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Autonomist Party

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Dalmatia.

The Autonomist Party (Template:Lang-it; Template:Lang-hr) was a political party in the Dalmatian political scene, that existed for around 70 years of the nineteenth century and until WWI. Its goal was to maintain the autonomy of the Kingdom of Dalmatia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as opposed to the unification with the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia. From 1907 it was related to the Italian irredentism.

History

Traditionally linked to the idea of a Dalmatian nation advocated by Niccolò Tommaseo in the first half of the century and regarded as a meeting of the Latin world with the Slavic world, initially the party also attracted the sympathies of some of the Slavic Dalmatians, while maintaining an undisputed open to the Italian cultural world.

The Dalmatian branch of the People's Party (Template:Lang-hr, Template:Lang-it), which supported the reunification of Dalmatia with the remainder of Croatia, viewed the Autonomists as supportive of an Italian annexation of Dalmatia, which was indeed the ambition of the Italian state. The Autonomist Party received the vote of the Dalmatian Italians and some bilingual Slavs[1] and controlled most Dalmatian coastal cities: this party had a majority in the Parliament of Dalmatia in the mid XIX century. However, in 1870 democratic alterations to the electoral laws allowed the majority Croatian population of Dalmatia to influence the elections for the first time. The democratic reforms allowed for a greater part of the general population to vote (but even areas where non-slav population was the majority were affected) and so the Autonomist Party no longer had a majority: by the outbreak of World War I, only the city of Zara (now called Zadar) remained in Autonomist hands.

A similar but independent political development occurred in Fiume (now called Rijeka), where Michele Maylender, claiming greater autonomy from the centralizing Hungarian executive of Dezső Bánffy, founded the (Fiume) Autonomist Party in 1896. Although the reference with Dalmatia was never made explicit among Fiume autonomists (who widely read Tommaseo and Bajamonti) the goals of the Party were very similar to that in Dalmatia as it opposed the inclusion of the city to Croatia.

Antonio Bajamonti, the last Italian major of Spalato and leader of the Autonomist Party

As in Zara the party remained in power up to 1914, and both cities, although claimed by the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes at the Paris Peace Conference, were finally assigned to Italy: Zara by the Treaty of Rapallo and Fiume with the Treaty of Rome, which gave Fiume to Italy and the adjacent port of Sušak to Yugoslavia.

Antonio Bajamonti, the most prominent Autonomist in the history of the party, once remarked:

No joy, only pain and tears, is brought by being a part of the Italian party in Dalmatia. We, the Italians of Dalmatia, retain a single right: to suffer.[2]

Count Francesco Borelli Dalmatian deputy, argued for the autonomy of the Kingdom of Dalmatia, claiming that it had no connection whatsoever with Croatia. Though he admitted that the majority of the population was Slavic in language, mentality and outlook, he felt that Dalmatia's "higher" culture was Italian.[3]

At the beginning of the XX century the Autonomist Party, having lost his majority in nearly all Dalmatia, started to be dominated by a group of Dalmatian Italians from Zara, led by Luigi Ziliotto and Giovanni Bugatto, who supported the Italian irredentism in Dalmatia: the party was suppressed in 1915 when Italy declared war on Austria during WWI.[4]

Important members

See also

References

  1. ^ Italians of Dalmatia: their Autonomist Party
  2. ^ A.Bajamonti, Discorso inaugurale della Società Politica dalmata, Split 1886
  3. ^ http://books.google.cl/books?id=Hu2SnETtV3kC&pg=PA273&lpg=PA273&dq=%22francesco+Borelli%22+autonomist&source=bl&ots=GObaVbmW50&sig=qC0dIgzchdD9HLnNC9T_hmqAadQ&hl=es&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result
  4. ^ Monzali, Luciano. Italians of Dalmatia p.323
  5. ^ Italian irredentist
  6. ^ Italian irredentist
  7. ^ Then Italian Senator
  8. ^ One of the first Italian irredentist. See J.Vrandečić, Razvoj talijanskog nacionalizma u Dalmaciji, here
  9. ^ Then Italian Senator
  10. ^ [1] Brief summary of the article J.Bezić, Musical activity of Zadar Theatre during the absolutism, SVIBOR, Zagreb 1994. Here another complete article (in Croatian) about Salghetti-Drioli
  11. ^ a b c [2] M.Đinđić, Identity “Conflict” of Dalmatian Italians, in Croatian Political Science Review, Vol.44 No. 3, September 2007, which stated that Trigari, Lapenna and Marassovich were Italians or chose the Italian identity
  12. ^ Then Italian Senator
  13. ^ Then Italian Senator
  14. ^ Then Italian Senator
  15. ^ Then Italian Senator

Sources

  • Renzo de Vidovich, Albo d'Oro delle Famiglie Nobili Patrizie e Illustri nel Regno di Dalmazia, Fondazione Scientifico Culturale Rustia Traine, Trieste 2004
  • L.Monzali, Italiani di Dalmazia. Dal Risorgimento alla Grande Guerra, Le Lettere, Firenze 2004
  • L.Monzali, Italiani di Dalmazia. 1914-1924, Le Lettere, Firenze 2007.
  • Monzali, Luciano.Italiani di Dalmazia Toronto University Press. Toronto, 2009
  • I. Perić, Dalmatinski sabor 1861-1912 (1918), Zadar 1978.
  • Duško Kečkemet, Bajamonti i Split, Slobodna Dalmacija: Split 2007.
  • Grga Novak, Prošlost Dalmacije knjiga druga, Marjan tisak: Split 2004.
  • Josip Vrandečić, Dalmatinski autonomistički pokret u XIX. stoljeću, Zagreb, 2002.
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