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Italia Irredenta (Meaning "Unredeemed Italy" in Italian) was an Italian nationalist opinion movement that emerged after Italian unification. The government decided that the next step after having reunified Italy in the unification, would be to unite everyone in the world of Italian origins into one country, where the Italians said its 'natural' borders should have been. This process was called "Italian irredentism" (where everyone from one ethnic group is grouped under one government). It ecouraged irredentism among the Italian people as well as other nationalities who were willing to become Italian and as a movement is also known as Italian irredentism. Not a formal organization, it was just an opinion movement that claimed that Italy had to reach its "natural borders". Similar patriotic and nationalistic ideas were common in Europe in the 19th century.

Origins

After the Italian unification, there were areas with Italian populations in neighbourhood of Italy. The Irredentists wanted to annex all those areas under one Italy. In order to judge which countries were eligible to be classed as the 'Italian lands', the Irredentists decided that anywhere using the Italian language (no matter if the speakers weren't necessarily Italians) would be included in the proposed merging.

These targeted areas were: Corsica, Dalmatia, Görz province, Ionian islands, Istria, Malta, Nizza (Nice), Ticino, Trentino, Triest province.

19th century

One of the first "Irredentists" was Giuseppe Garibaldi, who in 1859, as deputy for his native Nizza in the Piedmontese parliament at Turin, attacked Cavour for ceding Nice to Napoleon III (in order to get French help and approval for the Italian Unification). The Irredentism grew in importance in Italy in the next years.

On July 21, 1878, a noisy public meeting was held at Rome with Menotti Garibaldi (the son of unification leader Giuseppe Garibaldi) as chairman of the forum, and a clamour was raised for the formation of volunteer battalions to conquer the Trentino. Benedetto Cairoli, then Prime Minister of Italy, treated the agitation with tolerance. It was, however, mainly superficial, because the mass of the Italians had no wish to launch on a dangerous policy of adventure against Austria, and still less to attack France for the sake of Nice and Corsica, or Britain for Malta.

One consequence of the Irredentist ideas outside of Italy was the assassination plot organized against the Emperor Francis Joseph in Trieste in 1882, which was detected. Guglielmo Oberdan (a Triestine and thus Austrian citizen) was executed. When the Irredentist movement became troublesome to Italy through the activity of Republicans and Socialists, it was subject to effective police control by Agostino Depretis.

Irredentism faced a setback when the French occupation of Tunis in 1881 started a crisis in French–Italian relations. The government entered into relations with Austria and Germany, which took shape with the formation of the Triple Alliance in 1882.

20th century

However, this process of annexation of targeted areas into one country was not completed in the nineteenth century, as many Italians remained outside the borders of the Kingdom of Italy.

World War 1

Habsburg Monarchy, and after reorganization, Austria-Hungary, permanently made obstacles to Croatian and Slovenian interests on Eastern Adriatic, by supporting Italian community in its territory at the expense of majority population, Croats (in Dalmatia, Rijeka and Istria) and Slovenians (in Northern Istria), in order to suppress Slavs in the empire. Part of that policy was supporting of pro-Italian parties, keeping and promoting the Italian language as official in targeted provinces, as well as preventing of reunification of Croatia. Further, in order to gain friendship with Italy, Austria-Hungary made lucrative trade contracts (Wine Charter) with Italy, that severely struck economy in branches that were the source of income for Croat population (mainly lower or middle classes in development), enabling the import of goods from Italy, at the expense of local economies. The result was big emmigration of Croats from Eastern Adriatic to the Americas.

Italian irredentism obtained an important result after World War I, when Italy gained Trieste, Gorizia, Istria and the city of Zadar. Fascist irredentism added to Italy (temporarily during WWII) Corsica, Nizzardo and most of Dalmatia (including the Bay of Kotor), while occupied militarily Savoia and the Ionian islands.

Italy signed the London Pact and entered World War I with the intention of gaining those territories perceived as being Italian under foreign rule; several Austro-Hungarian citizens of Italian ethnicity fought within the Italian forces against Austria-Hungary to "free their lands". Some, such as Cesare Battisti, Nazario Sauro, Damiano Chiesa, Fabio Filzi, were captured and executed. The outcome of the First World War and the consequent settlement of the Treaty of Saint-Germain ensured Italy some of its claims, in accordance with the Treaty of London of 1915, including many (but not all) of the aims of the Italia irredenta party, incorporating Trento, Bolzano, Trieste and Istria.

