The Istrian–Dalmatian exodus (; ; ) was the post–World War II exodus and departure of local ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians) as well as ethnic Slovenes and Croats from Yugoslavia. The emigrants, who had lived in the now Yugoslav territories of the Julian March (Karst Region and Istria), Kvarner and Dalmatia, largely went to Italy, but some joined the Italian diaspora in the Americas, Australia and South Africa. These regions were ethnically mixed, with long-established historic Croatian, Italian, and Slovene communities. After World War I, the Kingdom of Italy annexed Istria, Kvarner, the Julian March and parts of Dalmatia including the city of Zadar. At the end of World War II, under the Allies' Treaty of Peace with Italy, the former Italian territories in Istria, Kvarner, the Julian March and Dalmatia were assigned to now Communist-helmed Federal Yugoslavia, except for the Province of Trieste. The former territories absorbed into Yugoslavia are part of present-day Croatia and Slovenia.
The treaty provided the right of option of nationality to people on both sides, who might have been required to emigrate from the territory if they opted to keep their nationality by jus sanguinis (right of blood). According to various sources, the exodus is estimated to have amounted to between 200,000 and 350,000 Italians (the others being ethnic Slovenes and Croats who chose to maintain Italian citizenship) leaving the areas in the aftermath of the conflict. The exodus started in 1943 under Nazi Germany and ended completely only in 1954. According to the census organized in Croatia in 2001 and that organized in Slovenia in 2002, the Italians who remained in the former Yugoslavia amounted to 21,894 people (2,258 in Slovenia and 19,636 in Croatia).
Hundreds up to tens of thousands of local ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians) were killed or summarily executed during World War II by Yugoslav Partisans and OZNA during the first years of the exodus, in what became known as the foibe massacres. From 1947, after the war, Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians were subject by Yugoslav authorities to less violent forms of intimidation, such as nationalization, expropriation, and discriminatory taxation, which gave them little option other than emigration. On the other hand, it is also true that there is no document that would confirm that the Yugoslav authorities carried out any measures of deliberate ethnic cleansing, and there are also sources that mention that the Yugoslav authorities prevented the emigration of Italians and other inhabitants of Yugoslavia. Moreover, among the emigrants were not only ethnic Italians but also other Slavs from Yugoslavia.
Overview of the exodus
A Romance-speaking population has existed in Istria since around the fall of the Western Roman Empire, when Istria was fully Latinised. The coastal cities especially had Italian populations, connected to other areas through trade, but the interior was mostly Slavic, especially Croatian.
Istrian Italians made up about a third of the population in Istria in 1900. According to the 1910 Austrian census, out of 404,309 inhabitants in Istria, 168,116 (41.6%) spoke Croatian, 147,416 (36.5%) spoke Italian, 55,365 (13.7%) spoke Slovene, 13,279 (3.3%) spoke German, 882 (0.2%) spoke Romanian (actually Istro-Romanian), 2,116 (0.5%) spoke other languages and 17,135 (4.2%) were non-citizens, who had not been asked for their language of communication. (Istria at the time included parts of the Karst and Liburnia). So, in the peninsula of Istria before World War I, local ethnic Italians accounted for about a third (36.5%) of the local inhabitants.
A new wave of Italians, who were not part of the indigenous Venetian-speaking Istrians, arrived between 1918 and 1943. At the time, Primorska and Istria, Rijeka, part of Dalmatia, and the islands of Cres, Lastovo, and Palagruža (and, from 1941 to 1943, Krk) were considered part of Italy. The Kingdom of Italy's 1936 censusVIII. Censimento della popolazione 21. aprile 1936. Vol II, Fasc. 24: Provincia del Friuli; Fasc. 31: Provincia del Carnero; Fasc. 32: Provincia di Gorizia, Fasc. 22: Provincia dell'Istria, Fasc. 34: Provincia di Trieste; Fasc. 35: Provincia di Zara, Rome 1936. Cited at indicated approximately 230,000 people who listed Italian as their language of communication in what is now the territory of Slovenia and Croatia, then part of the Italian state (ca. 194,000 in today's Croatia and ca. 36,000 in today's Slovenia).
From the end of World War II until 1953, according to various data, between 200,000 and 350,000 people emigrated from these regions. Since the Italian population before World War II numbered 225,000 (150,000 in Istria and the rest in Fiume/Rijeka and Dalmatia), the remainder must have been Slovenes and Croats, if the total was 350,000. According to Matjaž Klemenčič, one-third were Slovenes and Croats who opposed the Communist government in Yugoslavia,Matjaž Klemenčič, The Effects of the Dissolution of Yugoslavia on Minority Rights: the Italian Minority in Post-Yugoslav Slovenia and Croatia. See but this is disputed. Two-thirds were local ethnic Italians, emigrants who were living permanently in this region on 10 June 1940 and who expressed their wish to obtain Italian citizenship and emigrate to Italy. In Yugoslavia they were called optanti (opting ones) and in Italy were known as esuli (exiles). The emigration of Italians reduced the total population of the region and altered its historical ethnic structure.
In 1953, there were 36,000 declared Italians in Yugoslavia, just 16% of the 225,000 Italians before World War II.
