Title: Die Osterreichisch-Ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild. Dalmatien
Author: AA.VV.
Publishing House: Druck und Verlag der Kaiserlich-Konigleichen Hof-und Staatsdruckerei, Wien
Year: 1892
Under the auspices of the then heir to the imperial throne Rudolph of Habsburg, starting from 1883 the works were started to publish an encyclopedic work, in order to describe the multi-faceted Austro-Hungarian empire. The 24 volumes that emerged between 1885 and 1902 are the best that could be found at the time. The volume on Dalmatia came out in 1892, and some of the most famous scholars were called to compile it, including not a few Dalmatians. The chapter on Italian literature in Dalmatia is the work of the Tarantino Adolfo Mussafia, while the chapter on the Serbo-Croat literature is of the Albanian Marcel Kusar. Among the other authors, we mention Giuseppe Gelcich, Pietro / Petar Tartaglia, Francesco Gondola, Giorgio / Djuro Kolombatovic. After more than one hundred and twenty years, it remains a fundamental work.
Title: Istria in time. Manual of regional history of Istria with references to the city of Rijeka
Author: AA.VV.
Publishing House: Unione Italiana, Fiume – Popular University, Trieste – Center for Historical Research, Rovigno
Year: 2006
A book written mainly by Italian minority scholars in Slovenia and Croatia, dedicated primarily to their compatriots and then to anyone interested in the history of Istria. This text – designed and laid out to enter schools – is one of the most beautiful publishing innovations of recent decades. Coordinated by prof. Egidio Ivetic, some of the most famous names of historians in the region have collaborated to make “Istria in time” a point of arrival but also a starting point. From this book you can start to finally tell in a complete and updated way – without paying duty to the dictatorship of the day – the troubled history of a border region. Among all the interesting chapters I point out the final twenty pages, dedicated to the history of the Italian National Community from 1947 to 1992. The hope is that this excellent study will start an awareness-raising work in the schools of the Italian minority in the region, which will – hopefully – also be extended to the current majorities. Nothing better than mutual knowledge to favor a peaceful relationship.
Title: Istria. History, art, culture
Author: Alberi, Dario
Publishing House: Lint, Trieste
Year: 2001
This manual encyclopedic is at the same time a history of Istria, of its art, its peoples, its towns, its culture. Thanks to a painstaking work by the author, a veritable abyss in Italian publishing is being bridged, which did not know a work of this type, dedicated to the Istrian region now divided between three states (Italy, Slovenia and Croatia). Only a walker like Dario Alberi could have the patience to describe – we would say “step by step” – every smallest town in Istria. The result is an overall picture that is perhaps not always very easy to follow (sometimes the history of the various towns is a bit disheveled), but of great enjoyment. The agile format helps those who want to take the book around as a tour guide.
Title: Fragments of Dalmatian History
Author: Benevenia, Lorenzo
Publishing House: Dalmatian School of Sts. Giorgio and Trifone, Venice
Year: 2007
The first word that comes to mind when reading this series of essays by Lorenzo Benevenia is “erudition”. A scholarship that is not an end in itself, but put at the service of the local zaratine history: Benevenia tackles every issue having an impressive amount of past readings behind it. Certainly: the studies are dated and reflect the particular need of the scholar to oppose Croatian historiography, which in those years produced a considerable series of works. But for fans of Dalmatian history Benevenia is an essential step. Perhaps the only one that at the time could stand on a par with Giuseppe Praga.
Title: When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans. A Study of Identity in Pre-Nationalist Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia in the Medieval and Early-Modern Periods
Author: Fine, John VA jr.
