The geographical features of Istria include the Učka mountain range (Monte Maggiore) in the east, the rivers Dragonja, Mirna, Pazinčica and Raša, and the Lim bay. When these definitions are applied, Istria lies in three countries: Croatia, Slovenia and Italy. The largest portion, Croatian Istria, is further divided into two counties. The largest portion is Istria county in western Croatia. Important towns in Istria county include Pula (Pola), Poreč (Parenzo), Rovinj (Rovigno), Pazin (Pisino), Labin (Albona), Umag (Umago), Motovun (Montona), Buzet (Pinguente) and Buje (Buie), as well as smaller towns of Višnjan (Visignano), Roč (Rozzo), and Hum (Colmo). A small slice in the north, including the coastal towns of Izola (Isola), Piran (Pirano), Portorož (Portorose) and Koper (Capodistria) lies in Slovenia, and is commonly known as Slovenian Istria (Slovenska Istra), while a tiny region encompassing the town of Muggia (Slovenian Milje) belongs to Italy and is known as Italian Istria.
The small town of Peroj, although not large by size, has had a unique history which exemplifies the multi-ethnic complexity of the history of the region.
History
Early history
One theory is that the name is derived from the Illyrian tribe of the Histri, which Strabo refers to as living in the region. They Histri might as well be a venetian tribe from the northern adriatic area. The Romans described the Histri as a fierce tribe of pirates, protected by the difficult navigation of their rocky coasts. It took two military campaigns for the Romans to finally subdue them in 177 BCE. The region was then called toegether with the ventian part the X. roman region of "Venetia et Histria". Per ancient definition the north-eastern border of Italy. Dante Alighieri refers to it as well.
Some scholars speculate that the names Histri and Istria are related to the Latin name Hister, or Danube. Ancient folktales reported—inaccurately—that the Danube split in two or "bifurcated" and came to the sea near Trieste as well as at the Black Sea. The story of the "Bifurcation of the Danube" is part of the Argonaut legend.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the region was pillaged by the Goths, the Lombards, annexed to the Frankish kingdom by Pippin III in 789, and then successively controlled by the dukes of Carinthia, Merano, Bavaria and by the patriarch of Aquileia, before it became the territory of the Republic of Venice in 1267.
Venetian rule, the Holy Roman Empire, and incorporation into the Austrian Empire
Venetian rule left a strong mark on the region, one that can still be seen today. The Inner Istrian part around Mitterburg-Pisino, today Pazin, was held for centuries by the Holy Roman Empire. The venetian part of the peninsula passed to it in 1797 with the Treaty of Campo Formio. The Holy Roman Empire ended with the period of Napoleonic rule from 1805 to 1813 when Istria became part of the Italian Kingdom and of the Illyrian provinces of the Napoleonic Empire. After this short period the newly established Austrian Empire ruled Istria as the so called "Küstenland" which included the city of Trieste and Gorizia in Friuli until 1918. At that time the borders of Istria included a part of what is now Italian Venezia-Giulia and parts of modern-day Slovenia and Croatia, but not the city of Trieste. Today, Istria's borders are defined differently.
After World War I: Italian Istria
After World War I, Istria passed from Austrian Habsburg rule to that of Italy. After the advent of Fascism, the Slavs were exposed to a policy of forced Italianization and cultural suppression. They've lost their right to education and religious practice in their maternal language.
During World War II many Slovenes and Croats ended up in prisons and concentration camps. The subsequent German occupation during in 1943 further worsened ethnic relations.
The Istrian exodus after World War II
After the end of World War II, Istria was assigned to Yugoslavia, except for a small part in the northwest corner that formed Zone B of the formally independent Free Territory of Trieste; however Zone B was under Yugoslav administration and after the de facto dissolution of the Free Territory in 1954 it was also incorporated in Yugoslavia. Only the small town of Muggia, near Trieste, being part of Zone A remained with Italy. During and shortly after World War II, a large number of Italians were killed in the foibe massacres, both in Istria and in the Kras/Carso area surrounding Trieste. In the postwar years fear of Yugoslav communist regime, followed by actual, harsh, pressure by Yugoslav authorities resulted in almost all Italians leaving Istria. By 1956, when the last wave of the exodus was completed, Istria had lost about half of its population and a large part of its social and cultural identity. The drama experienced by the Italians in Istria is most powerfully visible in the exodus from Pula, a city located on the southernmost tip of the Istrian peninsula. Between December 1946 and September 1947, the city was abandoned by 28,000 of its 32,000 inhabitants. Most of them left in the immediate aftermath of the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty on February 10, 1947, which ceded Pula to Yugoslavia. In an emotional display of desperation, some exiles took with them not only their belongings but also their dead. The exodus from Pula received wide international press coverage. Some well-known postwar exiles from Istria include race driver Mario Andretti, actress Alida Valli, singer Sergio Endrigo and boxer Nino Benvenuti. Following the exodus, the areas were settled with additional Croats, Slovenians and a minute number of other Yugoslav nationalities like Serbs and Montenegrins.