In Dalmatia, despite the treaty of London, only the city of Zadar with some Dalmatian islands, like Lastovo, Palagruža and west Kvarner were assigned to Italy.

The ethnically Italian city of Rijeka in northern Dalmatia was the subject of claim and counter-claim (see Italian Regency of Carnaro, Treaty of Rapallo, 1920 and Treaty of Rome, 1924).

The stand taken by Gabriele D'Annunzio, which briefly led him to become an enemy of the Italian state , was meant to provoke a nationalist revival through Corporatism (first instituted during his rule over Fiume), in front of what was widely perceived as state corruption engineered by governments such as Giovanni Giolitti's. D'Annunzio briefly annexed to this "Regency of Carnaro" the Dalmatian islands of Veglia (Krk) and Arbe (Arb) where there was a numerous Italian community.

Moreover, Fascism made effort to seem as the natural outcome of war heroism, against a "betrayed Italy" that had not been awarded all it deserved, as well as appropriating the image of Arditi soldiers.

In 1922 Mussolini temporarily occupied Corfu, starting the irredentism on the Ionian islands of Greece. Mussolini even promoted actively the irredentism of the islands around the Kingdom of Italy - through the Maltese Italians, Corfiot Italians and Corsican Italians - in order to control the Mediterranean sea (that he called Italian Mare Nostrum).

World War 2

Even after the WW2, the irredentism movement has neved faded away from the Italian politics.
It was often kept living by fascist collaborants from areas occupied by Italy (or in areas that before WW2 were in Italy, like Istria), that escaped to the justice system.

During World War II, large parts of Dalmatia were annexed to Italy, in the Governatorato di Dalmazia from 1941 to 1943. Even Corsica and Nizzardo were administratively annexed to the Kingdom of Italy in November 1942. Malta was heavily bombed but was not occupied because a planned invasion by Italo-German forces was delayed in 1942 and never done.
Two months before the capitulation of Italy, just after the fall of Mussolini's rule in Italy, first group of Italians and pro-Italians began leaving the areas that were later restored to Croatia and Slovenia and from areas that later became parts of these republics in new Yugoslavia. After Italy's capitulation in 1943, areas formerly under Italian control were liberated for short period by Tito's partisans, but shortly afterwards these areas were occupied by German Wehrmacht, that bloodily suppressed the partisans' rule, especially on Istrian peninsula, in the sweeping operation (Rommel's forces). . Istrian landscape was covered with corpses, and because of immediate sanitary reasons, as well as shortage in time, money and personnel, the bodies of all killed weren't buried, but simply thrown into the carst caves, in order to prevent the appearance of diseases.

After 1945, most of the about 200,000 persons opted to leave to Italy). The "disappearance" of the Italian speaking populations in Dalmatia was nearly complete after World War II.

Today

Italy openly propagates irredentistic ideas even in the 21st century, which often causes sharp reactions of Croatian and Slovenian officials.
Vicepresident of Italian government, Gianfranco Fini, told to Croatian journalists on 51. gathering of Italo-optants (in Italy called: esuli) in Senigallia, that "...from the son of an Italian from Rijeka...I've first time learned that those areas were and are Italian, but not just because of that that in certain historical moment our armies have planted Italians there. That country was Venetian, and before that Roman" . Instead of issuing an official denial of those words, Carlo Giovanardi, minister for the relations with Parliament in Berlusconi's government, coldly confirmed Fini's words, saying "...that he told the truth"..
On 52. gathering of Italo-optants, Carlo Giovanardi also told in 2005, that "Italy'll execute cultural, economical and touristic invasion in order to 'reconstruct the Italianhood of Dalmatia' ", while participating on round table, together with neofascist and irredentist persons, discussing about the topic "Italy and Dalmatia today and tomorrow" (note: organizers, Italian revisionist and revanchist society, intentionally evade the noun "Croatia" in title) .
Roberto Menia, the deputy of Alleanza Nazionale in Italian Parliament, has been regularly verbally attacking institutions of Italians from Croatia (especially Italian Union) and its leaders and honorable persons (publicist and writer Giacomo Scotti was favourite target of those attacks), calling them as titoists, traitors and slavocommunists, although those persons and institutions were keeping the culture of Croatian Italians alive. Menia also supported the etiquette, told by Italian consul in Rijeka, Roberto Pietrosanto, in which Pietrosanto called those institutions as fifthcolumnist.
Also, Alleanza Nazionale has often shown territorial expansionis, repeating the revisionistic claim, "that Dalmatia was stolen to Italy". In 2005., Menia has told, that "when Croatia joins EU, Italy will return Istra, Rijeka and Dalmatia".
In 2001., Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi has given the medal to "free municipality of Zadar in exile" (note: Zadar is a city in Croatia):Medaglia d'oro al comune di Zara, al valor militar…".

