Italic History

Preface Without appealing to the ancients, from whom there is an abundance of national patriotic material and expressions of italianità to be found, particularly in Virgil and many other ancient Italian authors, we will instead begin with Dante Alighieri, who is generally considered the first modern Italian patriot. I. — Dante Alighieri The national idea came to Dante as part of that essential continuity between ancient Rome and modem Italy which is the key to Italian civilisation. Virgil himself had defined the national aspirations of Italians throughout the centuries, when he placed upon the lips of Aeneas the pregnant words: Italiam quaero patriam . There was never a time, from the day on which a barbarian conqueror dethroned the last of the old Roman emperors in the west to that on which Victor Emanuel assumed the crown of the united kingdom in 1861, when Italy—in the notorious phrase of the anti-Italian Metternich—was “a mere geographical expression.” As surprising as it m...

Ancient Italics and Roman Period The Italians are an old nation—one of the oldest in Europe—which can be traced back to the time of the Romans, and even farther back to the early Italic tribes and pre-Indo-European aboriginals of the Italian peninsula (from whom the Romans, and therefore modern Italians, descend). The Italian nation is very ancient, as is the existence of a unified Italian state. Italy, in fact, was the first unified nation-state in European history. Although Italy was unified most recently in 1861, this was not the first time Italy was united. Italy was first unified over 2,000 years ago in 222 BC under the Romans, making Italians the first unified people in the history of Europe. With the extermination of the Gauls in the north and the expulsion of the Greeks from the southern shores of the peninsula—thus eliminating from Italy the two major foreign and hostile powers—the Romans were able to join and unite all the native tribes of Italy into a single unit, with ...

Written by an unknown author Presentation This booklet is a simple collection of historical, linguistic and literary information on the name ‘Italy’ beginning in the sixth century BC. The key point is that I wanted to have an overview on the history of the name ‘Italy’ but could not find an adequate synopsis, therefore I tried to summarize the essential points of the subject myself. And why was I looking for an overview of the history of the name ‘Italy’? Because today many people are convinced that Italy is an “artificial” nation, created in 1861 following an event known as the “Risorgimento”, which supposedly forcibly united different regions with separate traditions and languages ​​(which we today call dialects) and imposed a new language called Italian, which until then was almost unknown. This contradicts everything we were taught in school, yet many people today actually believe this to be true. Evidently they are unaware of the fact that the history depicting Italy as a...

Written by an unknown author The feast of March 17th commemorates the date in which the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed under Vittorio Emanuele II in 1861. It is sometimes said that this was the beginning of Italy itself because, according to some people, the Italian nation did not exist at all prior to this date, or at least an Italian State supposedly did not exist. Such claims, which are particularly dear to the secessionists and to those who contest the national state by preaching its dissolution and disappearance, have no historical foundation whatsoever. It is hardly necessary to state that ‘nation’ and ‘state’ are not synonymous and that the fatherland or ethnic group continues to exist regardless of the political form in which it is found. Italy has a more than two thousand-year-old existence that is expressed on the level of language, onomastics, toponymy, literature, architecture, urban planning, music, juridical structures, collective consciousness, etc. It was therefore...

Written by Paolo Quercia One Hundred and Fifty Years of the Unified Italian State, but Twenty One Centuries of Italian Nationality and Fatherland Italy was born in 89 BC, when the Italic people obtained Roman citizenship. Numerous Italian tribes united in a league against Rome and created a state called Italy. Next year we celebrate twenty one centuries of the Italian nation. How many centuries has Italy existed? Just one and a half, if we judge according to administrative unity. At least double that if we go back to the birth of the historical and political desire for a united Italy ⁠— first literary and later actionary ⁠— which emerged in our country in the eighteenth century and culminated in the Risorgimento in the nineteenth century. But Italy was in no way born with the Risorgimento, which was only a late political-military achievement. That twofold romantic ambition of the nineteenth century to unify the Italian peninsula and to liberate it from foreigners was by no means ...

