- This article is about a geographical region bordering the Adriatic Sea. For information on the asteroid, see 183 Istria.
Istria (Istra, pronounced /'istra/ in Croatian and Slovenian; Istria, pronounced /'istrija/ in Italian, Istrien, pronounced /'istrijen/ in German) is the biggest peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. The peninsula is located at the head of the Adriatic between the Gulf of Trieste and the Bay of Kvarner.
The region lies mostly in Istria county of western Croatia. Important towns in Croatian Istria include Pula (Pola), Poreč (Parenzo), Rovinj (Rovigno), Pazin (Pisino), Labin (Albona), 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 Piran (Pirano), Portorož (Portorose) and Koper (Capodistria) lies in Slovenia, and a tiny region encompassing the town of Muggia (Slovenian Milje) belongs to Italy.
The larger geographical features of Istria include the Učka (Monte Maggiore) mountain in the east, the rivers Dragonja, Mirna, Pazinčica and Raša, and the Lim bay.
Famous people like Dante, Jules Verne, James Joyce and Robert Koch worked, wrote, visited or were simply inspired by 'Terra Magica'.
History
The name is derived from the Illyrian tribe of the Histri, which Strabo refers to as living in the region. The Romans described the Histri as a fierce tribe of Illyrian 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.
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 Longobardi, annexed to the Frankish kingdom by Pippin III in 789, and then successively controlled by the dukes of Carinthia, Meran, Bavaria and by the patriarch of Aquileia, before it became the territory of the Republic of Venice. It passed to the Habsburgs in 1797, (reverting temporarily to Napoleon in 1805- 1813).
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 of Istria, 168,116 (41.6%) spoke Serbo-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.
After World War I, Istria passed from Austrian Habsburg rule to that of Italy. In Italy, the Slavs were exposed to a policy of forced Italianization. Some Croats allege further that the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini colonized Istria with up to 50,000 more Italians (from Calabria, Sicily). The subsequent Nazi occupation during World War II further worsened the once traditionally tolerant ethnic relations.
After the end of World War II, parts of Istria were assigned to Socialist Yugoslavia. In the process, (1945-1956), a few thousand people were killed (see: foibe) and some 300,000 Italians abandoned the Italian territories along the north-eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea – the Slovene Littoral, Istrian peninsula, and coastal part of Dalmatia. By 1956, when the last wave of the exodus (or 'esodo,' as it came to be called by its participants) was completed and rest of the region annexed by the Communist Yugoslav state, Istria lost about half of its population and nearly all of what had been its dominant social and cultural identity. The drama experienced by the Italians in Istria is most powerfully visible in the exodus from Pola, 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 Pola to Yugoslavia. In an emotional display of desperation and patriotism, the exiles took with them not only their belongings but also their dead. The exodus from Pola, the only organized exodus from Istria, stood as a symbol of the “martyrdom” of the Italians in Istria and received wide international press coverage. Some well-known postwar exiles from Istria include race driver Mario Andretti, singer Sergio Endrigo and boxer Nino Benvenuti. Following the exodus, the areas were settled with Croats, Slovenians and a minute number of other Yugoslav nationalities like Serbs or Montenegrins.
There is a long tradition of tolerance between the people who live there, regardless of their nationality, and although many Istrians today are ethnic Croats, 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 čakavian dialect. Nowadays the Italian minority is small, but the Istrian county is bilingual.
Since the first multi-party elections in 1990, the regional party Istrian Democratic Assembly (Istarski Demokratski Sabor or Dieta Democratica Istriana) has consistently received an absolute majority of the vote and maintained a position often contrary to the government in Zagreb with regards to their regional autonomy.
Ethnicity
As with many other regions in the former Yugoslavia, common concepts about ethnicity and nationality fail when applied to Istria. Discussions about Istrian ethnicities 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 to a descendent of immigrants from Sicily during the Mussolini period as it can refer to autochthonous speakers of the Venetian language whose antecedents in the region extend back to the inception of the Venetian Republic. 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.
Similarly, national powers "claim" Istrian Slavs according to local language, so that speakers of Cakavian dialects are considered by the Croatian government to be Croatians and speakers of Kajkavian dialects are considered by the Slovenian government to be Slovenians. Many Istrian Slavs consider themselves simply to be Istrians, with no additional national affiliation. Others consider themselves to be patriotic members of the larger nations.
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