In Feb 2008 (on "Foibe Memorial Day"), Italian President Giorgio Napolitano gave a statement in in which he used phrases like "barbarhood of the century", "Slavic bloodthirsty hatred", "annectionist pretensions", when speaking about Croatian and Slovenian anti-fascist struggle and combat for liberation from Italian occupation in Eastern Adriatic. Napolitano's statements caused prompt sharp reaction from Croatian President Stipe Mesić, when he said "that it's impossible not to see in Napolitano's statements traces of open racism, historical revisionism and political revanchism". European Commission reacted promptly on Mesić's reaction (but not on Napolitano's!), asking for toning down and warned (!!) Croatian President "not to use too sharp phrases".

On December 12, 2007, the Italian post office issued a stamp with a photo of the Croatian city of Rijeka and with the text "Rijeka - eastern land once part of Italy" ("Fiume-terra orientale già italiana") .

The severeness of this act could seen in use of prepositions and adjectives - "già italiana" could also mean "already Italian". The stamp was printed in 3.5 million of copies. , but was not delivered to the public by the Italian Post Office in order to forestall a possible diplomatic crisis with Croatian and Slovenian authorities.

Napolitano's statement in Feb 2008 (on "Foibe Memorial Day"), in which he reconfirmed his statements from 2007, and even dared to call Mesić's reactions from 2007 as "unjustified", caused sharp reaction from the Office of the Croatian President Stipe Mesić on 11 Feb 2008, in which it was said, that as a reaction to this Napolitano's statement, there's no need to change any word from Mesić's last year's reaction.

On Feb 12, 2008, the mayor of Rijeka, Vojko Obersnel, has sent a letter of protest to the city government of Milan, Italian embassy in Croatia and to Croatian embassy in Italy, because of text on the invitation card (for the celebration of naming the street in Milan after the city of Rijeka), in which :

• the history of Rijeka under D'Annunzio's and fascist rule is glorified and falsely described as "the time of prosperity" (in reality, Rijeka at that time stagnated and even suffered economical deterioration: port of Rijeka almost stopped working, there was a curfew in the city and permanent police surveillance over ordinary citizens)
• invitation card contained revisionist and expansionist text where it said that "D'Annunzio's action was necessary... in order to annect the city to Italy"
• and text in which the history of Rijeka's population is distorted ("citizens of Rijeka were over centuries mostly Italians and Italian-speaking")
• opens historical revisionism regarding Peace accords of Yugoslavia and Italy after WW2 ("a humiliating and shameful document for Italy")
• open territorial expanisionism and revisionism, in which the liberating war of Croats against fascist Italian ruler was described as "military conquistingr"
• lying about the ethnic toleration in Rijeka ("conqueror who didn't tolerated coexistention with Italians"), , , although Italian community in Rijeka since WW2 had their daily newspapers, theatres and schools

Dalmatia: a case of Italian Irredentism

The linguist Matteo Bartoli calculated that the Italians were nearly 30% of the Dalmatian population at the beginning of the Napoleonic wars, while currently there are only 300 Italians in Croatian Dalmatia and 500 Italians in coastal Montenegro. Bartoli's evaluation was followed with other claims such as 25% in 1814/1815 (according to a census done by the french Auguste De Marmont, governor-general of the napoleonic Illyrian provinces) and, 3 years later, around 70,000 of Italians in a total of 301,000 people living in Austrian Dalmatia.