Written by an unknown author South Tyrol: Land of Italy South Tyrol, a region which is politically, geographically and historically Italian, today is inhabited by more than two-thirds of German-speakers. In ancient times this region was subject to Rome: traces of the Roman era are widespread everywhere. The region remained part of Italy with Odoacer and Theodoric, and still remained part of Italy even with the Longobards. In the eighth century, it was incorporated by the Franks into the Kingdom of Italy. The German invaders began to penetrate the area in the Middle Ages, first Germanizing the Val Pusteria and the area of Merano, and then some of the other valleys north of Salorno. The area between Bolzano and the Brenner was Germanized in the seventeenth century, suppressing Ladin. In the fourteenth century the Germanization of Silandro, Ortisei and Chiusa made little progress, while in the fifteenth century the valleys of Gardena, Tires, Eores and Gudon were still Ladin. Over th...

Written by Giovanni dalle Bande Nere The so-called “ Südtiroler Heimatbund ” (“South Tyrolean Homeland Federation”) has announced that in November a thousand posters bearing the words “South Tyrol is not Italy” will be posted in Rome, in order to reiterate that most of the German-speakers of Alto Adige want self-determination and want Alto Adige to secede from Italy. Apart from the oddity of the statement, it must be noted that the term “South Tyrol”, which is now used to define the territory between the alpine ridge and Salorno, is unhistorical, because historically there has never been any such territory with its own political or administrative autonomy prior to 1927, when Italy created the Province of Bolzano and separated it from Province of Trento. In fact, the term “South Tyrol” was previously used to define the region of Trentino in order to reaffirm its “belonging to Tyrol” after the inhabitants of Trentino, led by their urban bourgeoisie, proclaimed the “Away From Innsbruc...

Written by an unknown author We often hear, unfortunately even from some “luminaries”, of an Italian betrayal in reference to the First World War. But Italy did not betray anyone; rather, it was Italy that was betrayed. Austro-Hungarian Abuses Italy was linked to Germany and Austria-Hungary by a treaty known as the Triple Alliance, signed for the first time in 1882. The treaty provided that in the event of an attack on any of the contracting parties by another great power, the other contracting parties would have to come to the aid of the assaulted state. The treaty was designed to counter another alliance, the Triple Entente, between France, the United Kingdom and the Russian Empire, which in fact encircled Austria and Germany. The Triple Alliance was therefore a product of its time, signed not for any supposed good relations between the contracting parties, but for purely geopolitical reasons.

Written by Alessio Melita News about the First World War has been circulating for days on the web, according to which the defectors from the Italian army in the First World War supposedly numbered over 100 thousand. This claim was enthusiastically launched in an article which cited as its source the page ‘Cannibali e Re’, a Facebook page that interprets history from a strongly anti-nationalist and anti-militarist political perspective. The claim was immediately picked up with enthusiasm by the worst anti-Italian bottom-feeders, from Neo-Bourbonists to the pro-Habsburgists, led of course by the outcasts of the antagonistic and anti-militarist Left. In order to avoid dwelling too much on political or personal evaluations, let's discuss the merits of the article itself. First of all, the figure of 100 thousand deserters would mean that 1 out of 12 Italian soldiers defected. The article literally cites no source for this figure, just as no source is cited for the figure of mythical...

Written by Luca Cancelliere Franz Joseph Karl von Habsburg-Lorraine, Emperor of Austria and Apostolic King of Hungary, in his 86 years of life (1830-1916) and 68 year reign (from 1848 until his death), marked an entire era of European history, not only from a political and diplomatic point of view, but also from a cultural and social point of view. One school of thought, enamored by literary myths and historical idealizations, has identified in Franz Joseph the incarnation of the Mitteleuropean myth of Felix Austria , a dreamlike representation of an idyllic world in which—prior to the prevailing “nationalisms”—peoples and ethnic groups of very different origin, language and religion supposedly peacefully coexisted in a climate of tolerance and harmony under the wise and paternalistic government of an elderly Emperor, the representative of an ancient and legitimate dynasty, assisted by an efficient bureaucracy and by strong and faithful armed forces. This myth has as its corollary ...

