THE MODERN ERA
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The Last Territorial Modifications Under Venice The war with the league of Cambrai (the Pope, Spain, France and others) and with Austria from 1508 to 1516 resulted in the last territorial modifications, of a minor nature, before the fall of the Republic of Venice (1797). Venice obtained the German enclaves present in her territory, Hrastovlje/Cristoglie, Završje, Draguć and Barban, while she had to cede Črni Kal and, in addition Socerb, Mokovo, and Podgrad, conquered in 1463 as result of the war with Trieste.  Extract from the records relating to the settling of boundaries after the Austro-Venetian war of the XVIth century (Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Prov. alla camera dei confini, b. 232 f. 102v) With the peace of Trento in 1535 a border was drawn, along which in subsequent centuries, because of continuous political attritions between two great European powers, Venice and Austria, confrontations occurred over bits of land no bigger than a handkerchief, or trees that had been felled or the village bog, and over every border stone, stolen sheep or torched field. Istrans on either side of the border, who spoke the same language, and traded and intermarried, became the object of subterfuge and political intrigue provoked by government ideologies which were to them completely incomprehensible. War and Peace However, there were also times of concord, especially in the matter of defence against the mutual enemy - the Turks. Their incursions began to strike the peninsula more heavily in the last decades of the 15th century. Those times represented a hard test not only for the inhabitants, but also for the states which shared the Istran peninsula. They became aware of this early and they often they organised a common defence of the region, in particular by exchanging information and by reinforcing the garrisons along the main roads. Though this route would have taken the Turks mainly through the Istran Karst and straight towards the rich Friuli, they became attracted also by the minor communities of the Istran countryside. They did not succeed in getting to the coastal cities, thanks to the good organisation of defences in the countryside, which however had to submit to all the horrors of their devastations. There is still today much evidence of the Turkish period, like the city walls around Piran, while the suffering they caused was depicted in 1490 in the frescoes of the church of Hrastovlje. The unity of the inhabitants of the border areas was also evident in the case of military recruiting which was carried out by the authorities on both sides of the frontier. Young men who did not want to serve in military units (cernide) locally or elsewhere often avoided this unpleasant duty by taking refuge in the territory of the neighbouring State, where they found hospitality till the 'danger' had passed. Inhabitants along the border were obliged more than once to offer hospitality also to various refugees and criminals who were trying to escape the arm of the law. Co-operation amongst the border people extended also to times of pestilence, which often devastated the countryside. The Economic Situation in Venetian Istra The Istrans without doubt drew the greatest advantages from their collaboration with others in commerce. Capital derived from trade by sea and overland made its first appearance in the cities as early as the start of the 13th century. Various lenders, Jewish and Florentine, appeared with available funds which they invested mainly in maritime commerce. Several maritime trading corporations were established and those which invested in the trade divided both the gains and the losses. Already prior to the Venetian conquest sea trade was heavily monopolised. After the conquest it was regulated on two levels: that of imports and that of exports. For exports two rules applied: sea trade was arranged through the so-called commissioni of the Venetian Senate, whilst overland commerce was regulated through the statutes of the individual cities. The extraordinary inconsistency of Venetian regulations showed itself for example even in the case of the most important item of Istran export: wine. This was produced in the whole of the province; however, its exportation to Venice was forbidden-unless accompanied by a special permit from the podesta' which always entailed very heavy customs duties. Again, Istrans were at liberty to sell fresh fish anywhere, but their whole production of salted fish had to be sent to Venice. Thus Venice ensured it had plenty of victuals at a low price. In agriculture, cultivation with biennial rotation of crops predominated. The agrarian economy was, apart from viticulture, tied to the growing of olives. Grain was insufficient and had to be imported for the best part of the year. The most fertile lands were chiefly worked by coloni, but their dependence on the land owners varied. In the lands surrounding the cities 'crop sharing' (mezzadria,) predominated; alongside this it was