Yugoslavian scholars (like Večerina, Duško) complained that all these evaluations were not conducted by modern scientific standards and concentrated solely on the spoken language of the population. They pinpointed that according to report of the court councillor Joseph Fölch in 1827, Italian language was in usage not only by noblemen, but also by some citizens of lower classes only in the coastal cities Zadar, Šibenik and Split. Since only around 20.000 people populated these cities and they were not all Italian speakers, their real number for those Yugoslavian scholars was rather much smaller probably around 5% .

Italian irredentists (like D'Annunzio) argued to the above Yugoslavian critics that Joseph Fölch forgot the Dalmatian islands of Cres, Lošinj, Vis, etc. with huge Italian communities and that the only official evidences about the Dalmatian population come from the Austrian census: the 1857 Austro-Hungarian census (here) precisely showed that in this year there were in Dalmatia 369.310 Slavs and 45.000 Italians, forgetting or hiding the fact that those censuses counted the persons with knowledge of Italian language as Italians, although majority of these were Croats and Slovenians, which was the policy of Habsburg Monarchy, in order to keep Slavs and their requests in their empire suppressed. With hiding of that fact, Italian irredentism misrepresented the percentage of Italians in Dalmatia, showing it much higher, at 15%, than it really was.

The last bastion of Italian presence in Dalmatia was the city of Zadar, administrative centre of Austria's province, where all Italian personnel from lost provinces in wars with Italy (Lombardy, Venice) moved to work. The amount of Italians grew as pro-Italianist party began losing the elections and positions all over Dalmatia to Croat unionist party, so all of Italian emmigrants moved to live in administrative centre, concentrating there. In the Habsburg empire census of 1910 the city of Zadar had an Italian population of 9,318 (or 69,3% out of the total of 13,438 inhabitants. Zadar population grew to 24,100 inhabitants, of which 20,300 Italians, when was the capital of the "Governatorato di Dalmazia" in 1942, fullfilling the aspirations of the Italian Irredentism in the Adriatic. Actually, after WWII and the Italian exodus from Dalmatia there are only 100 Dalmatian Italians in this city.

Italians in Irredent territories around Italy

The Italians of Italia irredenta, living in the areas not included in the Kingdom of Italy after the 1861 Unification of Italy, were in eight regions (where Irredentism took place vehemently, mainly during the Fascist period):

1) Istrian Italians in Istria-Venezia Giulia
2) Dalmatian Italians in Dalmatia
3) Corfiot Italians in Corfu and Ionian islands
4) Maltese Italians in Malta
5) Corsican Italians in Corsica
6) Nizzardo Italians in Nizza (Nice) and Nizzardo
7) Savoia Italians in Savoia (Savoy)
8) Ticino Italians in Ticino

We have to include that the Fascist Irredentists, after 1938, claimed even the Quarta Sponda, as was called the shore of Libya (and even Tunisia), where was planned a huge emigration of Italian colonists by Mussolini. Those Italians were called: Libyan Italians and Tunisian Italians.

Finally, the Italian possession in the Aegean sea of the Dodecanese went under a process of italianization by the fascist governor Cesare Maria De Vecchi after 1936: many Italians families were moved to these islands, where the Italian language was declared the official language. Even if there were no irredentistic movement on the Dodecanese islands, the governor De Vecchi considered in 1940 the possibility of a future inclusion of the Dodecanese islands in the Kingdom of Italy..

Political figures in the Italian irredentist movement

• Guglielmo Oberdan
• Cesare Battisti
• Nazario Sauro
• Damiano Chiesa
• Fabio Filzi
• Carmelo Borg Pisani
• Giuseppe Garibaldi
• Gabriele D'Annunzio
• Petru Simone Cristofini
• Petru Giovacchini

See also

• Irredentism
• Italians
• Italian Regency of Carnaro
• Gabriele D'Annunzio

v t e Italian diaspora
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Oceania	Australia Melbourne New Zealand
Exodus	Istrian–Dalmatian exodus Niçard exodus
Neighborhoods	Little Italy List of Italian-American neighborhoods
local ethnic Italians ancient Italian migrations former Italian colonies or protectorates

