Ethnic Map of Yugoslavia

[Crvena zvezda]

Originally Posted by Zrinski

The strip of coastaline that belongs to Italy was in fact claimed by Yugoslavia after WW2 but the western powers and Italy lobbied that it stays within Italy. There was a very known parole in Yugoslavia - "Trst je nas" (Trieste is ours)

@Svin when you're in Slovenia I suggest you come down to a visit in Croatia too. Istria is a very nice place.

[Edit: ad hominem deleted.]

Hardly. It has more to do with Stalin not being happy about Tito making claims for parts of Romania, Greece (also supporting Greek communists when Stalin promised the west that Greece was theres) and Tito seeking to have Bulgaria join Yugoslavia and tito not being his subordinate.

During negotiations, the west had nothing against Yugoslavia claiming Trst and a few small other sections of Italy and Austria. However, Stalin actually opposed it because Tito was not his subordinate.

[Marcus Marulus]

According to which logic should have Trieste become part of Yugoslavia? It was always a town with Italian majority.

[Theobald]

Originally Posted by Plethon

According to which logic should have Trieste become part of Yugoslavia? It was always a town with Italian majority.

The logic of the winners, like in the Germano-Polish situation, probably...

[Crvena zvezda]

Originally Posted by Plethon

According to which logic should have Trieste become part of Yugoslavia? It was always a town with Italian majority.

Istria (at least the eastern coastline), Fiume and Zara were all Italian majority and they became part of Yugoslavia.

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by Crvena zvezda

Istria (at least the eastern coastline), Fiume and Zara were all Italian majority and they became part of Yugoslavia.

No, no and no. Rijeka (Fiume) had never Italian majority, what is more, it is a town that never had any political relatioship with any of the Italian lands, it was never part of the Venetian Republic.

The same goes for the interior of Istria (Pazinska grofovija) - never part of Venetian Republic.

In Istria taken as whole Italians were always minority, having the majority only in few coastal towns (Rovinj, Poreč, Pula). Villages in the interior had always Croatian majority, even in the Venetian part.

Zadar (Zara) is debatable. It had a sizeable Italian population, but I think it amounted to mostly 50% before the war.

[Monolith]

Originally Posted by Plethon

Zadar (Zara) is debatable. It had a sizeable Italian population, but I think it amounted to mostly 50% before the war.

True. That was due to forceful italianisation and terror over domestic population.

[Crvena zvezda]

Originally Posted by Plethon

No, no and no. Rijeka (Fiume) had never Italian majority, what is more, it is a town that never had any political relatioship with any of the Italian lands, it was never part of the Venetian Republic.

The same goes for the interior of Istria (Pazinska grofovija) - never part of Venetian Republic.

In Istria taken as whole Italians were always minority, having the majority only in few coastal towns (Rovinj, Poreč, Pula). Villages in the interior had always Croatian majority, even in the Venetian part.

Zadar (Zara) is debatable. It had a sizeable Italian population, but I think it amounted to mostly 50% before the war.

One. Rijeka (Fiume) had Italian mahority.
Two. I mentioned that at least the easten coast of Istria did.
Three. Only Croats debate this. Zadar was smaller then it is know when it fell under Italian control. It had Italian majority, but if you count the surrounding area and nearby settlements with it the figure is quite the opposite.
Four. I forgot to mention that many of Croatia's islands were of Italian majority and that up until the late 18th/early 19th century Ragusa (Dubrovnik) was Italian. But this has nothing to do with Italian regions going to Yugoslavia.

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by Crvena zvezda

One. Rijeka (Fiume) had Italian mahority.
Two. I mentioned that at least the easten coast of Istria did.
Three. Only Croats debate this. Zadar was smaller then it is know when it fell under Italian control. It had Italian majority, but if you count the surrounding area and nearby settlements with it the figure is quite the opposite.

Half truths the above-mentioned data.

But this one...

Four. I forgot to mention that many of Croatia's islands were of Italian majority

...is plainly untrue. No island had Italian majority.

and that up until the late 18th/early 19th century Ragusa (Dubrovnik) was Italian.

