Abstract
AbstractIn the 1848–1867 period, the Habsburg Monarchy was shaken by the first waves of nationalism. Yet in the case of the Habsburg port cities of Fiume/Rijeka and Trieste, contended by several different opponents, Italian and Croatian nationalisms had to face centuries‐long traditions of municipal autonomy. In both cities, municipalism and attachment to the House of Habsburg were particularly strong and were coupled with local urban identities that defied national forms of identifications, insofar as they were ethnically and linguistically hybrid. Nationalist activists sought to exploit ethnic and linguistic elements as markers of defined national identities, yet without widespread success. The final demise of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1918 has been generally taken as proof of the cogency of nationalist discourse, especially the Italian, in the region. However, the northern Adriatic rim points to the forcefulness of Habsburg multinationalism and the existence of ethnic hybridity, which provided effective bulwarks against nationalisms for decades.
Highlights
The north-eastern Adriatic, or Julian Region, has been the bone of contention of Italian and Slavic nationalists from the end of the 19th century and throughout the 20th
The northern Adriatic rim is widely seen as a border region with clear-cut national and ethnic distinctions, which have been superimposed on the 19th century
Widespread use of literary Italian, on the one hand, and of spoken Venetian, on the other, has been taken by historians as evidence for assimilation to the idea of an Italian culture of the numerous people who used either language
Summary
The north-eastern Adriatic, or Julian Region, has been the bone of contention of Italian and Slavic nationalists from the end of the 19th century and throughout the 20th. The discussion centres on ethnic hybridity and language practices in the Habsburg Adriatic in the face of emerging nationalisms, by looking at the cases of Fiume and Trieste from 1848 until the 1860s, the two port cities of the Hungarian and Austrian parts of the Habsburg Monarchy, respectively.
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