(1) The province or ‘crownland’ of Gorizia and Gradisca; (2) Trieste; (3) Istria; (4) Dalmatia—these four all formerly parts of Austria; and (5) Fiume, which belonged to Hungary. In addition some small bits of the provinces of Carinthia and Carniola have been involved in the dispute.
All these territories have a certain geographic unity. They form a long, narrow fringe of coastland and islands, rigidly separated from the Yugo-Slav hinterland by the successive chains of the Julian Alps, the Karst, the Velebite Mountains, and the Dinaric Alps. These ranges, which are the continuation of the Italian Alps, seem to detach the eastern coast of the Adriatic from the world beyond the mountains and to orient it towards the opposite western shore, of which it appears to be, in many respects, only an extension. Indeed, in its climate, its physical aspect, its vegetation; in the customs and mode of life of its inhabitants; its seafaring and commercial activities, and its age-long reliance upon communications by water rather than by land, this littoral region resembles Italy much more than the Balkans.
History has conformed to this aspect of geography. Not only did Rome long hold the whole eastern coast and plant there Latin colonies and a Latin tongue which, in some spots at least, seem never to have disappeared; but Venice succeeded to the inheritance of Rome, and from the tenth century to the end of the eighteenth imposed her sway over a large part of the eastern littoral and the islands. The Slavs had, indeed, penetrated to the coast or near it, in the seventh century; and ever since it may be assumed that the bulk of the population in almost every province on this coast has been of Slavic stock. Nevertheless, the Italians remained the dominant race in every respect save numbers; theirs was the language of business, of politics, of society, of literature, the language which almost everyone understood and tried to speak, if he pretended to be anybody; Italian was the civilization which has left such splendid monuments in the duomi and palazzi, the loggie and the campanili, which adorn the coast cities from Trieste to Ragusa. It is no great exaggeration when Italians today talk of eighteen centuries of Italianità in the lands east of the Adriatic. Nor is it strange that in Dalmatia, with her vines and olives, laurels and cypresses, and here and there a palm; with her warm Mediterranean sun and ever-present vistas of blue waters; with her cities studded with Roman and Venetian remains, and the lion of San Marco guarding every older edifice; the present-day Italian should feel himself very much in his own country.
But the nineteenth century revivals of dormant nationalities have brought cruel trials to the defenders of historic civilizations. Since the middle of that century, the Adriatic lands have seen a bitter conflict between the resurgent Croats and Slovenes, who are in most cases the majority, and the Italians. This conflict has been complicated and envenomed by the insidious and sometimes violent interventions of the Austrian and Hungarian authorities, both anxious to maintain their hold upon the coast by playing off the two chief nationalities of that region against one another. At Fiume the Magyars systematically favored the Italians in order to prevent the control of Hungary’s one port by the Croatians. In the other coastal territories the Austrians generally supported and spurred on the Slavs, who were regarded as less dangerous than the obnoxious nation which had brought Austria to grief in 1859 and 1866. Hence at the present day both of the rival races can say that the natural course of development has been perverted: neither quite likes to accept the ethnographic status quo produced through fifty years of machinations or violence by Vienna and Budapest.
Down to the World War the contest remained pretty much a local one, attracting no great amount of attention from the Italians of the kingdom, or the outside Yugo-Slavs, or the world at large. The other Yugo-Slavs had more pressing problems nearer home. In Italy the Carbonari did, indeed, dream of an ‘Ausonian Republic,’ extending from Malta to the Trentino, and from Trieste to Cattaro; and such seems also to have been the ideal of Daniel Manin and other heroes of 1848. All Italians agreed that Gorizia, Trieste, and Istria belonged by nature to Italy as much as did the Trentino or Venetia. But Dante, in a much quoted passage, had described the eastern side of Istria as the natural limit of Italy: he had spoken of the
“Quarnaro che Italia chiude.”
Mazzini, the greatest Italian political thinker of the nineteenth century, had also taken this to be the eastern boundary of Italy, and had spoken in the loftiest terms of the union and fraternity that ought to reign between his countrymen and the Yugo-Slavs. There seems to be no evidence that Cavour thought seriously of claiming anything east of the Adriatic—certainly not Dalmatia.
The Italian public thus had no very clear idea as to how much rightfully belonged to their country on the east; and as time wore on after the close of the Risorgimento period, that public more or less forgot about the Italian colonies beyond the Adriatic, or else gave them up as indefensible positions which there could be little hope of saving. Thus the Great War caught both Italians and Yugo-Slavs rather unprepared, and without very definite ideas or clear-cut programmes with respect to the Adriatic question.
It is well known that the Italian government then, rather hastily perhaps, formulated its programme and its demands in the treaty of London, of April 26, 1915—the treaty signed by England, France, and Russia in order to secure Italy’s entry into the War. This treaty promised Italy, in case of victory, a new frontier including the southern Tyrol, all of Gorizia, Trieste, all Istria, northern Dalmatia as far as a line which cuts the coast just west of Traù, and several of the larger Dalmatian islands farther south, including Lissa and Curzola. It did not include Fiume, presumably because the assumption then was that Austria-Hungary would continue to exist after the War as a great power, which must have at least one port on the Adriatic.
This treaty, were it ever to be carried out, would incorporate in Italy about 800,000 Yugo-Slavs, nearly half of whom live in Dalmatia. It inevitably created great resentment at Belgrade and Agram, and helped to produce that regrettable state of relations between Italians and Yugo-Slavs which has had such unfortunate results in the past year. At any rate, during the negotiations of the past year the Italians themselves have elected not to adhere to the strict terms of the treaty of London, but have shown, I think it must be admitted, a genuine willingness to seek a compromise more acceptable to their opponents.