Contribution to the history od 1848/49 in Istria

Abstract

The problem of the contents of the bourgeois/feudal revolutionary/counter-revolutionary 1848/1849 in Istria and the Kvarner islands (Istrian district within the Austrian part of the Habsburg Monarchy), has been seldom explored and researched in Istrian historiography and the historiography on Istria (in Italian and Croatian language). The reason may lay in the fact that those events were not only the reflexes of a bourgeois revolution, but also the first political conflict between members of a thin but absolutely prevailing ruling Italian-Italianized class, and members of a numerous and absolutely subordinated majority. These first manifestations of an organized appearence of national confrontation additionally make a scientific evaluation of historical events in 1848/1849 in Istria and the Kvarner islands more difficult. This contribution tries to shed light upon these facts, with an accent on the beginnings of Italian Italianized bourgeois political movements. The Author summarily follows these essential movements during 1848/1849, shows the main features of the events, the reactions of Austrian (German) military and civilian authorities, the attitudes of single Italian-Italianized circles: they, mainly for economical reasons, would not be attracted to the Italian national turmoils, whose echoes from the Appenninic peninsula (particularly from Venice) were audible on the eastern Adriatic coast, including Istria and the Kvarner islands. The Author also points at manipulations by Austrian authorities with the Croatian majority of Istria and Kvarner islands.