Italianization (Italian:italianizzazione[italjaniddzatˈtsjoːne];Croatian:talijanizacija;French:italianisation;Spanish:italianizción;Portuguese:italianização;Slovene:poitaljančevanje;German:Italianisierung;Greek:Ιταλοποίηση,romanized: Italopoíisi) is the spread ofItalian culture,language andidentity by way of integration orassimilation.[1][2] It is also known for a process organized by theKingdom of Italy to force cultural and ethnic assimilation of the native populations living, primarily, in the formerAustro-Hungarian territories that were transferred to Italy afterWorld War I in exchange for Italy having joined theTriple Entente in 1915; this process was mainly conducted during the period ofFascist rule between 1922 and 1943.
Between 1922 and the beginning ofWorld War II, the affected people were the German-speaking andLadin-speaking populations ofTrentino-Alto Adige,Friulians, and Slovenes and Croats in theJulian March. The program was later extended to areas annexed during World War II, affecting Slovenes in theProvince of Ljubljana, and Croats inGorski Kotar and coastalDalmatia, Greeks in theIonian islands and, to a lesser extent, to the French- andArpitan-speaking regions of the western Alps (such as theAosta valley). On the other hand, other indigenous communities, such as inLombardy,Venetia and the island ofSardinia, had already undergone cultural and linguistic Italianization starting from an earlier period.
The formerAustrian Littoral (later renamed theJulian March) was occupied by the Italian Army after theArmistice with Austria. Following the annexation of the March by Italy, 400[3] cultural, sporting (for exampleSokol), youth, social and professional Slavic organizations, and libraries ("reading rooms"), three political parties, 31 newspapers and journals, and 300 co-operatives and financial institutions 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 inVolosko (1918), the closure of the 488[3] Slovene and Croat primary schools followed.
The period of violent persecution of Slovenes inTrieste began with riots on 13 April 1920, which were organised as a retaliation for the assault on the Italian occupying troops by the local Croatian population in the11 July Split incident. Many Slovene-owned shops and buildings were destroyed during the riots, which culminated in the burning down of theNarodni dom ("National Home"), the community hall of the Triestine Slovenes, by a group of Italian Fascists, led byFrancesco Giunta.[4]Benito Mussolini praised this action as a "masterpiece of the Triestine fascism". Two years later he became prime minister of Italy.[5]
In September 1920, Mussolini said:
When dealing with such a race as Slavic – inferior and barbaric – we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy. We should not be afraid of new victims. The Italian border should run across theBrenner Pass,Monte Nevoso and theDinaric Alps. I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians.
— Benito Mussolini, speech held inPola, 20 September 1920[6]
This expressed a common Fascist opinion against the Croatian andSlovene minority in the Julian March.[5]
Italian teachers were assigned to schools and the use ofCroatian andSlovene languages in the administration and in the courts restricted. After March 1923 these languages were prohibited in administration, and after October 1925 in law courts, as well. In 1923, in the context ofthe organic school reform prepared by the fascist ministerGiovanni Gentile, teaching in languages different from Italian was abolished. In the Julian March this meant the end of teaching in Croatian and Slovenian. Some 500 Slovene teachers, nearly half of all Slovene teachers in the Littoral region, were moved by the Italians from the area, to the interior of Italy, while Italian teachers were sent to teach Slovene children Italian.[7] However, inŠušnjevica (it: Valdarsa) the use ofIstro-Rumanian language was allowed after 1923.[8]
In 1926, claiming that it was restoring surnames to their original Italian form, the Italian government announced the Italianization of German, Slovene and Croat surnames.[9][10] In the Province of Trieste alone, 3,000 surnames were modified and 60,000 people had their surnames amended to an Italian-sounding form.[3] First or given names were also Italianized.
