Original scientific paper
Immigration Policy of the Dubrovnik Republic Regarding the World Exile Institution
Ilija Mitić
; Institute for Historical Sciences of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Dubrovnik, Croatia
Abstract
Even before the liberation from the Venetian rule Dubrovnik used to receive various refugees, but only after the departure of the last Venetian doge (1358) and having gained her independence, Dubrovnik got the full competence for receiving refugees on her territory.
The appearing of refugees from neighboring countries on the Dubrovnik territory depended mainly upon the political and economic situation in those countries, as well as upon economic conditions in the very Dubrovnik. Most refugees asked for asylum in Dubrovnik during the Turkish invasion on to the Balkan Peninsula at the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th centuries. Later on refugees used to come in bigger or smaller numbers. So in the second half of the 18th century there were about 500 of them per year.
In Dubrovnik as well as in other European countries two categories of refugees were known: economic emigrants and those criminal, army or political refugees who left their countries not to be persecuted. Dubrovnik government kept a great number of these and granted them asylum. Being good merchants and craftsmen, they were admitted the citizenship. Some were sent away to other countries or repatriated upon their country's demand based on reciprocity. Foreigners' legal position, then conditions and the way of getting the citizenship were precisely defined in the Dubrovnik Republic. In the second half of the 18th century one of the most important conditions for a foreigner to be admitted the citizenship was ten year uninterrupted stay on the Dubrovnik territory.
Keywords
Dubrovnik Republic; immigration; exile
Hrčak ID:
244673
URI
Publication date:
30.6.1979.
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