Italian irredentism

Italia Irredenta (meaning 'Unredeemed Italy' in Italian) was an Italian nationalist movement that aimed to complete the unification of all Italian peoples. Originally, the movement promoted the annexation by Italy of territories inhabited by an Italian majority but retained by the Austrian Empire after 1866 (hence 'unredeemed' Italy). These included the Trentino, Trieste, Istria, Fiume, and parts of Dalmatia.

The liberation of Italia irredenta was perhaps the strongest motive for Italy's entry into World War I and the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 satisfied many irredentist claims.

Not a formal organization, it was rather 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. The term 'irredentism' was successfully coined from the Italian word in many countries in the world (List of irredentist claims or disputes). This idea of 'Italia irredenta' is not to be confused with the Risorgimento, which was the historical events that led to irredentism, or with Greater Italy, which was the political philosophy that took the idea further under Fascism.

Origins

After the Italian unification of 1861, there were areas with Italian peoples in several countries around the newly created Kingdom of Italy. The Irredentists sought to annexe all those areas into a single Italy, including some areas with a non-Italian majority. The areas targeted were Corsica, Dalmatia, Gorizia and Gradisca, the Ionian islands, Istria, Malta, Nice, Ticino, Trentino, Trieste and Fiume.

Initially, the movement can be understood as part of a more general nation-building process in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries when the multi-national Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires were being replaced by nation states. The Italian nation-building process can be compared to similar movements in Germany (Großdeutschland), Hungary, Serbia, and in pre-1914 Poland. Simultaneously, however, in many parts of 19th century Europe, liberalism and nationalism were ideologies which were coming to the forefront of political culture. In Eastern Europe, where the Habsburg Empire had long asserted control over a variety of ethnic and cultural groups, nationalism appeared in a standard format. The beginning of the 19th century, "was the period when the smaller, mostly Slavic nationalities of the empire - Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Ukrainians, and the Latin Romanians - remembered their historical traditions, revived their native tongues as literary languages, reappropriated their traditions and folklore, in short reasserted their existence as nations." The notion of a single united Italy ran counter to the aspirations of the majority populations.

19th century

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

Italian unification process.

It was, however, mainly superficial, as most Italians had no wish to launch 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 Irredentist ideas outside of Italy was an assassination plot organized against the Emperor Francis Joseph in Trieste in 1882, which was detected and foiled. 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.

The Irridentists' dream of absorbing the targeted areas into Italy made no further progress in the 19th century, as the borders of the Kingdom of Italy remained unchanged and the Rome government began to set up colonies in Eritrea and Somalia in Africa.

World War I

Italy signed the London Pact and entered World War I with the intention of gaining those territories perceived by Irridentists as being Italian under foreign rule. According to the pact, Italy was to leave the Triple Alliance and join Triple Entente, as already stated in a secret agreement signed in London, on 4-5 September 1914. Furthermore, Italy was to declare war against Germany and Austria-Hungary within a month — and in fact the declaration of war was published 23 May of the same year. In exchange, Italy was to obtain various territorial gains at the end of the war. The pact was nullified with the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, as Woodrow Wilson, supporting Slavic claims and not recognizing the treaty, rejected Italian requests on Dalmatian territories.

The outcome of the First World War and the consequent settlement of the Treaty of Saint-Germain met some Italian claims, including many (but not all) of the aims of the Italia irredenta party. Italian irredentism obtained an important result after World War I, when Italy gained Trieste, Gorizia, Istria and the cities of Rijeka and Zadar. Fascist irredentism added to Italy (temporarily during WWII) Corsica, Nizzardo and most of Dalmatia (including the Kotor), while occupied militarily Savoia and the Ionian islands. In Dalmatia, despite the treaty of London, only the city of Zara with some Dalmatian islands, like Cherso, Lussino and Curzola were assigned to Italy.

The city of Fiume/Rijeka in the bay of Kvarner 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. D'Annunzio briefly annexed to this "Regency of Carnaro" the Dalmatian islands of Veglia (Krk) and Arbe (Rab) where there was a numerous Italian community.

Fiume residents cheering D'Annunzio and his Italian Irredentism raiders, September 1919. Fiume/Rijeka had 22,488 Italians in a total population of 35,839 inhabitants.

Map of the Regions claimed by the Fascists in the 1930s. Savoy and Corfu were also later claimed.

Fascism and World War II

Main article: Greater Italy

Fascist Italy strove to be seen as the natural result 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 this vein, irredentist claims were expanded and often used in Fascist Italy's desire to control the Mediterranean basin.

In 1922 Mussolini temporarily occupied Corfu, perhaps using irredentist claims based on minorities of Italians in the Ionian islands of Greece . Similar tactics may have been used towards 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 in Latin Mare Nostrum).

Around 1939, the main territories sought included the rest of Istria, more of Dalmatia, the Ionian Islands (in Greece), Malta, Corsica, Nice, Savoy and Ticino. Other claims were also made for the Fourth Shore, which meant coastal Libya and Tunisia, and The Dodecanese islands of the Aegean Sea.