also common for land to be rented at an agreed price, as well as through the so-called 'livelo'' that is the rental of land where the payment in cash or kind was established on the basis of the annual production, or sometimes on the basis of a fixed amount. The living conditions of the coloni started to deteriorate in the period of economic stagnation and of the abandonment and depopulation of the countryside, that is, from the middle of the 16th century onwards. Although they were free men from a legal and formal point of view, the coloni could rarely choose a new landlord or leave the land that they had received. Even the new inhabitants, brought to Istra from Dalmatia by the Venetian authorities in the 16th and 17th centuries, in the majority of cases ended up as coloni and only a small number settled as free peasants. For various reasons to be discussed later, amongst other things because of infectious diseases, from the mid-16th century onwards the exodus from the Istran countryside kept growing, but a population decline was evident also in the cities. The number of workers on the land was dropping sharply and the Venetian authorities, in an attempt to remedy the situation, intervened declaring all abandoned lands to be state property (1556) and began to settle on them emigrants and refugees from Dalmatia and other Balkan provinces. A specific office of Provveditore was then established, the Provveditore sopra beni inculti, who every two years distributed abandoned land to immigrants. This situation continued until the middle of the 17th century. The measures taken resulted in a slow recovery of agriculture, but in some areas the raising of animals assumed too much importance compared with the cultivation of the fields. Animal raising was traditionally dominated by small animals. Contracts of partnership (socida) based on a determined period (2-5 years) were frequent between the owners and the tenants, generally for raising small animals, cattle, pigs and bees. Most of the time the owner and the tenant shared equally the initial stock as well as the newly-bred animals, but this was not a fixed rule. The Venetian coastal towns (principally Koper, followed by Piran, Muggia and others) had available many products from overseas brought there by Venetian merchants and others, but local products such as olive oil, wine and salt were also much appreciated. All this merchandise attracted the neighbouring merchants from the areas of Istra and Kranjska. From the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 17th century, these peasant-carriers, using animals (mussolati) or carrying the goods themselves (spalanti), brought to city markets their products: grain, dried meat, skins, wood, metals - briefly all that was in demand in the Istran towns, and not only there, as these products often continued their journey towards the other side of the Adriatic. After reaching a peak at the end of the 15th century, such commercial traffic suffered a large decrease during and after the so-called 'War with the Uscocchi' or 'War for Gradisca', when the Republic of Venice and Austria clashed in order to achieve freedom of transit through mainland commercial routes in the case of Venice, and freedom of transit through commercial sea routes in the case of Austria. The reduction in traffic was due in part to the savage devastation between 1615 and 1617, when the adversaries did not spare each other, in part due to an Austrian attempt, at times using force, to favour the commercial routes that passed through Trieste, as well as to the decline of Venetian power. Commerce and the Spheres of Influence of the Great Powers Venice and the Habsburgs clashed soon after becoming neighbours in the 14th century. The background of these quarrels was formed mainly by commercial interests, in particular that of free circulation on the mainland, which was of interest to Venice, and the free navigation of the Adriatic, which was the aim of the Habsburgs. Almost all the wars and major clashes between the two rival powers in the upper Adriatic had this backdrop, including their last conflict on Istran soil at the beginning of the 17th century, as mentioned above.  Mussolati in a storm (J.V. Valvasor) Dating from at least the victory over the pirates from Croatia and the Neretva region at the start of the second millennium, Venice had considered the Adriatic as its property-so much so that it was simply referred to as the Gulf of Venice. She exercised a rigid monopoly on the commercial maritime policy of the Istran towns, laying down that their merchandise should almost exclusively be carried on Venetian ships and to her market. In this way she was able to apply an unusual customs duty. All the goods which left Adriatic ports had to make Venice the first port of call and only if they could not find buyers amongst the Venetian merchants were the owners given a special permit to take their goods for sale elsewhere. Similarly, all goods that originated from outside the Adriatic had to be taken to Venice first for the same