'Annunzio, which briefly led him to become an enemy of the Italian state, was meant to provoke a nationalist revival through Corporatism (first instituted during his rule over Fiume), in front of what was widely perceived as state corruption engineered by governments such as Giovanni Giolitti's.

Moreover, Fascism made effort to seem as the natural outcome of war heroism, against a "betrayed Italy" that had not been awarded all it deserved, as well as appropriating the image of Arditi soldiers. In 1922 Mussolini temporarily occupied Corfu, starting the irredentism on the Ionian islands of Greece. Mussolini even promoted actively the irredentism of the islands around the Kingdom of Italy - through the Maltese Italians, Corfiot Italians and Corsican Italians - in order to control the Mediterranean sea (that he called Italian Mare Nostrum).

During World War II, large parts of Dalmatia were annexed to Italy, in the Governatorato di Dalmazia from 1941 to 1943. Even Corsica and Nizzardo were administratively annexed to the Kingdom of Italy in November 1942. Malta was heavily bombed but was not occupied because a planned invasion by Italo-German forces was delayed in 1942 and never done. After Italy's capitulation in 1943, Istria-Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia suffered the invasion of the German Wehrmacht. Between 2,000 and 15,000 Italians died in the so-called foibe massacres (this was more common in Istria than in Dalmatia).

After 1945, most of the remaining Italians fled the Balkan region (350,000 Italians emigrated from Istria and Dalmatia in the Istrian exodus). The "disappearance" of the Italian speaking populations in Dalmatia was nearly complete after World War II. The linguist Matteo Bartoli calculated that the Italians were 33% of the Dalmatian population during the Napoleonic wars, while currently there are only 300 Italians in Croatian Dalmatia and 500 Italians in coastal Montenegro.

Italians in Irredent territories around Italy

The Italians of Italia irredenta, living in the areas not included in the Kingdom of Italy after the 1861 Unification of Italy, were in eight regions where Irredentism took place vehemently (mainly during the Fascist period):

1) Istrian Italians in Istria-Venezia Giulia
2) Dalmatian Italians in Dalmatia
3) Corfiot Italians in Corfu and Ionian islands
4) Maltese Italians in Malta
5) Corsican Italians in Corsica
6) Nizzardo Italians in Nizza (Nice) and Nizzardo
7) Savoia Italians in Savoia (Savoy)
8) Ticino Italians in Ticino

Political figures in the Italian irredentist movement

• Guglielmo Oberdan
• Cesare Battisti
• Nazario Sauro
• Damiano Chiesa
• Fabio Filzi
• Carmelo Borg Pisani
• Giuseppe Garibaldi
• Petru Simone Cristofini
• Petru Giovacchini

See Also

• Irredentism

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
• Bartoli, Matteo. Le parlate italiane della Venezia Giulia e della Dalmazia. Tipografia italo-orientale. Grottaferrata, 1919.
• Colonel von Haymerle, Italicae res, Vienna, 1879 - the early history of Irredentists.
• Večerina, Duško, Talijanski Iredentizam ( Italian Irredentism ), ISBN 953-98456-0-2, Zagreb, 2001
• Vivante, Angelo, Irredentismo adriatico (The Adriatic Irredentism), 1984
• Slovene - Italian relations between 1880-1918
• Irredentists