History
From Roman era to early history
Roman Dalmatia was fully Latinized by 476 AD when the Western Roman Empire disappeared.Theodor Mommsen in his book "The Provinces of the Roman Empire" In the Early Middle Ages, the territory of the Byzantine province of Dalmatia reached in the North up to the river Sava, and was part of the Praetorian prefecture of Illyricum. In the middle of the 6th and the beginning of the 7th century began the Slavic migrations to the Balkans, which caused the Romance-speaking population, descendants of Romans and Illyrians (speaking Dalmatian), to flee to the coast and islands. The hinterland, semi-depopulated by the Barbarian Invasions, Slavic tribes settled. The Dalmatian cities retained their Romanic culture and language in cities such as Zadar, Split and Dubrovnik. Their own Vulgar Latin, developed into Dalmatian, a now extinct Romance language. These coastal cities (politically part of the Byzantine Empire) maintained political, cultural and economic links with Italy, through the Adriatic Sea. On the other side communications with the mainland were difficult because of the Dinaric Alps. Due to the sharp orography of Dalmatia, even communications between the different Dalmatian cities, occurred mainly through the sea. This helped Dalmatian cities to develop a unique Romance culture, despite the mostly Slavicized mainland.
Historian Theodor Mommsen wrote that Istria (included in the Regio X Venetia et Histria of Roman Italy since Augustus) was fully romanized in the 5th century AD.Theodore Mommsen. The Provinces of the Roman Empire.Chapter I. Between 500 and 700 AD, Slavs settled in Southeastern Europe (Eastern Adriatic), and their number ever increased, and with the Ottoman invasion Slavs were pushed from the south and east. This led to Italic people becoming ever more confined to urban areas, while some areas of the countryside were populated by Slavs, with exceptions in western and southern Istria which remained fully Romance-speaking.
By the 11th century, most of the interior mountainous areas of northern and eastern Istria (Liburnia) were inhabited by South Slavs, while the Romance population continued to prevail in the south and west of the peninsula. Linguistically, the Romance inhabitants of Istria were most probably divided into two main linguistic groups: in the north-west, the speakers of a Rhaeto-Romance language similar to Ladin and Friulian prevailed, while in the south, the natives most probably spoke a variant of the Dalmatian language. One modern claim suggests the original language of the romanized Istrians survived the invasions, this being the Istriot language which was spoken by some near Pula.Istrioto, the autochthonous language of southern Istria (in Italian)
Via conquests, the Republic of Venice, between the 9th century and 1797, extended its dominion to coastal parts of Istria and Dalmatia.Alvise Zorzi, La Repubblica del Leone. Storia di Venezia, Milano, Bompiani, 2001, ISBN 978-88-452-9136-4., pp. 53-55 (in italian) Thus Venice invaded and attacked Zadar multiple times, especially devastating the city in 1202 when Venice used the crusaders, on their Fourth Crusade, to lay siege, then ransack, demolish and rob the city, the population fleeing into countryside. Pope Innocent III excommunicated the Venetians and crusaders for attacking a Catholic city. The Venetians used the same Crusade to attack the Dubrovnik Republic, and force it to pay tribute, then continued to sack Christian Orthodox Constantinople where they looted, terrorized, and vandalized the city, killing 2.000 civilians, raping nuns and destroying Christian Churches, with Venice receiving a big portion of the plundered treasures.
The coastal areas and cities of Istria came under Venetian Influence in the 9th century. In 1145, the cities of Pula, Koper and Izola rose against the Republic of Venice but were defeated, and were since further controlled by Venice. On 15 February 1267, Poreč was formally incorporated with the Venetian state.John Mason Neale, Notes Ecclesiological & Picturesque on Dalmatia, Croatia, Istria, Styria, with a visit to Montenegro, pg. 76, J.T. Hayes - London (1861) Other coastal towns followed shortly thereafter. The Republic of Venice gradually dominated the whole coastal area of western Istria and the area to Plomin on the eastern part of the peninsula. Dalmatia was first and finally sold to the Republic of Venice in 1409 but Venetian Dalmatia was not fully consolidated from 1420.
From the Middle Ages onwards, numbers of Slavic people near and on the Adriatic coast were ever increasing, due to their expanding population and due to pressure from the Ottomans pushing them from the south and east. This led to Italic people becoming ever more confined to urban areas, while the countryside was populated by Slavs, with certain isolated exceptions. In particular, the population was divided into urban-coastal communities (mainly Romance-speakers) and rural communities (mainly Slavic-speakers), with small minorities of Morlachs and Istro-Romanians."Italian islands in a Slavic sea". Arrigo Petacco, Konrad Eisenbichler, A tragedy revealed, p. 9.
Republic of Venice influenced the neolatins of Istria and Dalmatia until 1797, when it was conquered by Napoleon: Capodistria and Pola were important centers of art and culture during the Italian Renaissance.Prominent Istrians, www.istrianet.org Istria and Dalmatia were then aggregated to the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1805, and annexed to the Illyrian Provinces in 1809 (for some years also the Republic of Ragusa was included, since 1808). From the Middle Ages to the 19th century, Italian and Slavic communities in Istria and Dalmatia had lived peacefully side by side because they did not know the national identification, given that they generically defined themselves as "Istrians" and "Dalmatians", of "Romance" or "Slavic" culture.
Austrian Empire