Written by Giulia Santoni One hundred years ago, on November 21, the last emperor of the great Austrian Empire, Franz Joseph of Habsburg-Lorraine, died. Born in Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna in 1830, he ascended the throne at age eighteen and so began his long reign. He ruled for 68 years and during this time period many changes took place in the world, such as the transition from the first steam train to the first automobile, to the creation of the airplane. Franz Joseph sought to consolidate his reign through various means, ranging from limited concessions, such as universal suffrage, to postponing delicate problems regarding the various nationalities within the empire. The situation he faced was difficult given the tumult within the imperial territories, but he managed to re-establish his dominion in Bohemia and in Hungary and to confirm his important presence in Germany and Italy. Thus began the period of imperial absolutism, which lasted from 1848 to 1860. After his ascent to ...

Written by Erica Del Giusto As many of you know, in recent years there has been much talk in Neo-Bourbonist circles about the solidity (and even the supposed wealth) of the finances of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, whose vast resources — according to some people — were supposedly appropriated by the first Italian government after unification in order to balance the disastrous budget of the Kingdom of Sardinia, thereby allowing Italy to have a solid financial start. Now, it is well known that after unification there was no “solid financial start” for Italy, whose financial issues, on the contrary, gave rise to the government of the Historical Right. Regarding this, the distinguished historian Valerio Castronovo wrote:

Written by an unknown author A mythology based on predictable and stereotyped canvases would like to depict the Risorgimento as the result of an inevitable “Masonic plot”. The nineteenth century was one of those centuries in which accusations of obscure plots and conspiracies abounded. Political opponents frequently accused each other of being supported or backed by secret underground networks: the liberals spoke of a “Jesuit conspiracy”, the reactionaries of a “Masonic plot”, and so on. But beyond all the polemics and propaganda, how much truth is there in the claim that the Risorgimento was a “Masonic plot”? Virtually none. Among the four Fathers of the Fatherland, only one was a Freemason. Vittorio Emanuele II and Cavour, both of whom were practicing Catholics, refused any contact with the Masonic lodges. Moreover, it was only in 1859 that the prohibition against membership in Freemasonry was relaxed in the Kingdom of Sardinia: previously this prohibition had always remained...

Written by an unknown author The theory of the “Masonic Risorgimento” is mythological. The best overall study on the relationship between Freemasonry and the Risorgimento probably remains that of Alessandro Luzio, “ La Massoneria e il Risorgimento italiano ”, divided into two ponderous volumes with very extensive documentary references. Luzio spoke very firmly of the “Masonic Risorgimento” as being a myth created by the Freemasons and the clergy, who were both interested—albeit for opposite reasons—in attributing to the Masonic lodges a role in Italian Unification which in reality they did not have. The pro-unitary monarchists were almost never Freemasons, starting with Vittorio Emanuele II and Cavour, who both refused any contact with the Masonic lodges. Even Mazzini was not a Freemason and in fact he criticized Freemasonry, as did his main disciple. Joining the Carbonari did not mean being a Freemason: these were two distinct organizations. However, the vast majority of Mazzinian...

Written by an unknown author It is widely known and proven that the brigands and their leaders, by an overwhelming majority, were nothing but common criminals. Active in the south for many centuries, uninterruptedly and in large numbers, gangs of brigands wrought devastation on the population like a plague. The extent of the crimes committed by these criminals in its precise quantitative dimensions still remains unknown to this day. Just to give an idea of its possible proportions we can recall the estimate made by Adolfo Perrone in his study on brigandage [1] , which reports about 5 or 6 thousand civilians murdered by brigands only in the years after Unification. It is a total that is substantially equivalent to that proposed by Franco Molfese, certainly the greatest scholar of post-unification brigandage, for the total number of brigands killed or executed by the army and the national guard in the course of the suppression of the phenomenon from 1861 to 1865. It is superfluous to...

