Preliminary communication
A Tribute to the Ethnohistory of (Sub)-Ethnic Groups of the Vlachs and Bessyaks in Istria
Sandi Blagonić
; Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti Zavod za povijesne i društvene znanosti u Rijeci, Područna jedinica u Puli, Pula, Hrvatska
Abstract
By analysing interview materials and information from historical, ethnologic and linguistic sources, the author manages to reconstruct the socio-historic preconditions for the setting up and maintaining of ethnic borders of the Vlachs and Bessyaks in Istria. The Slavic immigrants in the time of the so-called second Slavic colonisation have exercised the strongest cultural influence in the most of the territory of the historic Venetian Republic. Differences in speech, clothing and several other elements of material culture, ethnic stereotypes, in some cases even national affiliations (Austria and Venice) are supposed to have had some influence on the forming of the groups of the Vlachs and Bessyaks. Next, the impact of the modernisation processes on the lessening of the importance of collective identities of the traditional agricultural structure is followed, due to which the Vlach and the Bessyak affiliation is today – in most cases – manifested through symbolic ethnicity.
Keywords
Vlachs; Bessyaks; Besiacks; Istria; Austria; Venice; border
Hrčak ID:
55025
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2009.
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