routine. Foreign merchants were obliged to spend the profits which they had realised in Venice on the Venetian market, not in the places they came from. Ships could not set sail from Trieste, for example, without first having paid taxes to the podesta' and captain of Koper. On the other hand the Austrians, by customs duties along the borders and later by having recourse to force with the groups of so-called liberaiters (from Ueberreiter, superior knight), made all continental trade flow into the city of Trieste which had available products which were in demand, wine, oil, and salt, although at prices slightly higher than in the Venetian cities. Because of this, smuggling was rife, both on the sea and on the mainland, as has been excellently described in a Slovenian account of the character of Martin Krpan. From an economic and political point of view, the most important development took place in 1719, when Trieste became a duty-free port, tipping the scales entirely in favour of Austria and having a decisive influence on the development of the Istran cities under Venice. From then on Trieste rapidly transformed itself into one of the more important central European ports and, with an incredibly fast demographic growth, it also occupied a prominent place amongst the European metropolises of the time. The Ethnographic Aspect of Istra in the XVIIth Century Prospero Petronio, a Piranese according to some and a citizen of Koper according to others, wrote in 1681 an interesting description of the peoples who lived in the province. In this he followed in the footsteps of Tomasini, bishop of Novigrad-that great student of things Istran who preceded him by 50 years. The first, and the most numerous people were the Slavs, 'schiavi whom others call Slavi', who had come from Dalmatia or Schiavonia, from ancient Illyria: 'strong people fit for hard work'. They lived in all parts of the peninsula, so that the Slav language had become known to all and in many villages people did not know Italian at all. Peasants and farmers for the most part, they lived in the villages and in the countryside. The second most numerous people were the Carni: artisans who spun wool and wove clothes for common people, but were also tailors, blacksmiths, shoemakers, stonemasons-in general employed in manual work. They were full of good sense and thrifty, so that in a short time many of them succeeded in bettering their material condition or even became rich. They were of pleasant appearance and their positive traits made them very useful to the province. They lived in the larger villages, in the castles and in the terre, but they had not arrived in the province before the Slavs. Similar to the Carni, whom many referred to as Cargnelli, were the Friulans whose native land was not far away. Many Friulans settled for brief periods on the farms, on the terre or on single properties, where they worked for the season and afterwards returned home with their earnings. The third group (generatione) was from Grado. They were born fishermen, very knowledgeable about the sea and navigation. They lived on the coast, at Umag, Novigrad, Poreč, Vrsar and wherever one could trade in fish and other products with nearby Venice. Simple people, of few words, they spoke a language similar to the ancient Venetian dialect. They were not inclined to be talkative and did not boast about their achievements on the sea. Many of them had become wealthy through commerce, they had bought properties in the country, they had mixed with the indigenous population and become citizens of the larger cities. For example out of 25 families in Novigrad, as many as 12 had come from Grado. The fourth group were the new inhabitants, who had come from Albania and from other regions occupied by the Turks. Venice brought them willingly to the province. For over a century they had been subjects of the Captain of Rašpor, except for those in the territory of Pula who like the old residents were under the jurisdiction of the Provost (Provveditore) and therefore were not dependent on the dispositions of the rectors of single town or castle. Finally there was the indigenous population whose origins, because of numerous epidemics and wars, did not normally go back beyond 200 years. Therefore one could also treat as indigenous the Florentine, Bergamesque, Venetian and other immigrants who had quickly become acclimatised here. During the last war with the Turks (known as the War of Crete 1645-1668) many Morlacchi (the name given to the nomads indigenous to the Balkan peninsula, of Latin origin but later Slavs by adoption) came to Istra. The Venetians had brought them to Istra from Dalmatia and from Albania (the Montenegrine coast was then part of Albania) They were prone to thieving and burglaries and caused disturbances, but with the passing of time they calmed down (or so Prospero Petronio tells us). Fragments of Istran Ethnology The rapid cultural growth in the cities did not for a long time, however, find a similar counterpart in the countryside where, in spite of the numerous