engleski

Intercultural contact in the late Austro-Hungarian Empire: Opatija/Abbazia in 1867-1914

The last phase of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918) is commonly approached through the prism of the process of national identity construction and the conflicts that it entailed in a multinational empire maintained by a complex set of power relations. National historiographies in particular tend to focus on their respective “national awakenings”. In contrast to this, this paper, which is part of a larger project on transnationalism and intercultural dialogue in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, focuses on the everyday contacts between people of different nationalities and native languages and the role of this interaction in constructing intercultural spheres and identities. This involves going against the grain both of national historiography and the ubiquitous and often aggressive national ideologies and discourses of the period. The research will focus on the town of Opatija/Abbazia on the northern Adriatic coast, now part of Croatia. Opatija was specific due to its acclaim as a spa resort, which attracted an elite international clientele, as well as a heterogeneous mix of people offering goods and services to this privileged class. Research will be based on sources from Croatian archives, particularly private correspondence and diaries, as well as published memoirs, travelogues and travel guides and the local press from the period. The focus is intercultural contact and multilingualism in spheres of everyday life such as work, consumption, leisure, entertainment and social events. I hope to find out whether and in what form an intercultural sphere persisted alongside growing and conflicting national movements.

anthropology; private correspondence; multilingualism; intercultural; identity; Austro-Hungarian Empire; Istria

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