Absolutely untrue. Dubrovnik was not under Venice and absolutely NEVER had Italian majority. On the other hand, Italian was its administrative language for centuries. There was a perfect bilingualism. Croatian literature also flourished in Dubrovnik, along with literature in Latin and sometimes (not often) in Italian. However, the place of Italian as administratuve language was undisputed until the middle of the 19th century.

[Crvena zvezda]

Originally Posted by Plethon

Half truths the above-mentioned data.

But this one...



...is plainly untrue. No island had Italian majority.



Absolutely untrue. Dubrovnik was not under Venice and absolutely NEVER had Italian majority. On the other hand, Italian was its administrative language for centuries. There was a perfect bilingualism. Croatian literature also flourished in Dubrovnik, along with literature in Latin and sometimes (not often) in Italian. However, the place of Italian as administratuve language was undisputed until the middle of the 19th century.

They're not half trues. They're all true.

Second. Hardly, historically Itlians inhabited islands now belonging to Croatia. Historically Croat islands had larger population then they do now. Also, by the time of WWII Italians were majority on several islands, Italians would at least be majority on the islands that belonged to the Fiume Free State. Also, I never said dubrovnik was Venetian at any point I said until later stages in it's history it was Italian and it was.

The Slavic language spoken by the slavs of Ragusa was a precursor to modern Croatian. Ragusa was Italian but it had significant Slavic population. If the republic was Croatian then why would they use an Italic language instead of a Slavic language for administration -- simple because the majority were Italian. What you say now is like any nation in europe choosing a foreign language from a different language group to be their official language, it's just plain ridiculous. Furthermore, it was disputed in the mid-19th centuy because by that time Italians were living Dubrovnik as it was now part of austria, Italy was unified or was in the process of unifying and because Austrians encourage Italians to leave Dubrovnik, Dalmatia and other Austrian possessions.

I don't know what the Croat problem is with admitting that land that is know in Croatia was once is Italian. I have no problem saying the Kotor was once Italian and called Cattaro and that it was Italian under Venice and when it was an independent republic.

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by Crvena zvezda

The Slavic language spoken by the slavs of Ragusa was a precursor to modern Croatian. Ragusa was Italian but it had significant Slavic population. If the republic was Croatian then why would they use an Italic language instead of a Slavic language for administration -- simple because the majority were Italian.

Why would they have written so much literature in Croatian if they were in fact Italians?

Originally Posted by Crvena zvezda

What you say now is like any nation in europe choosing a foreign language from a different language group to be their official language, it's just plain ridiculous.

Those were other times, Dubrovnik/Ragusa wasn't a nation. It was always bilingual.

Originally Posted by Crvena zvezda

I don't know what the Croat problem is with admitting that land that is know in Croatia was once is Italian.

I have absolutely no problem with admitting that some of those lands were partly Italian, in a sense that certain number of Italians had lived there and that Italian was official language of the administration. Yes, they were partly Italian, not wholly, not in majority.

The end

[Zrinski]

To address some of CZ's rants:

1. Rijeka (Fiume) had Italian majority but only when they separated Sušak (today's Rijeka suburb) from the municipality. Rijeka was a divided city during that time. When we count both Rijeka and separated Sušak part it was 50,5% Croats and 49,5 Italians.
2. Islands were not populated by Italians, Italian communities were mainly based on the Adriatic coast in larger cities such as already mentioned Rijeka, and Zadar.
3. Dubrovnik was not Italian, ever. The town was overwhelmingly Croatian. The Republic of Ragusa however was trying to preserve it's roots within it's latin/romance cultural heritage. The latin-romance language was also a way to distinguish the nobility from the commoners. The English kings spoke French, that doesn't mean they were French. Also at the same time those same nobles gave some of the fines writers, scientists, composers, playwrights and so on. Among few: Marin Drzic, Dzore Drzic, Sisko Mencetic, Dinko Zlataric, Ivan Bunic Vucic, Ivan Gundulic, Rudjer Boskovic, Luka Sorkocevic....and so on, and so on....
4. The only largely Italian populated area was western coast of Istria, the inner Istria was Croatian. The eastern coast wasn't even part of Istrian county/markgravate but was through history part of Croatian duchy and later kingdom.
5. By 'western powers' I meant 'the Alliance' in general. Soviet Union was among the allies.