Written by Marco Vigna The gang leader Carmine Crocco has been presented by some libellists as a kind of social rebel. An objective analysis of his actions and his words shows that he was nothing more than a common criminal. Crocco was born in Rionero in Vulture (in Lucania, in the territory of Potenza) on June 5, 1830. His parents were Francesco, a farmer who worked on rented land, and Maria Gerardi, who occasionally worked as a wool carder. The social conditions of Carmine Crocco's origin placed him in the lower classes of society at the time, but not at the bottom of the social scale, as evidenced by the fact that he learned the rudiments of the alphabet from his uncle, thus had an ability (even if difficult) to read and write, which at the time was the privilege of a small minority in the Mezzogiorno. He worked as a laborer and shepherd for some companies in Lucania and Puglia, until he was enlisted in the Bourbon army in 1849 and took part in the repression of the Sici...

Written by Angelo Martino One of the most clamorous falsehoods that so-called revisionist journalists and some historians — who are not attentive to rigorous and documented historical research — have touted with harsh language has been that of an alleged concentration camp or lager at Fenestrelle in Piedmont. On the web such gigantic historical falsehood is commented upon with a harshness of language that Alessandro Barbero, in the preface to his book “ I prigionieri dei Savoia ”, defines as “ignoble”. With thorough historical research, Alessandro Barbero (in a volume whose complete title is “ The Prisoners of Savoy: The True Story of the Fenestrelle Conspiracy ”, published by Laterza, with 316 pages of rigorous documentation and archival research, and 42 pages of notes) has proven the whole story to be false.

Written by an unknown author Some claim that Italian Unification was only made possible thanks to English support. This is a long-standing myth promoted by anglophiles and especially by neo-bourbonists. It's not true that England desired the unification of Italy. Indeed, when Garibaldi arrived at the Strait of Messina, London diplomatic maneuvers attempted to stop the expedition, because they did not want the unification of the whole peninsula in a single state, which naturally would have major economic, demographic, military and political repercussions for the British. It took all of Cavour's skills to play on the rivalry between England and France in order to get the “green light”: however, the fact that England was in principle opposed to Italian Unification is proven by diplomatic documents. The English attitude was due to fear of a united Italy, with a demographic, economic and military power far superior to that of the pre-unification states, which would pose a thre...

Written by an unknown author The neo-Bourbonists have spread the erroneous claim that Garibaldi stole the assets of the Bank of Naples. This assertion is completely false. It might be useful to explain here the history of the Bank of Naples and the events of the Risorgimento. Throughout its history the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies remained a state with limited sovereignty, being subject to heavy influence from foreign powers: first Spain, and after 1815 primarily Austria. The Habsburg Empire provided training officials to the Bourbon army (in essence, men who today are euphemistically called “military advisors”) and also controlled the finances of the kingdom. The Bourbon state had two official banks, the “Bank of Palermo” and the “Bank of Naples”, which was the most important. The latter had the power to print money, but it was not controlled by the Bourbon sovereign, but by a well known family of Jewish origin: the Rothschilds. The Austrian branch of the Rothschilds was for a long...

Written by Alessio Melita In the worst revisionist and anti-Italian circles, in which a crowd of Neo-Bourbonists, Habsburgophiles and the lowest anti-patriotic Left wallow together, it is fashionable to assert that the Unification of Italy was a phenomenon willed by occult forces and “big powers”. It would be appropriate to remind the devoted lovers of the imperialist and reactionary forces which occupied and despoiled the Italian Fatherland for centuries that these mythical occult powers to which they refer, first of all the Rothschild family, were the primary puppeteers of the Bourbon, Papal and Habsburg dynasties. The Austrian Occupation of the South The partnership began in 1821 with the arrival of Calmann “Carl” Mayer von Rothschild in Naples. He founded the Naples branch of the most powerful family of Jewish bankers in European history. The perfect opportunity to launch themselves into the affairs of southern Italy arose with the Austrian occupation of the Kingdom of the Tw...