Slovene and Croat 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, theEdinost political society was also dissolved. Croat and Slovene financial co-operatives in Istria, which at first were absorbed by the Pula or Trieste savings banks, were gradually liquidated.[11]
In 1927,Giuseppe Cobolli Gigli, the minister for public works infascist Italy, wrote inGerarchia magazine, a Fascist publication, that "The Istrian muse named asFoibe those places suitable for burial of enemies of the national [Italian] characteristics of Istria".[12][13][14][15]
The Slovenemilitant anti-Fascist organizationTIGR emerged in 1927. It co-ordinated the Slovene resistance against Fascist Italy until its dismantlement by theFascist secret police in 1941. At the time, some TIGR ex-members joined theSlovene Partisans. As a result of the repression, more than 100,000 Slovenes and Croats emigrated from Italian territory between the two world wars, the vast majority to Yugoslavia.[7] Among the notable Slovene émigrés from Trieste were the writersVladimir Bartol andJosip Ribičič, the legal theoristBoris Furlan, and the architectViktor Sulčič.
During theItalian annexation of Dalmatia in World War II,Giuseppe Bastianini immediately gave way to a massive and violent Italianization of the annexed provinces: the political secretaries of the fascist party, of the after-work club, of the agricultural consortia and doctors, teachers, municipal employees, midwives were sent to administer them, immediately hated by those whose jobs they took away.[16] Italian was imposed as a compulsory language for officials and teachers, althoughSerbo-Croatian was tolerated for communications within the civil administration.[17] In the major centres, various signs written in Croatian were replaced by writings in Italian, Croatian flags, newspapers and posters were prohibited except the bilingual ones published by the Italian civil and military authorities; cultural and sporting societies dissolved, the Roman salute imposed, some Italian surnames restored.[18] We also proceeded, as already inJulian March andSouth Tyrol, with the Italianization of geographical names, streets and squares.[17] A special office for the Adriatic lands offered loans and benefits to those willing to denationalize, and in the meantime purchased land to redistribute to former Italian combatants.[19] Scholarships were established for Dalmatians who wanted to continue their studies in Italy and 52 Dalmatian Italians and 211 Croatians and Serbs made use of them.[20]
In 1919, at the time of its annexation,South Tyrol was inhabited by almost 90%German speakers.[21][22] In October 1923, the use of the Italian language became mandatory (although not exclusive) on all levels of federal, provincial and local government.[23]
Regulations by the fascist authorities required that all kinds of signs and public notices be in Italian only. Maps, postcards and other graphic material had to show Italian place names.[23] In September 1925, Italian became the sole permissible language in courts of law.[23] IllegalKatakombenschulen ("Catacomb schools") were set up by the local German-speaking majority to teach children the German language. The government created incentives to encourage immigration of native Italians to South Tyrol. Several factors limited the effects of the Italian policy, namely the adverse nature of the territory (mainly mountains and valleys of difficult access), the difficulty for the Italian-speaking individuals to adapt to a completely different environment and, later on, the alliance betweenGermany and Italy: under the 1939South Tyrol Option Agreement,Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini determined the status of theGerman people living in the province. They either had to opt for emigration toGermany or stay in Italy and become fully Italianized. Because of the outbreak ofWorld War II, this agreement was never fully implemented and most ethnic Germans remained or returned at the end of the war.
Following World War II, South Tyrol was one of the first regions to be granted autonomy on the ground of its peculiar linguistic situation; any further attempts at Italianization were formally abandoned.
In the 21st century, just over 100 years after the Italian annexation of the region,[24] 64% of the population of South Tyrol speak German as theirfirst and everyday language.
Fascism tried to ItalianizeAosta Valley, suppressing the French-speaking schools (French:Écoles de hameau), establishing the exclusive use of the Italian language in judicial offices (Royal Decree of 15 October 1925, n. 1796), suppressing the teaching of the French language (Royal Decree 22 November 1925, n. 2191), Italianizing toponyms (ordinance of 22 July 1939) and suppressing newspapers in French, such asLe Duché d'Aoste,Le Pays d'Aoste andLa Patrie valdôtaine. Furthermore, with Royal Decree n. 1 of 2 January 1927, Aosta Valley became theprovince of Aosta including also part of the Italian-speakingCanavese.