migratory flows, the Istrans preserved unchanged through the centuries above all their ethnological characteristics. In part this depended on the psychological characteristics of the old inhabitants who called the new arrivals foresti ('outsiders') and in this way kept them away from important events, forcing them to accept even more promptly the traditional usages and customs. To this unitary ethnological outlook the civic statutes which legalised some of the accepted usages contributed in large measure, as for instance that concerning 'marriage Istran style' that is as 'brother and sister' (ut frater et soror), in the sense that each married partner owned an equal share of their common property. This custom is supported in almost all civic statutes, whilst the agrarian law, cited only in the Koper's statutes, was, according to general opinion, valid at least in the countryside of Venetian Istra. Of course many usages and customs were preserved only in specific areas, as happened for example with popular costumes and with the dialects, differing from one community to another, but other customs and superstitions of pagan origin were deeply rooted in the Istran people. As established by M. Tomšič in his literary works, Istrans share many magical stories, first amongst which are stories about sorcerers, witches and werewolves. The criminal trial against sorcerers and witches held in the environs of Kastav as late as 1716 says much about their resilience and at the same time about the persistence of the prosecutors. A colourful description of such beliefs was given by J. V. Valvasor in his book Slava vojvodine Kranjske (1689): This practice, of opening a coffin and piercing the corpse with a pole, is not unusual amongst the Istrans of the countryside, that is to say amongst the peasants. Although the authorities impose very severe penalties if they discover it, since it is against religious beliefs, nevertheless it takes place very frequently .....  Istran Costumes (J.V. Valvasor) Famines and wars were constants in the demographic changes in Istra. During the migration of peoples late in the ancient period, many populations in the course of their movements towards Italy had devastated above all the areas of the Karst. After the situation calmed down the Slovenians gradually settled in those areas (the Slav tombs discovered near Buzet and at Predlok are from the 9th-10th centuries), whilst the ancestors of the Croatians, who came from east of the Balkans, settled in the environs of Žminj/Gimino. The Slav presence in the Karstic interior of Istra in the 11th century is attested by the toponyms Cernogradus and Bellogradus (1102) and, in the Pazin area, by the toponym Gologorica, while in 1030 the road which went from Pazin to Poreč was called 'Via Sclava' (and 'Via Sclavorum' in 1158). This did not mean that Slavs lived along the road, but that they used it to come to the town for trade. So in Pula in 1145 there were persons named Petrus Sclavus and Petrus Sclavus cum Arpo filio suo (1149), at Muggia in 1202 A. de Stoica, Radius, J. Sclavo and others, at Piran in 1222 Menesclavus, and so on. In 1234 the village of Lonjer near Trieste is mentioned as 'Villa Sclavorum'. The earliest compact territory populated by Slavs was undoubtedly the territory within the bishopric of Trieste from Osp to Rakitovec-which in the middle of the 13th century was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Community of Koper. Significant from our point of view is the part of the statutes of Koper which were drawn up in the second half of the 13th century, where many toponyms appear which are derived from names of plants or from the morphology of the soil, characteristic of the more ancient colonisation, e.g. Gabrovica, Črni Kal, Bezovica, Podpeč, Zanigrad and Rakitovec. At the beginning of the 14th century, the Community of Koper issued a so-called agrarian law referring to peasants and/or Slavs (Sclauus vel Rusticus, Sclauus aut Rusticus), whilst in 1349 the Venetian Senate appointed the rector of the contado of Koper as 'Captain of the Slavs' (capitaneus Sclavorum). This position continued to exist right up to the fall of the Republic of Venice. In the first half of the 14th century a remarkable and monumental document came into existence in the land of Istra. Referred to as the Istarski razvod or Reambulazione istriana, it had great political and linguistic significance. It saw the light chiefly as an act of demarcation of the borders in the interior of Istra between the masters of Istra at the time: the patriarch of Aquileia and the counts of Gorica and Venice. It was drawn up in Latin, German and Croatian (glagolitic). The authenticity of the Croatian text is in doubt, many historians affirming that it was not written until the 16th century, a conclusion confirmed by the study of M. Kos (1931), although this also proved that the text included older documents defining boundaries between various terrritories from the 13th century onwards. The numerous toponyms of the first half of the 14th century attest to the Slav and Romance presence with equal frequency in central Istra, although the remains of Histrian and German influences should also be noted.  