Written by Angelo Martino Neo-Bourbonist revisionism conveniently ignores that at the time that Garibaldi launched his expedition against the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the Sicilians had a deep hatred of the Bourbon dynasty. Moreover, the first of the many European revolutions of 1848 took place in Sicily on January 12, 1848. The Sicilian revolution against Bourbon tyranny was the first revolt of the revolutionary movements throughout Europe that year, and the ideals of the Sicilian people were the same as so many previous years: to free themselves from the Bourbon Kingdom and to achieve independence in the context of national unification, already internalized many years before Italian Unification. Sicily aspired to autonomy and was the bearer of a strong feeling of independence before 1848; the Sicilians hated the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, ruled by tyrants such as the Bourbons.

(Extracted from the article The Risorgimento Was Not Against Catholicism or the Catholic Church ) The Presumed Catholicity of the Bourbons is Equivalent to the “Catholicity” of the Mafia and the Camorra What must one think of the Catholicity which was claimed by the Bourbon regime? Mutatis mutandis , it is comparable to those forms of religiosity that can be found in the Italian Mafia. Abstractly and theoretically, the Mafia and the Camorra habitually claim they are Catholics, have their children baptized, observe various religious precepts such as going to church, but only in a completely formal way. This outward adhesion does not prevent them from murdering, injuring, raping, torturing, stealing, cheating, and dealing drugs. In fact, by kissing crucifixes, taking part in processions, going on pilgrimages to shrines, communicating, and bestowing offerings with blood money, the Mafia is doing nothing but engaging in self-serving propaganda, trying to pass itself off as respectable ...

Written by Alberto Casirati The article published by Giuseppe Chiellino in Il Sole 24 Ore on August 29, 2010, entitled “ Italian Unification From the Southern Point of View: An Annexation Without a Declaration of War? ”, once again, albeit gently, repeats several arguments that have no historical basis, but which have been used by those people who, for personal reasons, are taking advantage of the good faith of people who are unaware of the historical facts. They are trying to exploit the 150th anniversary of Italian unity by spreading false propaganda. For the sake of historical truth, is necessary to remember that: 1) The arguments of the nostalgic Neo-Bourbonists completely ignores the general European and global framework of the nineteenth century, whose conditions made the national unification process necessary and inevitable.

Written by an unknown author It's the virtually unanimous judgment of historians that the economic conditions of the Mezzogiorno were on average worse than those of the north of Italy and that this gap had centuries-old roots. Even southernist historians, from Villari to Gramsci, do not deny this. Also, if you take into account the so-called “quality of life” (calculated on the basis of a varied range of indices) and not just GDP, you will notice that the gap between north and south was even higher in the Bourbon period. The Bourbon government was awful, with its reactionary conservatism and stagnation, an incredible level of corruption and administrative inefficiency, excessive power of feudal cliques, the court and even the Mafia. Not for nothing did the great majority of southerners welcome Garibaldi as a liberator. Furthermore, the Bourbon state was an Austrian semi-protectorate, as the military instructors and the most loyal troops of King Frankie were Austrians (they called...

Written by Marco Lenci The Ransom Companies: A Forgotten Page in the Relationship Between Europe and the Muslim World The entire Mediterranean area, from the early sixteenth century until the early nineteenth century, was more or less marked by the predatory exploits of the Barbary pirates who had their main operational bases in the regencies of Tripoli, Tunis and Algiers, semi-independent entities formally dependent on the Ottoman Empire. Due to its geographical location in the center of the Mediterranean, Italy was very strongly involved. For more than three centuries the coastal populations of the peninsula had to live with the constant threat of sudden ruinous incursions from the sea. The danger, however, was not limited only to those who lived on the coast. It was enough in fact that an individual had the need to travel by sea, which meant that he too could become, in turn, the victim of a Barbary abduction. Those who paid the consequences were tens of thousands of men who...