During World War II, large parts of Dalmatia were annexed by Italy into the Governatorato di Dalmazia from 1941 to 1943. Corsica and Nice were also administratively annexed by the Kingdom of Italy in November 1942. Malta was heavily bombed but was not occupied, due to Allied naval control of the Mediterranean and the success of Operation Pedestal, one of the most important British strategic victories of the Second World War.

After Italian capitulation in 1943, areas formerly under Italian control in Istria and Venezia Giulia were controlled by Yugoslav Partisans. Shortly afterwards these areas were occupied by the German Wehrmacht that bloodily suppressed the Partisans' rule, especially on the Istrian peninsula.

After 1945, about many Italians chose to move to Italy , and there was a significant decline in Italian speaking populations in Istria and Dalmatia. .

Dalmatia: a case of Italian Irredentism

The linguist Matteo Bartoli calculated that the Italians were nearly 30% of the Dalmatian population at the beginning of the Napoleonic wars, while currently there are only 300 Italians in Croatian Dalmatia and 500 Italians in coastal Montenegro. Bartoli's evaluation was followed with other claims such as 25% in 1814/1815 (according to a census done by the french Auguste De Marmont, governor-general of the napoleonic Illyrian provinces) and, 3 years later, around 70,000 of Italians in a total of 301,000 people living in Austrian Dalmatia.

Yugoslav scholars (such as Duško Večerina) complained that not all these evaluations were conducted by modern scientific standards and concentrated solely on the spoken language of the population. They pinpointed that according to a report by court councillor Joseph Fölch in 1827, the Italian language was used not only by noblemen, but also by some citizens of lower classes only in the coastal cities of Zara, Sebenico and Spalato. Since only around 20,000 people populated these cities and they were not all Italian speakers, their real number for those Yugoslavian scholars was rather much smaller, probably around 5% .

Italian irredentists (like Gabriele D'Annunzio) argued to the above Yugoslav critics that Joseph Fölch forgot the Dalmatian islands of Cherso/Chres, Lussino/Lusinj, Lissa/Vis, etc. with huge Italian communities and that the only official evidences about the Dalmatian population come from the Austrian census: the 1857 Austro-Hungarian census precisely showed that in this year there were in Dalmatia 369,310 Slavs and 45,000 Italians. That means that the Dalmatian Italians were 15% of the total population of Dalmatia in the mid-19th century.

The last bastion of Italian presence in Dalmatia was the city of Zara. In the Habsburg empire census of 1910 the city of Zara had an Italian population of 9,318 (or 69.3% of the total of 13,438 inhabitants). Zara's population grew to 24,100 inhabitants, of which 20,300 Italians, when was in 1942 the capital of the Governatorate of Dalmatia (the "Governatorate" fulfilled the aspirations of the Italian Irredentism in the Adriatic).

In 1943 Tito, pretending the town was an important supply centre for the German divisions in Yugoslavia, persuaded the Allies of its military importance. The Anglo-Americans, between 2 November 1943 and 31 October 1944, razed it to the ground with fifty-four bombardments. As a consequence, at least 2,000 people were buried beneath the rubble, about 10-12,000 people took refuge in Trieste and slightly over one thousand reached Apulia. Tito’s partisans entered in Zara on 31 October 1944, and 138 people were shot, killed or drowned .

With the Peace Treaty of 1947, the Italians still living in Zara - no more than three thousand - were granted by Tito the opportunity to choose to become Italian citizens but with the obligation to take up residence in Italy. Actually, after WWII and the Italian exodus from Dalmatia there are only 100 Dalmatian Italians in this city.

Controversies about Italian irredentism today

After WWII Italian Irredentism has officially "gone" away together with the defeated Fascism and the Monarchy of the Savoia. But some Italian organizations - mainly related to the istrian exodus - still do propaganda for irredentism, with the approval of far right political parties. The main reason behind this last irredentism is the economic one, related to the restitution of properties confiscated by the Yugoslav government to the 350,000 Italians exiled from istria and Dalmatia after 1945.

Some Croatian and Slovenian organizations (supported by some politicians from their countries) complain that Italy - in their opinions - openly propagates irredentistic ideas even in the 21st century, which often causes sharp reactions of Croatian and Slovenian officials.
They pinpoint that in 2004 the Vicepresident of Italian government, Gianfranco Fini, told to Croatian journalists on the 51th gathering of the Italians who fled from Yugoslavia after WWII, in Senigallia, that "...from the son of an Italian from Fiume...I've first time learned that those areas were and are Italian, but not just because of that that in certain historical moment our armies have planted Italians there. That country was Venetian, and before that Roman" </ref>. Instead of issuing an official denial of those words, Carlo Giovanardi, minister for the relations with Parliament in Berlusconi's government, confirmed Fini's words, saying "...that he told the truth"..

They pinpoint that on the 52th gathering of the same association, in 2005, Carlo Giovanardi told that "Italy'll execute cultural, economical and touristic invasion in order to 'reconstruct the Italianhood of Dalmatia' ", while participating on a round table, discussing about the topic "Italy and Dalmatia today and tomorrow" (note: organizers evade the noun "Croatia" in title) . Giovanardi later declared that he was misunderstood .