A secret society was organized in the region for the defense of the Aosta Valley identity and the use of the French language, theLigue valdôtaine, whose founder was Anselme Réan, as well as apartisan activity which led to the Declaration ofChivasso, signed by the representatives of the communities Alpine in defense of their particularism. A member of the resistance, Émile Chanoux, arrested by the fascist militia, was assassinated in prison on the night of 18-19 May 1944.
In 1720, the island ofSardinia was ceded toAlpineHouse of Savoy, which at the time already controlled a number of other states in the Italian mainland, most notablyPiedmont. The Savoyards had imposed the Italian language on Sardinia as part of a wider cultural policy designed to bind the island to the Mainland in such a way as to prevent either future attempts of political separation or curb a renewed interest on the part ofSpain. In fact, the complex linguistic composition of the nativeislanders, theretofore extraneous to Italian and its cultural sphere, had been previously roofed bySpanish as the prestige language of the upper class for centuries; in this context, Italianization, while difficult at first, was intended as a cultural policy whereby the social and economic structures of the island could become increasingly intertwined with the Mainland and expressly Piedmont, where the Kingdom's central power lay.[25] The 1847Perfect Fusion, performed with an assimilationist intent[26] and politically analogous to theActs of Union betweenBritain andIreland, determined the conventional moment wherefrom, according to Antonietta Dettori, theSardinian language ceased to be regarded as an identity marker of a specific ethnic group, and was instead lumped in with a dialectal conglomerate which, in the Mainland, had long been subordinate to the national language.[27][28] The jurist Carlo Baudi di Vesme, in his 1848 essayConsiderazioni politiche ed economiche sulla Sardegna, stated that Sardinian was one of the most significant barriers separating the islanders from the Italian Mainland, and only the suppression of their dialects could ensure that they might understand the governmental instructions, issued in Italian, and become properly "civilized" subjects of the Savoyard Kingdom.[29]
However, it was not until the rise of fascism that Sardinian was actively banned and/or excluded from any residual cultural activities to enforce a thoroughshift to Italian.[30][31] According to Guido Melis, the resulting assimilation created "an intergenerational rift that could no longer be healed".[32]
After the end of the Second World War, efforts continued to be made to further Italianize the population, with the justification that by doing so, as the principles of themodernization theory ran, the island could rid itself of the "ancient traditional practices" which held it back, regarded as a legacy of barbarism to be disposed of at once in order to join the Mainland's economic growth;[33] Italianization had thus become a mass phenomenon, taking roots in the hitherto predominantly Sardinian-speaking villages.[34] To many Sardinians, abandoning their language and acquiring Italian as a cultural norm represented a means through which they could distance themselves from their original group, which they perceived as marginalized and lacking in prestige, and thereby incorporate themselves into an altogether different social group.[35] The Sardinians have been thus led to part with their language as it bore the mark of a stigmatized identity,[36] the embodiment of a long-suffered social and political subordination in a chained society, as opposed to the social advancement granted them by embracing Italian;[37] such social stigma went beyond the Sardinian language itself to also encompass the Sardinian-influenced accent when speaking Italian, which, unlike other accents, was equally considered uncouth and befitting criminals, or ignorance.[38] Research on ethnolinguistic prejudice has pointed to feelings of inferiority amongst the Sardinians in relation with mainlanders and the Italian language, perceived as a symbol of continental superiority and cultural dominance.[39] Many indigenous cultural practices were to go extinct, shifting towards other forms of socialization.[34]
Within a few generations Sardinian, as well asAlghero'sCatalan dialect, would become aminority language spoken by fewer and fewer Sardinian families, the majority of whom have turned intomonolingual andmonocultural Italians.[40][41] This process has been slower to take hold in the countryside than in the main cities, where it has become most evident instead.[42]