Written by Donato Didonna I am not an art historian and so I apologize for any involuntary inaccuracies, but, in the face of silence from those who might have more expertise to speak than me, I feel duty-bound to denounce the historical mystification of the UNESCO World Heritage Site called “Arab-Norman Palermo and the Cathedral Churches of Cefalù and Monreale” which contributes—in the collective imagination of citizens, tourists and guides—to consolidating the myth of an Arab Palermo to which they would like to attribute everything: from the Sicilian monuments of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, to the original recipe for Sicilian sponge cake ( cassata ), and even Sicilian semi-frozen dessert ( granita ). I understand the political agenda of UNESCO in wanting to find a historical moment of peaceful coexistence between Christians, Jews and Muslims that could serve as an example for our day, but let it not be forgotten that a certain period of peace and tolerance in Sicily only came ...

Written by an unknown author The County of Nice was an Italian-speaking territory which included almost the entire basin of the Var River and part of the Roya-Bevera Valley. The capital was Nice, called “Nizza Marittima” to distinguish it from Nizza Monferrato in Piedmont. The county belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia until 1860, when it was ceded to France by Cavour; an intense work of Frenchification was implemented most especially in the city of Nizza Marittima, but also in the rest of the territory. The progressive spread of the French language was favored, to the detriment of the Italian language: for example, all Italian newspaper publications were closed (such as “ La voce di Nizza ”); even many native surnames were changed: “Bianchi” became “Leblanc”; “Del Ponte” became “Dupont”, etc. The Italianity of Nice gradually disappeared: In the 1930's the old city centre was still majority Italian, now the city is entirely French-speaking. Italian is still the second language ...

Ticino is a canton of Switzerland primarily inhabited by an Italian population, and comprises most of the Italian-speaking area of Switzerland. Of all the ethnically Italian regions located outside of Italy, Ticino is unique because it is the only Italian region situated within a majority non-Italian country whose language, culture and identity is still Italian. This is in contrast to regions such as Istria or Grigioni, whose Italian populations have been greatly diminished over the last couple centuries. In ancient times the area of southern and eastern Switzerland was inhabited by a group of tribes known as the Rhaetians. The Rhaetians were the descendants of Etruscans who had settled in the Alps after being driven out of Italy by Gallic invaders in the 4th century BC. The Rhaetians derived their name from Retus or Rhetus, an Etruscan leader from ancient Tuscany who led his people into exile across the Rhaetian Alps. The area inhabited by the Rhaetians included what is today the Ca...

Grigioni, also known as Graubünden or Grisons, is a canton of Switzerland and a historical Italian region currently divided between Italian-speaking, Romansh-speaking and German-speaking populations. The cantons of Ticino and Grigioni together form Svizzera Italiana or Italian Switzerland. In ancient times the area of southern and eastern Switzerland was inhabited by a group of tribes known as the Rhaetians. The Rhaetians were the descendants of Etruscans who had settled in the Alps after being driven out of Italy by Gallic invaders in the 4th century BC. The Rhaetians derived their name from Retus or Rhetus, an Etruscan leader from ancient Tuscany who led his people into exile across the Rhaetian Alps. The area inhabited by the Rhaetians included what is today the Canton of Grigioni, part of the Canton of Ticino, Trentino, Tyrol, and other Alpine areas stretching from northeastern Italy to southern Germany. The names of the tribes that inhabited what is now Grigioni included the ...