Defences of Koper and neighbourhood after 1535 (D. Darovec, drawn by A Umek) Therefore the Slav inhabitants from the 12th to the 15th centuries were gradually approaching the Istran coastal towns, which on the other hand were not entirely of a Romance character. In Labin, for instance, from the 13th to the 15th centuries the Croatian language predominated and only under Venetian rule did the Romance language again overtake it. The first immigrants from the Balkan peninsula, fleeing the advancing Turks, arrived in Istra as early as the first half of the 15th century. They were predominantly Romeni, nomads of Romance origin, indigenous to today's Serbia, Herzegovina and Bosnia, and the so-called Morlacchi, Vlachs who had for the most part adopted Slav culture. Amongst them there were many Croatians, Dalmatians and Montenegrins, besides Albanians who, originating from a territory under Venetian rule, in earlier times had already held public offices in Istra, especially military ones. Amongst the inhabitants of Romance origin one should enumerate also the Cici who, at the beginning of the 16th century, settled in what today is Čičarija. Venetian sources describe them as extremely uncultivated people and they blame them for the destruction of forests, since their nomadic ways of raising animals (goats, sheep) destroyed the young plants and they used the wood they needed without any control and in excessive quantities. Besides they were so undisciplined that many times through pure carelessness they caused major fires in the forests. These unplanned migrations had a positive influence on the population density in the province (we should remember that in 1375 Istra was said to be 'almost entirely depopulated'). The numerous epidemics of plague which from the middle of the 14th to the beginning of the 17th centuries struck Istra on the average every ten years with disastrous consequences, as well as wars and malaria continually reduced the Istran population. Even so, the indigenous population did not readily accept the newcomers. In the 16th century the city with the largest population in the territory between the Timava and the Kvarner was Koper. More precisely, towards the middle of the century it had between nine and ten thousand inhabitants, who however were reduced to only three thousand by the plague of 1553-1554. An even worse fate befell Pula, where the plague decimated the population, reducing it from 4000 to 600 inhabitants, whilst of the numerous villages of the district, 72 in all, only 12, with 2600 inhabitants, remained inhabited in the course of this century. Trieste, Novigrad and Poreč also suffered in the same way. The Venetian authorities attempted, by bringing in colonists, to put an end to the demographic crisis in Istra, which because of desertion and depopulation was threatening the remaining inhabitants with other diseases, with malaria topping the list. Malaria was also spreading in Istra because of climatic conditions which had altered due to an increase in the land surface covered by swamps and a higher level of waters in rivers. Indeed it was malaria which struck a major blow to the first colonists who came from the environs of Padua and Treviso and from Friuli. Only after the Magistrature of Abandoned Properties (Magistrato dei beni inculti) was established in Venice in 1566, and an attempt to settle colonists from Greece in the middle of the 16th century had failed, was a decision taken to have a planned colonisation by the so-called Morlacchi. In the Venetian sources the Morlacchi are described as a strong and tough folk, suited to military service, to service in the jails and other strenuous employment. By virtue of these qualities they succeeded in acclimatising themselves in a short time in the region, where they had initially been given a number of concessions, both on the Austrian and the Venetian sides, such as exemptions from taxes for a period of 20 years.
* La Provincia dell'Istria, a. II., n.11, 1868, pp. 145-8 ** including the islands of the Kvarner Tabel: Population of Istra and selected cities The new inhabitants were at first under the jurisdiction of the Provveditore nell'Istria, whom in 1578 the Senate named Rector of the Magistrature of Abandoned Properties in Istra, stationed in Pula. After the office was abolished in 1592, the supervision of the settlement of new inhabitants in Venetian Istra was given to the Captain of Rašpor, although it seems that for the territory of Koper decisions on these matters were still the responsibility of the podesta' and captain of Koper.  