Jump to content

Italianization: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Content deleted Content added
Fascist Italianization: What a mess, we mix here populations with regions. Also it does not make sense to include South-Tyrol, Friuli and Julian March (they were already in the process before WWII).
Fascist Italianization: now the intro is correct - it was missing lots of information
Line 4: Line 4:
[[File:Italy 1796.png|thumb|300px|Independent kingdoms and territories pre-Italian unification]]
[[File:Italy 1796.png|thumb|300px|Independent kingdoms and territories pre-Italian unification]]


==Fascist Italianization==
==Italianization==
[[File:Sterzing-Vipiteno.JPG|left|thumb|280px|The village of [[Sterzing]], Italianized as ''Vipiteno'']]
[[File:Sterzing-Vipiteno.JPG|left|thumb|280px|The village of [[Sterzing]], Italianized as ''Vipiteno'']]
The Fascist Italianization consisted in the process of cultural and ethnic assimilation of the native minority populations living in the ex-[[Austro-Hungarian]] territories given to Italy in exchange for joining Great Britain in [[World War I|First World War]]. This process was conducted between 1922 and 1945.
Italianization under [[Italian Fascism]] was a government organized process of forced cultural and ethnic assimilation of the native minority populations living in the ex-[[Austro-Hungarian]] territories given to Italy in exchange for joining Great Britain in [[World War I|First World War]]. This process was conducted between 1922 and 1943. Initially the affected people were the Germans in the [[Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol|Trentino-Alto Adige]] region and the Slovens and Croats in the [[Julian March]]. The program was later extended to areas annexed during [[World War II]], affecting Slovenes and [[Croats]] in [[Gorski Kotar]] and coastal [[Dalmatia]].
The program was later extended to areas annexed during [[World War II]], affecting Slovenes and [[Croats]] in [[Gorski Kotar]] and coastal [[Dalmatia]].


===Istria, Julian March, and Dalmatia===
===Istria, Julian March, and Dalmatia===

Revision as of 16:17, 11 October 2012

Italianization (Italian: Italianizzazione) is the process of ethnically non- or partially Italian people assimilate into Italian culture. The process can be voluntary or forced and was conducted essentially during the Fascism, between 1922 and 1945

Independent kingdoms and territories pre-Italian unification

Italianization

The village of Sterzing, Italianized as Vipiteno

Italianization under Italian Fascism was a government organized process of forced cultural and ethnic assimilation of the native minority populations living in the ex-Austro-Hungarian territories given to Italy in exchange for joining Great Britain in First World War. This process was conducted between 1922 and 1943. Initially the affected people were the Germans in the Trentino-Alto Adige region and the Slovens and Croats in the Julian March. The program was later extended to areas annexed during World War II, affecting Slovenes and Croats in Gorski Kotar and coastal Dalmatia.

Istria, Julian March, and Dalmatia

The Treaty of Rapallo and the Italianization of ethnic Slovenes on the Ethnographic map of Austria-Hungary.

During the period of occupation between years 1918 and 1920, all Slovene and Croatian cultural associations (Sokol, reading rooms etc.) had been forbidden, and specifically so later with the Law on Associations (1925), the Law on Public Demonstrations (1926) and the Law on Public Order (1926), the closure of the classical lyceum in Pazin, of the high school in Voloska (1918), the closure of the Slovene and Croatian primary schools followed.

On 13 July 1920, under a pretense of a retaliation for the insurgency in Split, the National Hall in Trieste, the cultural and economic centre of Slovene inhabitants of Trieste, was burned by the Blackshirts.[1] The act was praised by Mussolini, two years before he would become Prime Minister, as a "masterpiece of the Triestine fascism"[2]. It was part of a wider pogrom against the Slovenes and other Slavs in the very centre of Trieste and the harbinger of the ensuing violence against the Slovenes and Croats in the Julian March.[1]

A leaflet from the period of Fascist Italianization in Vodnjan (Dignano) prohibiting usage of "Slavic language"

In September 1920, Mussolini stated:

When dealing with such a race as Slavic - inferior and barbarian - we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy. We should not be afraid of new victims. The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps. I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians.