Introduction The Grisons ( Grigioni in Italian; Grischun in Romansh; Graubünden in German) is a canton in southeastern Switzerland which is divided between three groups: Germans, Italians and Romansh. Until the end of the 13th century, Italian (in the form of Lombard dialect) and Romansh (a group of Western Ladin dialects) were the only languages spoken in the Grisons. In fact, until that time there was not a single German village in the entire region. Aside from the Germanic feudal lords and some foreign-born clergy, the entire population was Latin. Beginning in the late 13th century, however, a gradual Germanization of some areas began to take place. Despite this, at the beginning of the 19th century the Romansh-speakers and Italian-speakers still formed two-thirds of the population. And yet today these ancient indigenous groups of the Grisons are facing extinction. How did this come to be? What follows is a brief overview which is incomplete but sufficient to get a general id...

Written by General Riccardo Basile It might sound like a fairy tale, but it is not. This is the story of a region of Italy that used to exist, but today is no longer. The region was enclosed between the Julian Alps to the north and the Adriatic Sea to the south; from the Isonzo river to the west, and to the east the watershed that passes from Mount Tricorno to Mount Nevoso and Mount Maggiore before descending onto the Quarnaro Gulf. It included five Provinces: Trieste, Gorizia, Pola in Istria, Fiume in the Carnaro and Zara in Dalmatia. Of these cities only two remained in Italy: Trieste, which was mutilated, and Gorizia, which was dismembered. Both today are included in the region “Friuli-Venezia Giulia”. There are many today who believe the name of this region is too long, so they shorted it to “Friuli” and omit “Venezia Giulia”: one can easily understand the disappointment of the Giulians! The name “Venezia Giulia” was coined in 1863 by one of the greatest glottologists of ...

Written by Diego De Castro (Extracted from the book “ La questione di Trieste, l'azione politica e diplomatica italiana dal 1943 al 1954 ” by Professor Diego De Castro) 2. The Geographical Border At the time of the peace treaties of 1919 and 1947, Italy maintained that its eastern border was established by the Julian Alps; Wilson himself, in his message to the Italian people in April 1919, had accepted this affirmation. [1] It would be out of place to discuss that topic in this book, given the existence of a large volume that deals specifically with the problem of our eastern borders and references a rich bibliography. [2] According to Yugoslavia, our borders ended at the Isonzo river or, perhaps, even at the Tagliamento. This was bending geography to politics... But as I have said and will repeat several times, the geographical arguments were perfectly useless because the representatives of the great nations bartered the destiny of a small victorious people and that of a ...

Written by an unknown author The forced Slavicization of Julian Venetia and Dalmatia, designed and carried out by the Habsburg Empire, notoriously developed in a variety of forms and ways, including judicial and police activities, deportations, mass immigration of Slavs from the interior, political propaganda, educational measures, etc. One of the instruments used by the Imperial Royal authorities to Slavicize these regions was the Slovenian and Croatian nationalist clergy, through whom they sought to achieve a massive Slavicization of the local Catholic Church in all its aspects, in contrast to the national and religious identity of the Italian Catholics who lived there. I. Austro-Slavism So-called “Austro-Slavism” was a widespread political current among Slovenes and Croats that was intended to achieve their national and nationalistic goals within the Habsburg regime and with its collaboration. Austro-Slavism was also popular among other Slavic peoples of the Empire, such as th...

Written by an unknown author During the meeting of the Austro-Hungarian Council of Ministers, under the presidency of Franz Joseph, the following decision made by the Emperor was verbalized: “His Majesty has expressed the precise order that we decisively oppose the influence of the Italian element still present in some Crown lands, and to aim unsparingly and without the slightest compunction at the Germanization or Slavicization — depending on the circumstances — of the areas in question, through a suitable entrustment of posts to political magistrates and teachers, as well as through the influence of the press in South Tyrol, Dalmatia and the Littoral.” The decision, made at the highest level by Emperor Franz Joseph and the Habsburg Council of Ministers, to Germanize and Slavicize the Italian populated lands, i.e. Trentino, South Tyrol, Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia, “unsparingly and without the slightest compunction”, is incontrovertible proof of the imperial will to proceed with ...