Istria after the breakup of Yugoslavia
In the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Istria was divided between the republics of Croatia and Slovenia, following ethnic division lines. After the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991 this administrative subdivision became a border between independent states. Since Croatia's first multi-party elections in 1990, the regional party Istrian Democratic Assembly (IDS-DDI, Istarski demokratski sabor or Dieta democratica istriana) has consistently received a majority of the vote and maintained through 1990s a position often contrary to the government in Zagreb, led by then nationalistic and rightist party Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ, Hrvatska demokratska zajednica) with regards to decentralization in Croatia and certain regional autonomy. However, that changed in 2000, when IDS formed with five other parties left-centre coalition government, led by Social Democratic Party of Croatia (SDP, Socijaldemokratska Partija Hrvatske). After reformed HDZ won Croatian parliamentary elections in late 2003 and formed minority government, IDS has been cooperating with state government on many projects, both local (in Istria County) and national.
Demographic history
The region has traditionally been ethnically mixed. Under Austrian rule in the 19th century, it included a large population of Italians, Croats, Slovenes and some Vlachs/Istro-Romanians and Serbs. In 1910, the ethnic and linguistic composition was completely mixed. According to the Austrian census results, out of 404,309 inhabitants in Istria, 168,116 (41.6%) spoke Croatian, 147,416 (36.5%) spoke Italian, 55,365 (13.7%) spoke Slovenian, 13,279 (3.3%) spoke German, 882 (0.2%) spoke Romanian, 2,116 (0.5%) spoke other languages and 17,135 (4.2%) were non-citizens, which had not been asked for their language of communication. During the last decades of Habsburg dynasty the coast of Istria profited from the tourism within the Empire. Generally speaking, Italians lived on coast, while Croats and Slovenians lived inland.
In the second half of the 19th century a clash of new ideological movements, Italian irredentism (which wanted Trieste and Istria to be annexed by Italy) and Slovenian and Croatian nationalism (developing individual identities in some quarters whilst seeking to unite in a South Slav bid in others), resulted in growing ethnic conflict between Italians one side and Slovenes and Croats in opposition. This was intertwined with the class conflict, as inhabitants of Istrian towns were mostly Italian and people who lived in the country were mostly Croats or Slovenes.
There is a long tradition of tolerance between the people who live there, regardless of their nationality, and although many Istrians today are so called ethnic Croats (in fact they are mostly mixed), a strong regional identity has existed over the years. The Croatian word for the Istrians is Istrani, or Istrijani, the latter being in the local Chakavian dialect. The term Istrani is also used in Slovenia. Today the Italian minority is small, but the Istrian county in Croatia is bilingual, as are large parts of Slovenian Istria. Every citizen has the right to speak either Italian or Croatian (Slovenian in Slovenian Istria) in public administration or in court. Furthemore, Istria is a supranational European Region that includes Italian, Slovenian and Croatian Istria.
Ethnicity
As with many other regions in the former Yugoslavia, common concepts about ethnicity and nationality fail when applied to Istria. Discussions about Istrian ethnicity often use the words "Italian," "Croatian" and "Slovenian" to describe the character of Istrian people. However, these terms are best understood as "national affiliations" that may exist in combination with or independently of linguistic, cultural and historical attributes.
In Istrian contexts, for example, the word "Italian" can just as easily refer it can refer to autochthonous speakers of the Venetian whose antecedents in the region extend before the inception of the Venetian Republic or Istriot language the oldest spoken language in Istria dated back to the Romans, today spoken in the south west of Istria, but also to a descendant of immigrated during the Mussolini period. It can also refer to Istrian Slavs who adopted the veneer of Italian culture as they moved from rural to urban areas, or from the farms into the bourgeoisie. In fact most of the families in Inner Istria are mixed descendants.
Similarly, national powers claim Istrian Slavs according to local language, so that speakers of Čakavian and Štokavian dialects of Croatian language are considered to be Croatians, while speakers of other dialects may be considered to be Slovenians. Those Croatian dialect speakers are descendants of the first Slavic immigrants which settled in the region in the 7th and the 8th centuries as well as the refugees of the turkish invasion and the Ottoman Empire from Bosnia and Dalmatia from the 16 century. Often they were slavizised Vlachs, the so called Morlacchi - Morlachs (vlachi mori). The Venetian Republic settled them down in Inner Istria, devastated by wars and plague. Many villages have the Morlchian name like Cattuni-Katun. Like with all other regions, the local dialects of the Slavic communities are very slight across close distances. The Istrian Slavic and Italian vernaculars had both developed for many generations before being divided as they are today. This meant that Croats/Slovenes on one side and Venetians/other Italians on the other will have yielded towards each other culturally whilst distancing themselves from members of their ethnic groups living farther away. There is still the Romanian community to mention, the Istro-romanians in east and north of Istria (Cicceria) and parts of neighbouring Liburnia (the east coast of the peninsula which s not part of Istria)
Some Istrians consider themselves simply to be Istrians, with no additional national affiliation (in the 2001 Croatian census 8,865 (4.3%) people in Istria county declared themselves "Istrian"). Nevertheless, most residents of Croatian Istria declare themselves as Croatian, while most residents of Slovenian Istria declare themselves as Slovenian.
Gallery
Image:Pula-avion.JPG|Aerial picture of Pula/Pola
Image:Porec riva.jpg|The promenade (riva) of Poreč/Parenzo
Image:Rovinj.jpg|Rovinj/Rovigno, seen from Campanile of Santa Eufemia church
Image:Motovun 2002 Croatia.jpg|Motovun/Montona
Image:Lim canal.jpg|Lim canal/Canale di Leme
Image:Piran large.jpg|Piran/Pirano city core
Image:Koper Praetorian Palace.jpg|Venetian Praetorian Palace in Koper/Capodistria
External links
