Multimedia Documentation Center of Julian Istrian Fiumana Dalmatian Culture
February 9th, 2025
+39 040 771569
info@arcipelagoadriatico.it

Premise

The history of Dalmatia is a complex story, not only from a political and social point of view but also from an ethnic one, as well as the centuries-old path linked to the Dalmatian identity of Italian character; a path little known especially for the evident political reasons that occurred after the end of the Second World War, when Italy had to cede to Yugoslavia all the territories that faced the eastern Adriatic coast.
The Dalmatian identity of Italian character has left indelible traces of its important presence in the monumental, urban, artistic, political, economic and linguistic fields.
Dalmatia is a border land that has seen many dominations throughout its long history.
Since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, new and often violent migrations of barbarian peoples, together with other historical events, determined a particular ethnic and political fracture between the hinterland and the coast of the Dalmatian region.

It is enough to remember the opposition between the Venetians and the Hungarian-Croatian kings in central-northern Dalmatia, the struggles between the Serbian-Montenegrin principalities and the coastal centres of southern Dalmatia or the long conflict between Venice and the Turkish-Ottoman Empire, to realise how much history there has been in its troubles.
In the nineteenth century Dalmatia passed to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and that century was marked by the struggles for autonomy advocated by the most important Dalmatian cities, where Italianness proved to be very tenacious until the early twentieth century.
Despite its troubled political history, Dalmatia managed for many centuries to play an important role in cultural mediation between Western Europe and the Slavic-Balkan world.
Unfortunately, Italianness in Dalmatia, despite being a living and combative element, experienced an irreversible ethnic and political decline in the first half of the twentieth century.
The Dalmatians as a whole, whether Italian or Slavic, although divided until the first half of the nineteenth century by ethnic, linguistic and social issues, always agreed in recognising each group's right to live in its own land.

Subsequently, in the first half of the twentieth century, this trend had to give way to the logic of assimilation of one ethnic group by another.
The clear considerations of a nationalistic nature, as well as the homologation in the criteria considered national of entire communities bearing complex identities, of a multicultural and multi-ethnic type, have gradually led to the disintegration of the ancient and traditional Dalmatian world.
The Italianness acquired by many Slavic Dalmatians through simple cultural irradiation over the centuries did not occur at all through authoritarian and assimilatory policies.
Instead, in the 20th century, the two totalitarianisms, the Italian fascist one and the Slavic-communist one, practically imposed, alternating, cultural and political models of an assimilative type without aiming for consensus and therefore for a peaceful coexistence between the two most important ethnic groups in Dalmatia: Croats and Italians.
Before the union of Zadar with Italy, the Italian Dalmatians participated in various forms in the wars of the Risorgimento. They recognized themselves above all in the Venetian myth, having borrowed its dialect in their time.
The defeat of the Italian fleet in the Third War of Independence off the coast of Lissa disappointed the aspirations of the Italian Dalmatians.
From then on, the long Italian farewell to Dalmatia began.

Francesco Crispi subsequently changed Italy's international alliances to form the Triple Alliance with its historic enemy: Austria.
As a result, from 1882 onwards, the Trentino, Julian and Dalmatian patriots were controlled and persecuted by Italy itself.
The Italian Dalmatians responded to the Slavic assimilation, encouraged by the Austrian government starting in 1860, with irredentism and faith in Italy.
When the time came, many Dalmatians fought and died for the Italian homeland, because they were strongly attracted by modern national-patriotism, when this rose to an undeniable mass political force.
The fate of the Italians of Dalmatia was profoundly adverse after the Second World War.
Zara, the last Italian stronghold in Dalmatia, after a thousand years of fierce resistance, was destroyed by 54 bombings, leaving over 2.000 dead.
However, the meaning and importance of the Dalmatian culture of Italian character, which over time has undoubtedly been able to communicate in its evolutionary process with the neighbouring Slavic cultural component, has reached such a universal level of civilisation that it is able to contribute to the evolution of the new contemporary European culture free from the ideological burdens of the 20th century, since in the Dalmatian universe there are clearly found motifs and testimonies that are precursors of the new European humanism, which is laboriously being reconstituted in the community context.

Currently, Dalmatia has about 600.000 inhabitants and belongs mostly to the Republic of Croatia, which was officially created after the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia in 1991.
Only some parts of the Dalmatian territory belong to other state entities: the coastal town of Neum (south of Split) belongs to Bosnia and Herzegovina, while the southernmost part including the Bay of Kotor and the city of Budva belong to Montenegro (Union of Serbia and Montenegro).

In Dalmatia, the presence of the Italian ethnic group according to the 1991 census amounts to only 225 people, but it is estimated that the presence remained submerged for political and social reasons of at least 1.000 people.
The Croatian ethnic group is predominant but the Serbs, despite the exodus from the Dalmatian hinterland which occurred during the recent war in the former Yugoslavia, still constitute a significant numerical minority.
From an economic point of view, Dalmatia is not a very developed country.
The main activity is undoubtedly tourism, favored by the beauty of the coasts and seabeds.
Tourism is followed by fishing and port activities.

The liquor and cement industries are very important.
The road situation has improved recently, especially after the construction of the motorway section connecting Zadar to Split.
The largest cities are Split (in Croatian Split) with approximately 200.000 inhabitants, Zadar (Zadar) with approximately 80.000 inhabitants, Dubrovnik (Dubrovnik) with 50.000 inhabitants, Šibenik (Sebenik) with 42.000 inhabitants, Trogir (Trogir) with 20.000 inhabitants and Kotor (in Montenegrin Dalmatia) with 21.000 inhabitants.