Nowadays, the Sardinians are linguistically and culturally assimilated into Italian and, despite the official recognition conferred to Sardinian by the national law in 1999, according to Giulio Paulis "identify with their language to lesser degree than other linguistic minorities in Italy, and instead seem to identify with Italian to a higher degree than other linguistic minorities in Italy".[43][28] It is estimated that around 10 to 13 percent of the young people born in Sardinia are still competent in Sardinian,[44][45] and the language is currently used exclusively by 0.6% of the total population.[46] A 2012 study conducted by theUniversity of Cagliari andEdinburgh found that the interviewees from Sardinia with the strongest sense of Italian identity were also those expressing the most unfavourable opinion towards Sardinian.[47]
The twelve major islands of theDodecanese, of which the largest is Rhodos, were ruled by Italy between 1912 and 1945. After a period of military rule, civil governors were appointed in 1923 shortly after Fascists began to rule Italy and Italians were settled on the islands. The first governor,Mario Lago, encouraged intermarriage between Italian settlers and Greeks, provided scholarships for young Greeks to study in Italy and set up a Dodecanese church to limit the influence of theGreek Orthodox Church. Fascist youth organizations were introduced on the islands, and the Italianization of names was encouraged by the Italian authorities. The islanders did not, however, receive full citizenship and were not required to serve in the Italian armed forces. The population was allowed to elect their own mayors. Lagos' successor,Cesare Maria De Vecchi, embarked on a forced Italianization campaign in 1936. TheItalian language became compulsory in education and public life, with Greek being only an optional subject in schools. In 1937 the elected mayors were replaced by appointed loyal fascists. In 1938, the newItalian Racial Laws were introduced to the islands.[48]
The cultural remnants of the Venetian period were Mussolini's pretext to incorporate the Ionian Islands into the Kingdom of Italy.[49] Even before the outbreak of World War II and theGreek-Italian 1940-1941 Winter War, Mussolini had expressed his wish to annex the Ionian Islands as an Italian province.[50] After the fall of Greece in early April 1941, the Italians occupied much of the country, including the Ionians. Mussolini informedGeneral Carlo Geloso that the Ionian Islands would form a separate Italian province through a de facto annexation, but the Germans would not approve it. Nevertheless, the Italian authorities continued to prepare the ground for the annexation. Finally, on 22 April 1941, after discussions between the German and Italian rulers, Hitler agreed that Italy could proceed with a de facto annexation of the islands. Thus on 10 August 1941 the islands ofCorfu,Cephalonia,Zakynthos,Lefkada and some minor islands were officially annexed by Italy as part of theGrande Communità del Nuovo Impero Romano (Great Community of the New Roman Empire).
As soon as the fascist governorPiero Parini had installed himself onCorfu he vigorously began a forced Italianization policy that lasted until the end of the war.[51] The islands passed through a phase of Italianization in all areas, from their administration to their economy. Italian was designated the islands' only official language; a new currency, the Ionian drachma, was introduced with the aim to hamper trade with the rest of Greece, which was forbidden by Parini. Transportation with continental Greece was limited; in the courts, judges had to apply Italian law, and schooling followed the educational model of the Italian mainland. Greek administrative officials were replaced by Italian ones, administrative officials of non-Ionic origin were expelled, the local gendarmes were partially replaced by ItalianCarabinieri, although Parini initially allowed the Greek judges to continue their work, they were ultimately replaced by an Italian Military Court based in Corfu. The "return to the Venetian order" and the Italianization as pursued by Parini were even more drastic than the Italianization policies elsewhere, as their aim was a forced and abrupt cessation of all cultural and historical ties with the old mother country. The only newspaper on the islands was the Italian language "Giornale del Popolo".[51][52][53][54] By early 1942 pre-war politicians in the Ionian Islands began to protest Parini's harsh policies. Parini reacted by opening a concentration camp on the island ofPaxi, to which two more camps were added onOthonoi andLazaretto islands. Parini's police troops arrested about 3,500 people, which were imprisoned at these three camps.[51] The Italianization efforts in the Ionian islands ended in September 1943, after thearmistice of Cassibile.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