[Crvena zvezda]

Originally Posted by Zrinski

To address some of CZ's rants:

1. Rijeka (Fiume) had Italian majority but only when they separated Sušak (today's Rijeka suburb) from the municipality. Rijeka was a divided city during that time. When we count both Rijeka and separated Sušak part it was 50,5% Croats and 49,5 Italians.
2. Islands were not populated by Italians, Italian communities were mainly based on the Adriatic coast in larger cities such as already mentioned Rijeka, and Zadar.
3. Dubrovnik was not Italian, ever. The town was overwhelmingly Croatian. The Republic of Ragusa however was trying to preserve it's roots within it's latin/romance cultural heritage. The latin-romance language was also a way to distinguish the nobility from the commoners. The English kings spoke French, that doesn't mean they were French. Also at the same time those same nobles gave some of the fines writers, scientists, composers, playwrights and so on. Among few: Marin Drzic, Dzore Drzic, Sisko Mencetic, Dinko Zlataric, Ivan Bunic Vucic, Ivan Gundulic, Rudjer Boskovic, Luka Sorkocevic....and so on, and so on....
4. The only largely Italian populated area was western coast of Istria, the inner Istria was Croatian. The eastern coast wasn't even part of Istrian county/markgravate but was through history part of Croatian duchy and later kingdom.
5. By 'western powers' I meant 'the Alliance' in general. Soviet Union was among the allies.

I was refering to just Fiume, not Susak.
Actually the Islands did.
Dubrovnik was Italian but it had large slavic population. Plus it's debatable, given that few records exist from this time regarding ethnic makeups in most of europe. Plus, the language the Slavs spoke in Ragusa is a precursor to Croatia, and it's debatable since historical documents refer to them as Slavs and in the early 19th century a large number of Slavs in Ragusa had the view that they were serbs (http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=003...2-O&size=LARGE, this is not a propaganda site). Also, just because your writers, intellectuals are based in a city means nothing since by that logic I should be claiming the Timisaora in Romania is a Serb city because a large number of Serbian writers and so forth were based their even though that city never was majority Serbian.
I wrote done eastern coastline, but I meant the western coastline- so you are right about that.

[Zrinski]

This is ridiculous. CZ the islands were not Italian, they were almost totally Slavic (Croatian) speaking. There could have been some Italian speaking people there but they were complete and insignificant minority. I suggest you take a look at some ethnic maps such as 1910. Shepherd map which shows the islands completelly slavic speaking. You can find even on Wikipedia.

Anyway Dubrovnik was never Italian, never. The official language was first Latin and then the local Ragusan dialect of Dalmatian language which however completely went out of use in 15th century. The spoken languages were also Venetian and obviously the local slavic language which was called 'Slavonic' or 'Illyric'. However aleady pointed out Kasic, Mikalja and Dubrovnik native Stulli were all clear on that. Stulli f.e. writes: 'illyrice": "Slovinski, harvatski, hrovatski, horvatski'. (in English - Illyric - Slavonic, Croatian, Croat, etc.)

And I am very well aware of the theories in 19th century. Serbia gained indepedence at that time and was a young amibitious state with huge imperialistic apetite. It had large influence on all South Slavs in Austria-Hungary and more. It was during that time and later in Kingdom of Yugoslavia that the theory "shtokavian=serbian, chakavian=croatian, kajkavian=slovenian" was promoted and aceppted not only by other South Slavs but by others also. However from the various natives of Dubrovnik we never had one instance where they call their language Serbian neither we have any reference to it. We however have abundance of references to Croats and Croatian language. And the Dubrovnik people made it clear what they are and were in 1893. at the unveiling of the Ivan Gundulic monument. Unlike Timisioara Dubrovnik was obviously (and still is) a Croatian city.

[Heretik]

As always, zvezda speaks about things he has no idea about. Congrats!