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Following a first exodus toward the end of the 1800s, in 1905 in Rome a ''Dalmatian Italian Association'' to help the refugees was founded.  

Following a first exodus toward the end of the 1800s, in 1905 in Rome a ''Dalmatian Italian Association'' to help the refugees was founded.  

Then, after WWI tens of thousands of Dalmatian Italians abandoned their towns and villages in 1920-1930s and settled on Italian territory. During WW2 a third and final exodus: the winning '''Communist''' movement embraced the Croatian’s irredentist cause and included it in its war strategy and national political platform. The consequence was the violent expulsion of  Italian speaking autochthonous inhabitants from the entire Eastern Adriatic coastline - from the southern Dalmatia to the Istrian peninsula - and the consequential erasing of two millennia of a very rich civilisation. Ethnic cleansing had happened in many parts of Europe in both old and modern times, so the demographic and cultural extirpation of Italian presence in Dalmatia, the Quarnero region and Istria is not really a new phenomena. But this slow, brutal and in 1945 also military operation had an unexpected development, something very peculiar. After erasing almost all the Italian speaking population in Dalmatia proper, without succeeding completely in the Quarner region and Istria, Communist Yugoslavia adapted a new form of genocide: the stealing of the “enemy’s” history in order to obliterate his memory and aggrandise the country. Completely ignored in the West, this skulduggery is a new Pandora’s box-Balkan style.  

Then, after WWI tens of thousands of Dalmatian Italians abandoned their towns and villages in 1920-1930s and settled on Italian territory. During WW2 a third and final exodus: the winning [[Titoism and Totalitarianism|Communist]] movement embraced the Croatian’s irredentist cause and included it in its war strategy and national political platform. The consequence was the violent expulsion of  Italian speaking autochthonous inhabitants from the entire Eastern Adriatic coastline - from the southern Dalmatia to the Istrian peninsula - and the consequential erasing of two millennia of a very rich civilisation. Ethnic cleansing had happened in many parts of Europe in both old and modern times, so the demographic and cultural extirpation of Italian presence in Dalmatia, the Quarnero region and Istria is not really a new phenomena. But this slow, brutal and in 1945 also military operation had an unexpected development, something very peculiar. After erasing almost all the Italian speaking population in Dalmatia proper, without succeeding completely in the Quarner region and Istria, Communist Yugoslavia adapted a new form of genocide: the stealing of the “enemy’s” history in order to obliterate his memory and aggrandise the country. Completely ignored in the West, this skulduggery is a new Pandora’s box-Balkan style.  

Croatia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia], a country of about 5 million inhabitants, has “nationalised” the history of her Adriatic coastline, a territory that had never been part of the Slavic hinterland, historically, politically and culturally. In order to totally “Croatianize“ the coastal territories, the country is manipulating their history and striving to “show” the world that Dalmatia, the Quarner region and Istria have “always” been Croatian. There is no actual political contingency to justify this operation: the old Italian irredentism ended up definitely in the dustbin of the history, and no other countries - except for Slovenia - have pressing territorial ambitions toward Croatia. Never methodically investigated, nobody knows how and when these history misappropriations started. In 1858-60 Ivan Kukuljevic Sakcinski, who belonged to Croatian nobility, published his “Slovnik umjetnikah jugoslavenskih”, an encyclopaedic dictionary of Slav artists (then, Croatia was under Hungarian domination and Yugoslavia was still a dream). In this book among Slavic artists you can find the painter Vittore Carpaccio - born in Venice, 1460/65 ca. - 1525/26 ca. - only because Carpaccio used to create religious paintings commissioned by churches in Istrian peninsula and Dalmatia. Kukuljevic Sakcinski, a hot-headed nationalist, “opined” that the artist’s last name derived from a Croatian root: “Krpaci, Skrpaci or Krpatici”.

Croatia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia], a country of about 5 million inhabitants, has “nationalised” the history of her Adriatic coastline, a territory that had never been part of the Slavic hinterland, historically, politically and culturally. In order to totally “Croatianize“ the coastal territories, the country is manipulating their history and striving to “show” the world that Dalmatia, the Quarner region and Istria have “always” been Croatian. There is no actual political contingency to justify this operation: the old Italian irredentism ended up definitely in the dustbin of the history, and no other countries - except for Slovenia - have pressing territorial ambitions toward Croatia. Never methodically investigated, nobody knows how and when these history misappropriations started. In 1858-60 Ivan Kukuljevic Sakcinski, who belonged to Croatian nobility, published his “Slovnik umjetnikah jugoslavenskih”, an encyclopaedic dictionary of Slav artists (then, Croatia was under Hungarian domination and Yugoslavia was still a dream). In this book among Slavic artists you can find the painter Vittore Carpaccio - born in Venice, 1460/65 ca. - 1525/26 ca. - only because Carpaccio used to create religious paintings commissioned by churches in Istrian peninsula and Dalmatia. Kukuljevic Sakcinski, a hot-headed nationalist, “opined” that the artist’s last name derived from a Croatian root: “Krpaci, Skrpaci or Krpatici”.