— Benito Mussolini, speech held in Pula, 20 September 1920[3]

This confirmed the Fascist stance against the Slovene minority in Italy and Croatian population of the Julian March.[2] Especially after Benito Mussolini came to power in 1922, the violent Fascist Italianization of Slovene and Croatian populations and ethnic cleansing policies were under no international restraint in ex-Austro-Hungarian territories given to Italy in exchange for joining Great Britain in World War I. No undertaking about the rights of minorities in either the Treaty of Rapallo or the Treaty of Rome was given in Istria, Trieste's surroundings and Julian March, and after 1924 Treaty of Rome in Rijeka; Croatian, Slovene, German toponyms were systematically Italianized.

Fascist Italy brought Italian teachers from South Italy to Italianize ethnic Slovene and Croatian children, while the Slovene and Croatian teachers, poets, writers, artists and clergy were exiled to Sardinia and elsewhere to South Italy. In Istria the use of Croatian and Slovene languages in the administration and in the courts had already been restricted and was prohibited after March 1923 in administration, and after October 1925 in law courts, as well. Slovene and Croatian schools were prohibited with the scholastic reform of Fascist minister Giovanni Gentile on 1 October 1923. Use of Slovene and Croatian languages was forbidden. Acts of Fascist violence were not hampered by the authorities.

In 1926, claiming that it was restoring surnames to their original Italian form, the Italian government announced the Italianization of German, Slovene and Croatian surnames, giving this program open legislative form, adding furtherly Italianizing all the minorities.[4][5] There was no exception for first names. Some Slovenes and Croatians have under these circumstances "willingly" accepted Italianization in order to stop being a second-class citizens without upward social mobility [citation needed].

Most native Slovenes resisted these policies with the support of local Catholic clergy of the Slovene origin. However local Slovene and Croatian teachers, writers, artists and clergy have been brutally punished for resisting Fascist ethnic cleansing policies[citation needed]. All Slovene and Croatian societies and sporting and cultural associations had to cease every activity in line with a decision of provincial fascist secretaries dated 12 June 1927. On a specific order from the prefect of Trieste on 19 November 1928 the Edinost political society was also dissolved. Croatian and Slovene financial co-operatives in Istria, which at first were absorbed by the Pula or Trieste Savings Banks, were gradually liquidated.[6] All non-Italians were forced to attend Italian language schools and to use only the Italian language in public places including churches. Slovene and Croatian institutions, were vandalized, as were German cultural institutions. Libraries and the media were closed.

After complete destruction of all Slovene minority cultural, financial and other organizations, and continuation of violent Fascist Italianization policies, the Slovene militant anti-Fascist organization TIGR emerged in 1927, co-ordinating the Slovene resistance against Fascist Italy until its dismantlement by the Fascist secret police in 1941, after which some of TIGR ex-members joined Slovene Partisans.

In 1927, minister for public works Giuseppe Cobolli Gigli in fascist Italy wrote in Gerarchia magazine, a Fascist publication, that "The Istrian muse named as foibas those places suitable for burial of enemies of the national [Italian] characteristics of Istria".[7][8][9][10][11]

South Tyrol

In 1919, at the time of its annexation, the southern part of Tyrol was inhabited by almost 90% German speakers.[12] Under the 1939 South Tyrol Option Agreement, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini determined the status of the German people living in the province. They could emigrate to Germany or stay in Italy. Because of the outbreak of the Second World War, this agreement was never fully implemented.

In October 1923, the "use of the Italian language became mandatory on all levels of federal, provincial and local government".[13] Regulations by the fascist authorities required that all kinds of signs and public notices had to be in Italian only, while maps, postcards and other graphic material had to show Italian place names.[13] In September 1925, Italian became the sole permissible language in courts of law, meaning that cases could be heard from now on only in Italian.[13] Illegal Katakombenschulen ("Catacomb schools") were set up by the local German-speaking minority to teach children the German language. Immigration in South-Tyrol of native Italians from Southern Italy was also incentivated.

A number of factors contributed to limit the effects of the Italian policy, namely the adverse nature of the territory (mainly mountains and valleys of difficult access), the difficulty for the Italians from Southern Italy to get used to a completely different environment and later on the alliance betweeen German and Italy. Indeed, today (almost one century after the annexation of South Tyrol)[14], 70% of the population of South-Tyrol still speak German.