Notes

1. ^ Template:Hr iconGeografija.hr Esuli ili optanti?
2. Petar Strčić, Croatian academic, in the TV-show that discussed about the movie Cuore nel pozzo
3. Template:Hr icon Slobodna Dalmacija Gianfranco Fini: "Dalmacija, Rijeka i Istra oduvijek su talijanske zemlje", Oct 13, 2004
   ("Dalmatia, Rijeka and Istria have forever been Italian lands")
4. Template:Hr icon Slobodna Dalmacija Utroba koja je porodila talijanski iredentizam još uvijek je plodna, Mar 18, 2006
   (The bowels that gave birth to Italian irrendentism are still fertile)
5. ^ Template:Hr icon Nacional Talijanski ministar najavio invaziju na Dalmaciju, Oct 19, 2005
   (Italian minister announced an invasion on Dalmatia)
6. Template:Hr icon Slobodna Dalmacija Menia želi kontrolu nad 8 milijuna eura za Talijansku uniju, Feb 2, 2005
   (Menia wants control over 8 mil. euros for Italian Union)
7. ^ Template:Hr iconNet.hr Mesić iznenađen govorom Napolitana
8. Template:Hr icon Index.hr MVP uputio prosvjednu notu Italiji zbog poštanske marke s nacionalističkim natpisom
   (The Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sent a protest note to Italy, because of issue of a stamp with nationalistic text)
9. B92 - Internet, Radio and TV station Zagreb protests over Italian stamp
10. Template:Hr icon Novi list Talijanska iredenta skrivena pod krinkom svečanosti otvaranja Aleje grada Rijeke u Milanu
    Obersnel prosvjedovao zbog veličanja fašizma
11. Template:Hr icon Večernji list Obersnel prosvjeduje zbog talijanskog iskrivljavanja povijesti
12. R-1 Portal Rijeka Povijest treba prepustiti povjesničarima
13. Bartoli, Matteo. Le parlate italiane della Venezia Giulia e della Dalmazia. p.46
14. O broju Talijana/Talijanaša u Dalmaciji XIX. Stoljeća”, , Zavod za povijesne znanosti HAZU u Zadru, 2002, UDK 949.75:329.7”19”Dalmacija 2002, p. 344
    (“Concerning the number of Italians/pro-Italians in Dalmatia in the XIXth century”)
15. Statistisches Handbüchlein für die österreichische Monarchie, edited by the k.k. Direktion der administrativen Statistik

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
• Bartoli, Matteo. Le parlate italiane della Venezia Giulia e della Dalmazia. Tipografia italo-orientale. Grottaferrata, 1919.
• Colonel von Haymerle, Italicae res, Vienna, 1879 - the early history of Irredentists.
• Večerina, Duško, Talijanski Iredentizam ( Italian Irredentism ), ISBN 953-98456-0-2, Zagreb, 2001
• Vivante, Angelo, Irredentismo adriatico (The Adriatic Irredentism), 1984
• Slovene - Italian relations between 1880-1918
• Irredentists

External links

• Template:Hr icon Hrvati AMAC Gdje su granice (EU-)talijanskog bezobrazluka? (Where are the limits of Italian arrogancy?; page contains the speech of Italian deputy)
• Template:Hr icon Hrvati AMAC 'Božićni darovi' poniženoj Hrvatskoj (Christmas gifts to humiliated Croatia; page contains the scan of the incriminated stamp)
• Template:Hr icon Slobodna Dalmacija Počasni građanin Zadra kočnica talijanskoj ratifikaciji SSP-a
• Template:It icon D'Annunzio and Fiume
• Template:It icon Politicamentecorretto.com Onorevole Guglielmo Picchi Forza Italia
• Template:It icon Italia chiama Italia Francobollo Fiume: bloccata l'emissione
• Template:It icon Trieste.rvnet.eu Stoppato” il francobollo per Fiume, bufera: protestano Unione degli istriani, An e Forza Italia (contains the scan of the incriminated stamp)

Italian revisionist sites:

• Template:It icon Website of the Italian irredentism
• Template:It icon On the History of Dalmatia
• Template:It icon On the Italians in Dalmatia
• Template:It icon On Zara (Zadar), when was a city of the Kingdom of Italy.

• History of Austria-Hungary
• Contemporary Italian history
• History of Croatia
• Irredentism
• World War I
• World War II
• History of Italy