Pula in 1633 Side by side with these planned colonisations, from time to time various merchants also came to settle in Istra and, on a larger scale, soldiers from other European countries migrated here - Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, Hollanders, North Africans and others who served in Istra from the 15th century onwards. Even today, amongst the current inhabitants of various localities, there is still preserved the consciousness of their alien origins; for instance the surname Lazar from Podpeč highlights the Bohemian gipsy origin of this family. The Istran peninsula entered the 18th century with instability in the relationships of its ethnic groups, to which must be added those on Prospero Petronio's list. The new century was less turbulent as far as wars and human tragedy were concerned, but was exceptionally active in the cultural field. We could characterise it as a century of consolidation and identification. Istran men of culture had already, during the Renaissance and later the Reformation and the Enlightenment, contributed to the general growth of the cultural and intellectual levels of a population which now, with the last changes at the end of the 18th century so important to the ancient regimes, was about to enter the still more eventful 19th century. The Linguistic Aspect of Istra in the XVIIIth Century The complicated story of the colonisation of Istra resulted in a heterogeneous total of cultural influences and of ethnic mutations. These led to the emergence of a difference between the ethnic and the linguistic consciousness of the Istran population. The immigrations of the new inhabitants were not the only movements which took place, since in the interior of the peninsula also people moved to new locations drawn by economic advantages. Through the centuries of Istran history the rule had worked that citizens could reach a higher social status, be more respected and better off, if they held some public office. By long occupation of the lower city positions, particularly military ones, or by going into commerce or handicrafts, those who came from the country to the cities became assimilated with the Romance city population, since in these jobs the Istro-romance language still predominated though waves of colonisation gradually replaced it with Venetian. The Istro-romance language, belonging to the Dalmatico-retoromance tongues, had practically disappeared by the end of the 19th century. Today Istriot dialect is spoken (and written) by only a few people in Bale, Fažana, Galežana, Rovinj, Šišan and Vodnjan, whilst Slovenian and Croatian have become the carriers, in a genetic sense, of the two most ancient but still living and predominating Istran languages. In the countryside, where until the 18th century many migrants arrived also from the Italian regions, these two languages have completely taken over.  Glagolitic funerary inscription of 1582 (Istra in Slovensko primorje, 200) The ethnico-historical results which are significant for modern times in Istra were being consolidated from the end of the 17th century onwards. In the 18th century, in the period of stabilisation at the regional level, they took the form of three linguistic communities: Croatian, Italian and Slovenian. Being part of one or other of these linguistic groups at that time did not yet imply any nationalistic consciousness, but rather social status. The gap between a linguistic consciousness and a nationalistic one was gradually narrowing in people's minds, in line with the consolidation and reinforcement of the modern national consciousness starting from the end of the 18th century and subsequently. In the Istran area only the 19th century (more exactly its last decades) represents the period of consolidation of the idea of an ethnic border founded on national awareness. Acknowledgement of this three-fold unity was strengthened by the recognition of the ethnic borders between Slovenians and Croatians, while the Italian population was scattered in cities of a traditional Romance character and in some separated country areas with Italian majorities. Administrative-Ecclesiastical Reforms at the Fall of the Republic of Venice While numerous administrative reforms were taking place in the Austrian provinces from the middle of the 18th century, Venetian Istra before the Napoleonic campaigns was affected only by the administrative-ecclesiastical reforms of the Emperor Joseph II. The emperor tried to make the ecclesiastical division conform to the administrative one, namely to the State frontiers. After the abolition of the bishopric of Pićan in 1788, its territory, with the outlying vicarage of Pazin (part of the diocese of Poreč), and the outlying vicarages of Kršan and Kastav (part of the diocese of Pula), were added to the diocese of Poreč. Muggia was transferred to the diocese of Koper and Umag to the diocese of Novigrad. The aim of these rearrangements was to extend the diocese of Trieste beyond Trieste itself to the whole of Austrian Istra. The establishment of new borders for the diocese of Trieste continued in 1828, when the abolished diocese of Novigrad was assigned to the diocese of Trieste, and the diocese of Koper was added to it (hence from 1830 referred to as the Trieste-Koper diocese). The bishop's seat of Koper had been vacant from 1810. In 1830 Buzet was once again assigned to the diocese of Trieste. |