World War II

During World War II, Italy occupied almost all of Dalmatia, and the Italian government made stringent efforts to Italianize the region. Among other things, it was forbidden to listen to any radio station in Croatian or Slovene, and those doing so risked being identified as an enemy of the state and executed. Yugoslavs were not allowed to buy land or property, and drastic measures were enacted to ensure that.[15] The program was implemented by Italo Sauro, son of Nazario Sauro and personal counselor to Mussolini for Italianization.
Italian occupying forces were accused of committing war crimes in order to transform occupied territories into ethnic Italian territories.[16]

The Italian government operated many concentration and internment camps[17] for Slavic citizens, such as Rab concentration camp and one on the island of Molat. Survivors received no compensation from Italy after the war.

Mario Roatta was the commander of the 2nd Italian Army in Yugoslavia and to suppress the mounting resistance led by the Slovene partisans adopted tactics of "summary executions, hostage-taking, reprisals, internments and the burning of houses and villages",[18] for which after the war the Yugoslav government sought unsuccessfully to have him extradited for war crimes. He was quoted as saying "Non dente per dente, ma testa per dente" ("Not a tooth for tooth but a head for a tooth"), while General Mario Robotti, Commander of the Italian 11th division in Slovenia and Croatia was quoted as saying "Si ammazza troppo poco" ("There are not enough killings") in 1942.[19] [20]

References

  1. ^ a b "90 let od požiga Narodnega doma v Trstu". Primorski dnevnik [The Littoral Daily] (in Slovene). 2010. p. 14–15. COBISS 11683661. Retrieved 28 February 2012. {{cite news}}: More than one of |at= and |page= specified (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  2. ^ a b Sestani, Armando, ed. (10 February 2012). "Il confine orientale: una terra, molti esodi". Gli esuli istriani, dalmati e fiumani a Lucca (in Italian). Instituto storico della Resistenca e dell'Età Contemporanea in Provincia di Lucca. p. 12–13. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |trans_chapter= ignored (|trans-chapter= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
  3. ^ Verginella, Marta (2011). "Antislavismo, razzismo di frontiera?". Aut aut (in Italian). ISBN 9788865761069.
  4. ^ Regio decreto legge 10 Gennaio 1926, n. 17: Restituzione in forma italiana dei cognomi delle famiglie della provincia di Trento
  5. ^ Hrvoje Mezulić-Roman Jelić: O Talijanskoj upravi u Istri i Dalmaciji 1918-1943.: nasilno potalijančivanje prezimena, imena i mjesta, Dom i svijet, Zagreb, 2005., ISBN 953-238-012-4
  6. ^ A Historical Outline Of Istria
  7. ^ Gerarchia, vol. IX, 1927: "La musa istriana ha chiamato Foiba degno posto di sepoltura per chi nella provincia d'Istria minaccia le caratteristiche nazionali dell'Istria"Template:Sr icon[1]
  8. ^ Template:Sr iconhttp://www.danas.rs/20050217/dijalog1.html
  9. ^ Template:It icon http://www.lavocedifiore.org/SPIP/article.php3?id_article=1692
  10. ^ Template:It iconhttp://www.osservatoriobalcani.org/article/articleview/3901/1/176/
  11. ^ Template:It icon http://www.laregione.ch/interna.asp?idarticolo=105997&idtipo=91
  12. ^ Oscar Benvenuto (ed.): "South Tyrol in Figures 2008", Provincial Statistics Institute of the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol, Bozen/Bolzano 2007, p. 19, Table 11
  13. ^ a b c Steininger, Rolf (2003), p. 23-24
  14. ^ "astat info Nr. 38" (PDF). Table 1 — Declarations of which language group belong to/affiliated to — Population Census 2011. Retrieved 2012-06-12.
  15. ^ Josip Grbelja: Talijanski genocid u Dalmaciji - konclogor Molat, Udruga logoraša antifašista u talijanskom Koncentracijskom logoru Molat : Regoč, Zagreb, 2004., ISBN 953-6813-01-7
  16. ^ Review of Croatian History Issue no.1 /2005 Z. Dizdar: Italian Policies Toward Croatians In Occupied Territories During The Second World War
  17. ^ Elenco Dei Campi Di Concentramento Italiani
  18. ^ IngentaConnect General Roatta's war against the partisans in Yugoslavia: 1942
  19. ^ "Si ammazza troppo poco". I crimini di guerra italiani 1940-1943 Oliva Gianni
  20. ^ Sixty years of ethnic cleansing, by Tommaso Di Francesco and Giacomo Scotti

Template:Link GA