Abstract
On 3 April 1848 an announcement was published in Venice and distributed throughout the northern Adriatic, specifically addressed to the ‘valorous of the Venetian and Dalmatian navies’. Signed ‘your brothers in Venice’, the leaflet begged sailors to come join the battle against Austrian troops eager to re-conquer the city. To make sure that the message hit home, Dalmatians from the eastern Adriatic were urged to flock to their former metropolis with the pitiful words that, ‘mother is calling her children to her’.1 Within days of this announcement, Nicolò Tommaseo, one of the leading figures in the Italian Risorgimento and Minister of Education and Religion in the revolutionary Venetian government, contacted Dalmatians insisting that they stay put.2 ‘Remain calm’, the Dalmatian-born Tommaseo insisted, ‘stay far away from either side [of the war] … and concentrate … on keeping the peace’.3 Though he himself went into debt, lost his eyesight, and was exiled from both Venice and Dalmatia as a result of his participation in Venice’s battle for independence, Tommaseo repeatedly discouraged Dalmatian naval officers, students, soldiers, and community leaders from getting involved, insisting that they concentrate their efforts on their homeland’s own destiny. He assured them, as one Slav to another, that their fortune lay elsewhere.
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Notes
I Vostri Fratelli di Venezia, ‘Ai Valorosi della marineria veneta e dalmata,’ in: Raccolta per ordine cronologico di tutti gli atti, decreti, nomine ec. del Governo Prov. della Repubblica Veneta (Venice, 1848), p. 319.
One striking example: L. Čoralić,. Šibenčani u mlecima (Šibenik, 2003), pp. 158–60.
Stipan Ivičević, ‘Letter to Luigi Pavissich, Macarsca April 25, 1848,’ in: L.C. Pavissich (ed.), Memorie macarensi: Stefano Ivichevich e la sua epoca in Dalmazia (Trieste, 1897 ), pp. 50–1.
K. Clewing, Staatlichkeit and nationale Identitätsbildung: Dalmatien in Vormärz and Revolution (Munich, 2001 ). Illyrianism was a cultural and political movement founded by Ljudevit Gaj and predominant within Croatia and Slavonia during the 1830s-40s. Illyrianism advocated the formation of a standardized south Slavic language and literary culture, regardless of religion and in line with other Slavic national movements within Europe.
J. Vrandecie, Dalmatinski autonomisticki pokret u XIX. stoljeeu (Zagreb, 2002).
It remains to be investigated how much Dalmatia’s Napoleonic experience stimulated the use of a missionary ideology to sustain patriotism. Compare: S. Woolf, ‘French Civilization and Ethnicity in the Napoleonic Empire’, Past and Present 124 (1989), 96–120.
Habsburg census figures published in 1845–46 indicate 16,000 Italians, 320,000 Croatians (Slavic-speaking Catholics), 500 Jews and 80,000 Serb Orthodox in Dalmatia. See: S. Obad, ‘Dalmacija za vrijeme izlazenja Zore Dalmatinske’, Zadarska Smotra 44, Nos 3–4 (1995), 31–8.
G.L. Garagnin, Reflessioni economico-politiche sopra la Dalmazia (Zadar, 1806), p. 72.
G.K. Albinoni, Memorie per la storia della Dalmazia, vol. I (Zadar, 1809 ), pp. 227–8.
On the whole, this is similar to what David Laven describes in his analysis of the transformation from the Napoleonic to the Habsburg administration of Venice in the immediate postwar period. However, Venetians had a larger chance to present their plans for provincial reorganization as they possessed a congregazione centrale with noble and non-noble representatives, greater communal autonomy in local administration, and a separation between military and administrative offices within the Habsburg state structure, all of which were lacking in Dalmatia. See: D. Laven, Venice and Venetia under the Habsburgs, 1815–1835 (Oxford, 2002 ).
F. Borelli, ‘Del nuovo sistema doganale della Dalmazia,’ L’Agronomo raccoglitore- Giornale ebdomadario di Economia rurale, intento a promuovere in via istruttiva popolare it progresso dell’agricoltura ed altri oggetti economici di panto interesse I, no. 46 (1851), p. 362.
B. Ghetaldi and F. Borelli, Discorsi di Biagio Barone de Ghetaldi e di Francesco Conte de Borelli di Wrana pronunziati nella solenne inaugurazione della Società agronomica centrale di Zara (Zadar, 1850 ), pp. 33–4.
A. Madonizza, ‘Lettere: 1831–1866,’ in: G. Quarantotti (ed.), Di me e de’ fatti miei (1806–1870) (Trieste, 1951 ), pp. 49–51.
N. Tommaseo, Il Monzambano e Sebenico, Italia e Dalmatia: Cenni di Niccolà Tommaseo e narrazione d’alcuni particolari del fatto (Florence, 1869 ), pp. 47–8.
F. Carrara, La Dalmazia descritta (Zadar, 1846), pp. 121–2.
Anon, ‘Degl’intenti del giornalismo in Dalmazia,’ Annuario Dalmatico II (1859), 17.
N. Tommaseo, Ai Dalmati (Zadar, 1861), p. 21.
L. Wolff, Venice and the Slays: The Discovery of Dalmatia in the Age of Enlightenment (Stanford, 2001 ).
L. Serragli, Sulla Riforma doganale della Dalmazia (Dubrovnik, 1851), p. 15.
N. Tommaseo, ‘Parte Prima: Dalmazia. 12. D’alcuni studi fatti intorno alle cose dalmatiche da stranieri e da nostri. - Lettere due. A N.N.,’ in: id., Intorno a cose dalmatiche e triestine (Trieste, 1847 ), p. 118.
I. A. Kaznačić, ‘Introduzione,’ L’Avvenire di Ragusa 1, no. 1 (1848), 2.
K. Vojnović, Un voto per l’Unione (Split, 1861), p. 13.
F. Borelli, Cenni sull’utilità ed importanza d’una strada ferrata Istro-Adriatica dal basso Danubio al lido dalmatico (Zadar, 1856), p. 9.
S. Margetich, Riçi na slogu k Dalmatinskoj Zori, in: Zora dalmatinska I (1844), 3. The Zora dalmatinska (Dalmatian Dawn) was the most important Slavic language journal in early nineteenth-century Dalmatia.
N. Tommaseo, ‘Appendice Nona - Gli Sciti, gl’Illiri, gli Slavi,’ in: G. Balsamo-Crivelli (ed.), G. B. Vico (Turin, 1930 ), p. 157.
I.A. Kaznačić, ‘Sulle finanze della Dalmazia’, L’Avvenire di Ragusa 1 (1848), 13.
M. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York-Oxford, 1997 ).
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Reill, D. (2007). A Mission of Mediation: Dalmatia’s Multi-national Regionalism from the 1830s–60s. In: Cole, L. (eds) Different Paths to the Nation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230801424_2
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