Dalmatian Italians
Dalmatian Italians are an Italian national minority in the region of Dalmatia (within Croatia and Montenegro). After the 1840s the ethnic group suffered from a trend of decreasing numbers and only around 1,000 of the grouping remain.
History
Roman Dalmatia
Roman Dalmatia was fully latinized by 476 AD when the Western Roman Empire disappeared, according to scholar Theodor Mommsen in his book "The Provinces of the Roman Empire".
During the Barbarian invasions[1] of Eurasian Avars allied with certain Slavic tribes,[2][3] invaded and plundered Byzantine-Roman Dalmatia. This eventually led to the settlement of different Slavic tribes in the Balkans.
The original Roman population endured within the coastal cities[4] and in the inhospitable Dinaric Alps (later known as "Morlachs" or Vlachs).
The Dalmatian cities retained their Romanic culture and Latin language in cities such as Zadar (Jadera/Zara), Split (Spalatum/Spalato) and Dubrovnik (Ragusa)). They developed their own vulgar Latin, the Dalmatian language, a now extinct Romance language.[5]
These coastal cities (politically part of the Byzantine Empire)[6] maintained political, cultural and economic links with Italy, through the Adriatic sea. On the other side communications with the mainland were difficult because of the Dinaric Alps.
Due to the sharp orography of Dalmatia, even communications between the different Dalmatian cities, occurred mainly through the sea. This helped Dalmatian cities to develop a unique Romance culture, despite the mostly Slavicized mainland.
References
- ^ A London Encyclopaedia: Or Universal Dictionary of Science, Art, Literature (p48)
- "In the latter ages of the Roman Empire this country suffered frequently from in-roads of Barbarians..."
- ^ The Changing Face of Dalmatia: Archaeological and Ecological Studies in a Mediterranean Landscape by John Chapman, Robert Shiel & Sime Batovic
- "In chapters 29 and 30, two similar accounts are given for the fall of nearby Salona to the Avars and Slavs ..."
- ^ The Italians of Dalmatia: From Italian Unification to World War I by Luciano Monzali (p5)
- ^ The Illyrians by John Wilkes (p269)
- ^ Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe by Glanville Price (p377)
- ^ University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies The Slavonic and East European Review-The Slavonic-Latin Symbiosis in Dalmatia during the Middle Ages by Victor Novak
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