Written by Marco De Turris The so-called Austrian Empire (Austria-Hungary after 1866) was responsible for a great deal of persecution, abuse and violence against the Italian nation. We know how this decisively contributed to perpetuating the long state of division of Italy, the colonial possession of its vast territories under foreign rule, the condition of economic exploitation, cultural repression, political oppression and ethnic discrimination of its Italian subjects. However, what is less known is how the Empire planned and accomplished after 1866 a true genocide (in the sense of forced denationalization) to the detriment of the Italian residents in their possessions. An objective and truthful assessment of the Habsburg Empire, founded on the principle of the hegemony of the ethnic Austrian element, can be introduced by recalling the minutes of the decision expressed in the Imperial Council of Ministers on November 12, 1866, held under the presidency of Emperor Franz Joseph. The ...

Written by Marco Vigna The writer and literary critic Claudio Magris coined the fortunate expression “Habsburg myth” to describe the image presented in literature by some writers of Mitteleuropa of an orderly and cosmopolitan Habsburg Empire capable of ensuring coexistence between its various peoples. But this precisely is a “myth” of literary origin: the historical reality was quite different. Magris himself stated that his book was specifically written to criticize and demolish the myth itself, but some people misunderstood this and thought it was an exaltation. After World War I the Austrian Empire underwent a literary reconstruction that struck the public imagination, but which had very little correspondence to historical reality. The discrepancy between the actual history of the Habsburg State and its imaginary romantic vision corresponds, roughly, to that existing between historiography and literature.

Written by Mario Bortoluzzi Objectors say: “ The exodus of the Istrians, Fiumans and Dalmatians is a consequence of the events of the Second World War, the violence committed by the Slavs was merely in retaliation to the violence committed by Fascists during the Italian occupation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia .” This is a claim that has been made every year around the time of the Day of Remembrance for the last decade, repeated like a mantra by the media of our country, which is controlled by a well-defined school of thought. In essence, they claim that the anti-Italian violence by Tito's Slavs was perhaps a bit much, but was caused by the violence and oppression of the occupying Italian army. These claims demonstrate their ignorance – their ignorance of the history of Istria and Dalmatia. These lands were never divorced from Italian history, as we shall see, but rightfully belong to our national history, no less so than all the other current regions of Italy.

Written by an unknown author The nineteenth century witnessed the rise of national consciousness in many European peoples (the era of romantic nationalism). The Risorgimento began in Italy, and national consciousness also began to rise in the Balkans, initially in the form of the Pan-Slavism movement. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Illyrian movement, headed by the Croat Ljudevit Gaj, began to spread in Dalmatia. This movement intended to create a single culture and political consciousness among the Southern Slavs. Although it remained confined mostly to Croatian areas, members of the Serb community of Dalmatia also joined them. The Illyrian movement of the early 19th century transformed into the so-called “Croatian national movement” after 1848, which gave rise to the “Croatian popular resurgence” ( hrvatski narodni preporod ) in Dalmatia and clashes with the dominant Italian Dalmatian community. Up until that point in Dalmatia, both the Italians and Slavs had h...

Written by Luca Cancelliere Part I – Corsica and Italy until 1729. Since prehistoric times Corsica, the fourth largest island in the Mediterranean after Sicily, Sardinia and Cyprus, was linked on one side to the Italian peninsula, and other the other side to the neighboring island of Sardinia. The first great Corsican civilization was that of the megalithic, which appeared in the fourth millennium BC and which, according to Giovanni Lilliu, was related to the contemporary Sardinian “Ozieri culture”. During the Bronze Age “Torrean civilization” spread throughout Corsica. The name derives from truncated conical constructions known as “torri”, similar to the Sardinian Nuraghe. Once again, the link with the contemporary Sardinian-Nuragic civilization is obvious. Inhabited by Ligurian peoples since the second millennium BC, Corsica entered the sphere of Etruscan influence after the Battle of Aleria in 535 BC and was later occupied by the Romans during the First Punic War (264-241 BC). ...