Publishing House: The University of Michigan Press
Year: 2006
This book has raised a number of criticisms from the Croatian side against its author. John VA Fine Jr., the son of a university professor at Princeton University, studied at Harvard and at the age of thirty – in 1969 – began teaching at the University of Michigan. His field of interest ranges from theology and the history of Christianity to Byzantine history, but has focused in particular on the medieval and modern history of the Balkans. “When Etnicity did not Matter in the Balkans” presents itself with an impressive critical apparatus and is the result of years of study and travel in the locations covered by the subject. The assumption of Fine is that the idea of ”croaticità” is surprisingly recent, dating more or less to the mid-nineteenth century. This idea then imposed itself overwhelmingly in the following decades, and particularly in the 20th century. On the contrary: for Fine there was never in history a concept of “Croatian nation” that brought together the peoples currently considered Croats. In particular, the prevailing concept was that of an indistinct “slavity”, however opened in the areas of Dalmatia to external influences. A fluid concept and not at all granitic, therefore. Fine shows how the term “Croatian” was used in Dalmatia little or not at all, and this in all contexts. Reactions by some Croatian scholars have come to suggest that the Serbian ancestry of Fine’s wife perniciously influenced the scholar, making him write an ancient text. To be honest, the anticroaticity to me does not seem obvious: perhaps Fine has simply touched an open nerve. for Fine there was never in history a concept of “Croatian nation” that brought together the peoples currently considered Croats. In particular, the prevailing concept was that of an indistinct “slavity”, however opened in the areas of Dalmatia to external influences. A fluid concept and not at all granitic, therefore. Fine shows how the term “Croatian” was used in Dalmatia little or not at all, and this in all contexts. Reactions by some Croatian scholars have come to suggest that the Serbian ancestry of Fine’s wife perniciously influenced the scholar, making him write an ancient text. To be honest, the anticroaticity to me does not seem obvious: perhaps Fine has simply touched an open nerve. for Fine there was never in history a concept of “Croatian nation” that brought together the peoples currently considered Croats. In particular, the prevailing concept was that of an indistinct “slavity”, however opened in the areas of Dalmatia to external influences. A fluid concept and not at all granitic, therefore. Fine shows how the term “Croatian” was used in Dalmatia little or not at all, and this in all contexts. Reactions by some Croatian scholars have come to suggest that the Serbian ancestry of Fine’s wife perniciously influenced the scholar, making him write an ancient text. To be honest, the anticroaticity to me does not seem obvious: perhaps Fine has simply touched an open nerve. In particular, the prevailing concept was that of an indistinct “slavity”, however opened in the areas of Dalmatia to external influences. A fluid concept and not at all granitic, therefore. Fine shows how the term “Croatian” was used in Dalmatia little or not at all, and this in all contexts. Reactions by some Croatian scholars have come to suggest that the Serbian ancestry of Fine’s wife perniciously influenced the scholar, making him write an ancient text. To be honest, the anticroaticity to me does not seem obvious: perhaps Fine has simply touched an open nerve. In particular, the prevailing concept was that of an indistinct “slavity”, however opened in the areas of Dalmatia to external influences. A fluid concept and not at all granitic, therefore. Fine shows how the term “Croatian” was used in Dalmatia little or not at all, and this in all contexts. Reactions by some Croatian scholars have come to suggest that the Serbian ancestry of Fine’s wife perniciously influenced the scholar, making him write an ancient text. To be honest, the anticroaticity to me does not seem obvious: perhaps Fine has simply touched an open nerve. Fine shows how the term “Croatian” was used in Dalmatia little or not at all, and this in all contexts. Reactions by some Croatian scholars have come to suggest that the Serbian ancestry of Fine’s wife perniciously influenced the scholar, making him write an ancient text. To be honest, the anticroaticity to me does not seem obvious: perhaps Fine has simply touched an open nerve. Fine shows how the term “Croatian” was used in Dalmatia little or not at all, and this in all contexts. Reactions by some Croatian scholars have come to suggest that the Serbian ancestry of Fine’s wife perniciously influenced the scholar, making him write an ancient text. To be honest, the anticroaticity to me does not seem obvious: perhaps Fine has simply touched an open nerve.