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Italian irredentism

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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)

Fascist Irredentism claimed even the "Fourth Shore" (coastal Libya and Tunisia)

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 Zara . 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 initially, 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. [2]

In Dalmatia, despite the treaty of London, only the city of Zara (Zadar) with some Dalmatian islands, like Cherso (Chres) and Lussino (Lusinj) 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).

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

The stand taken by Gabriele D'Annunzio, which briefly led him to become an enemy of the Italian state [3], 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 briebly annexed to this "Regency of Carnaro" the Dalmatian islands of Veglia (Krk) and Arbe (Arb) where there was a numerous Italian community.

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. Nearly 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.

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[1], 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.

Yugoslavian scholars (like Večerina, Duško) complained that all these evaluations were not conducted by modern scientific standards and concentrated solely on the spoken language of the population. They pinpointed that according to report of the court councillor Joseph Fölch in 1827, Italian language was in usage not only by noblemen, but also by some citizens of lower classes only in the coastal cities Zadar/Zara, Šibenik/Sebenico and Split/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% [2].

Italian irredentists (like D'Annunzio) argued to the above Yugoslavian 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 (here) precisely showed that in this year there were in Dalmatia 369.310 Slavs and 45.000 Italians. That means that the Dalmatian Italians were officially 15% of the total population of Dalmatia in mid XIX century[3].

The last bastion of Italian presence in Dalmatia was the city of Zara. In the Habsburg empire census of 1910 the city of Zadar (Zara) had an Italian population of 9,318 (or 69,3% out of the total of 13,438 inhabitants. Zara population grew to 24,100 inhabitants, of which 20,300 Italians, when was the capital of the "Governatorato di Dalmazia" in 1942, fullfilling the aspirations of the Italian Irredentism in the Adriatic. Actually, after WWII and the Italian exodus from Dalmatia there are only 100 Dalmatian Italians in this city, officially now called Zadar.

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

We have to include that the Fascist Irredentists, after 1938, claimed even the Quarta Sponda, as was called the shore of Libya (and even Tunisia), where was planned a huge emigration of Italian colonists by Mussolini. Those Italians were called: Libyan Italians and Tunisian Italians.

Finally, the Italian possession in the Aegean sea of the Dodecanese went under a process of italianization by the fascist governor Cesare Maria De Vecchi after 1936: many Italians families were moved to these islands, where the Italian language was declared the official language. Even if there were no irredentistic movement on the Dodecanese islands, the governor De Vecchi considered in 1940 the possibility of a future inclusion of the Dodecanese islands in the Kingdom of Italy.[4].

Political figures in the Italian irredentist movement

Italian irredentism today

After WWII Italian Irredentism faded 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 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 Italo-optants (in Italy called: esuli) 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" [4]. Instead of issuing an official denial of those words, Carlo Giovanardi, minister for the relations with Parliament in Berlusconi's government, coldly confirmed Fini's words, saying "...that he told the truth".[5].
They even pinpoint that on the 52th gathering of Italian exiles from Istria & Dalmatia, Carlo Giovanardi also told in 2005, that "Italy'll execute cultural, economical and touristic invasion in order to 'reconstruct the Italianhood of Dalmatia' ", while participating on round table, together with neofascist and irredentist persons, discussing about the topic "Italy and Dalmatia today and tomorrow" (note: organizers and Italian revisionist intentionally evade the noun "Croatia" in title) [6].
Roberto Menia, the deputy of Alleanza Nazionale in 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.[7]
Also, Alleanza Nazionale (a neo-fascist party) has often shown territorial expansionism, repeating the revisionistic claim, "that Dalmatia was stolen to Italy". In 2005, Menia has told, that "when Croatia joins EU, Italy will return to Istra, Fiume and Dalmatia". [6]
In 2001, Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi has given the golden medal (for the aerial bombings endured during WWII) to the "Free municipality of Zara in exile" (note: Zara/Zadar is a city in Croatia):Medaglia d'oro al comune di Zara, al valor militare…".

The Croatian complains about the alleged menaces of this contemporary irredentism reached the unbelievable level of fearing the simple 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 was officially Italian with the name "Fiume") and with the text "Fiume-terra orientale già Italiana" (Rijeka - eastern land once part of italy). [8] [9].

The Croatian authorities declared that the severeness of this act could seen in use of prepositions and adjectives - "già italiana" could also mean "already Italian" (even if the correct meaning in Italian syntaxis is "previously Italian"). This simple fact gives an idea of the "fanatism" involved in the accusations. The stamp was printed in 3.5 million of copies. [5] , but was not delivered to the public by the Italian Post Office in order to forestall a possible (and incredible) diplomatic crisis from the Croatian authorities.[6]

During the february 17, 2008 "Declaration of Independence" by Kosovo (the first historical withdrawal of Slavs from territories of ex-Yugoslavia since WWII) the Italian irredentistic organizations celebrated with the Kosova authorities and planned a new postal stamp.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Bartoli, Matteo. Le parlate italiane della Venezia Giulia e della Dalmazia. p.46
  2. ^ [1] O broju Talijana/Talijanaša u Dalmaciji XIX. Stoljeća”, , Zavod za povijesne znanosti HAZU u Zadru, 2002, UDK 949.75:329.7”19”Dalmacija 2002, p. 344
    (“Concerning the number of Italians/pro-Italians in Dalmatia in the XIXth century”)
  3. ^ Statistisches Handbüchlein für die österreichische Monarchie, edited by the k.k. Direktion der administrativen Statistik
  4. ^ Slobodna Dalmacija Gianfranco Fini: "Dalmacija, Rijeka i Istra oduvijek su talijanske zemlje", Oct 13, 2004
    ("Dalmatia, Rijeka and Istria have forever been Italian lands")
  5. ^ Slobodna Dalmacija Utroba koja je porodila talijanski iredentizam još uvijek je plodna, Mar 18, 2006
    (The bowels that gave birth to Italian irrendentism are still fertile)
  6. ^ a b Nacional Talijanski ministar najavio invaziju na Dalmaciju, Oct 19, 2005
    (Italian minister announced an invasion on Dalmatia)
  7. ^ Slobodna Dalmacija Menia želi kontrolu nad 8 milijuna eura za Talijansku uniju, Feb 2, 2005
    (Menia wants control over 8 mil. euros for Italian Union)
  8. ^ Index.hr MVP uputio prosvjednu notu Italiji zbog poštanske marke s nacionalističkim natpisom
    (The Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sent a protest note to Italy, because of issue of a stamp with nationalistic text)
  9. ^ B92 - Internet, Radio and TV station Zagreb protests over Italian stamp

References

  • Public Domain 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
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