History Teaching, Vol. 33 No. 1, 2022.
Conference paper
THE CITY OF RIJEKA IN THE 20TH CENTURY: NATIONS, CONFLICTS, BORDERS, MIGRATIONS
Tea Perinčić
orcid.org/0000-0003-3534-0999
; Maritime and History Museum of the Croatian Littoral Rijeka
Abstract
Even today, the city of Rijeka is considered a tolerant multicultural environment, somewhat different from the rest of Croatia. But is that really the case a hundred years after the disappearance of the Austro-Hungarian Empire? It was within this state that Rijeka functioned as a multi-ethnic environment until ethnic intolerance, exclusivism, persecution, and totalitarian regimes escalated in it, a little earlier than in rest of the European continent. For this reason, the history of this city from the period between the middle of the 19th and the middle of the 20th century can serve as a case study for the study of these historical phenomena. Rijeka was under the Hungarian administration since 1870, and thanks to significant investments, it grew into a large industrial and trading port centre of the Dual Monarchy. At the same time, the number of immigrants from all parts of the Monarchy, as well as from other parts of Europe, was increasing, which gave the city a specific multicultural atmosphere. That is precisely why, after the First World War, it was impossible to apply the right of a people to self - determination as the key to deciding which country the city would belong to - the Kingdom of Italy or the future Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. This ethnic pressure resulted in a large number of forced emigrations and changes in the ethnic structure of the population. The same thing happened after the Second World War, when those who did not welcome the future Yugoslav government emigrated. After the merge of Rijeka and Sušak in one city, once again it became an important industrial and port centre where new residents from the Yugoslavia of the time moved in. The decline of industry at the very end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century keeps affecting the emigration of residents from Rijeka, but now for economic reasons. This loss cannot be compensated even by the efforts invested in the restoration of cultural assets as a resource for the development of cultural tourism in the city.
Keywords
the city of Rijeka; multiculturalism; multinationality; totalitarianism
Hrčak ID:
294350
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2022.
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