Original scientific paper
Immigrants from Dubrovnik, Boka Kotorska, and Venetian Albania in Pula (17th-19th century)
Slaven Bertoša
Abstract
The parish registers of Pula, filed at the State Archives of Pazin, providing the researcher with a comprehensive insight into the process of continual immigration to the area, are a valuable source to a historian investigating the city of Pula and the Istrian region between the 17th and 19th century. At that time, Pula was the most developed South Istrian centre and an important port on the Venetian maritime route to Dalmatia and the Levant. For years immigration had been the only answer to Pula’s decreasing population (high mortality and low birth rate), allowing it to maintain its urban identity. Immigrants from the Republic of Dubrovnik, Boka Kotorska, and Venetian Albania were not considerable in number, most likely because these areas are so far away. Yet their names can be continuously traced in the registers between the years 1613 and 1817. The names of 21 immigrants are mentioned in the death registers, 10 in birth registers, 2 in marriage registers, and only one on the confirmation list. The majority of immigrants came from Venetian Albania (around 32 %), Boka Kotorska and Dubrovnik (around 12 %). Few came from Perast, Risan, and Vlor. (around 6 %), and fewer still from Bar, Budva, Cavtat, Dadri, Hercegnovi, Korčula, Kotor, Prčanj, and Shkod.r, for a total of 34 shortand long-term immigrants. No doubt, migrations to Pula from these distant areas represent a worthy contribution to a better understanding of seemingly weak relations between the people and regions within the Venetian provinces in the Adriatic and the Republic of Dubrovnik.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
11704
URI
Publication date:
23.5.2003.
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