Roberto Menia, a deputy of Alleanza Nazionale in the Italian Parliament, has been regularly verbally attacking institutions of Italians from Croatia (especially Italian Union) and its leaders and honorable persons (publicist and writer Giacomo Scotti was favourite target of those attacks), calling them as titoists, traitors and slavocommunists, although those persons and institutions were keeping the culture of Croatian Italians alive. Menia also supported the etiquette, told by Italian consul in Rijeka, Roberto Pietrosanto, in which Pietrosanto called those institutions as fifthcolumnist.

Also, Alleanza Nazionale (a post-fascist party) has often claimed that Italy paid too much for her defeat in WWII, repeating that "Dalmatia was stolen to Italy". In 2005, Menia has told, that "when Croatia joins EU, Italy will return to Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia".
In 2001, Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi has given the golden medal (for the aerial bombings endured during WWII) to the last Italian administration of Zara (today Zadar, Croatia), represented by its Gonfalone, which is currently owned by the association "Free municipality of Zara in exile". Croatian authorities complained that he was awarding a fascist institution, although the motivations for the golden medal explicitly recalled the contribution of the city to the Resistance against Fascism.

Croatian authorities adfirm that the menaces of this contemporary irredentism are clearly represented by the emissions of stamps related to a former Italian city in the Adriatic: Fiume (now called Rijeka). On December 12, 2007, the Italian Post Office issued a stamp with a 1922 photo of the Croatian city of Rijeka (when the name "Fiume" was official) and with the text "Fiume-terra orientale già Italiana" (Rijeka - eastern land once part of italy) . The same sources declared that the severeness of this act could seen in use of prepositions and adjectives - adfirming that "già italiana" could also mean "already Italian" (even if the correct meaning in Italian syntaxis is only "previously Italian"). Italian sources subsequently denounced the "fanatism" involved in the accusations. The stamp was printed in 3.5 million of copies. [3] , but was not delivered to the public by the Italian Post Office in order to forestall a possible diplomatic crisis with Croatian authorities.[4]

An extra problem with Croatian-Italian relation is the fishing zone in the Adriatic sea. Croatia requires a fishing zone for itself. However, Italy (and Slovenia) oppose the existing of Croatian envieronomental fishing (in Croatia known by its acronym ZERP) .Having the bigger fleet Italy has much bigger options to exploit the Adriatic coast even the East one. Under jurisdiction of Croatia. . Moreover , many Italian organizations claim their "historical right" for fishing in the East Adriatic

Political figures in the Italian Irredentism

• Guglielmo Oberdan
• Cesare Battisti
• Nazario Sauro
• Damiano Chiesa
• Fabio Filzi
• Carmelo Borg Pisani
• Giuseppe Garibaldi
• Gabriele D'Annunzio
• Petru Simone Cristofini
• Petru Giovacchini
• Maria Pasquinelli

See also

• Irredentism
• Italians
• Italian Regency of Carnaro
• Italian Unification
• History of Italy as a monarchy and in the World Wars
• Italian Empire

References and footnotes

• 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.
• Lovrovici, don Giovanni Eleuterio. Zara dai bombardamenti all'esodo (1943-1947). Tipografia Santa Lucia - Marino. Roma, 1974.
• Petacco, Arrigo. A tragedy revealed: the story of Italians from Istria, Dalmatia, Venezia Giulia (1943-1953). University of Toronto Press. Toronto, 1998
• Večerina, Duško. Talijanski Iredentizam ( Italian Irredentism ), ISBN 953-98456-0-2, Zagreb, 2001
• Vivante, Angelo. Irredentismo adriatico (The Adriatic Irredentism), 1984

External links

• Articles on the History of Dalmatia
• Articles on the Italians in Dalmatia
• Articles on Zara (Zadar), when was a city of the Kingdom of Italy.
• Slovene - Italian relations between 1880-1918
• Irredentists
• Website of the Italian irredentism (in Italian)
• Hrvati AMAC Gdje su granice (EU-)talijanskog bezobrazluka? (Where are the limits of Italian arrogancy?; page contains the speech of Italian deputy) (in Croatian)
• Hrvati AMAC 'Božićni darovi' poniženoj Hrvatskoj (Christmas gifts to humiliated Croatia; page contains the scan of the incriminated stamp) (in Croatian)
• 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)
• Slobodna Dalmacija Počasni građanin Zadra kočnica talijanskoj ratifikaciji SSP-a (in Croatian)
• D'Annunzio and Fiume (in Italian)
• Politicamentecorretto.com Onorevole Guglielmo Picchi Forza Italia (in Italian)
• Italia chiama Italia Francobollo Fiume: bloccata l'emissione (in Italian)
• Trieste.rvnet.eu Stoppato” il francobollo per Fiume, bufera: protestano Unione degli istriani, An e Forza Italia (contains the scan of the stamp) (in Italian)