Naslov
Creating Fiume’s Italianity: Interpreting and Incorporating Local Events Through a National Lens

Autori
Jeličić, Ivan

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Skup
European Social Science History Conference 2023

Mjesto i datum
Göteborg, Švedska, 12.04.2023. - 15.04.2023

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
Rijeka/Fiume ; World War One ; Nationalism ; Post-imperial transition

Sažetak
This paper focuses on street names, monuments, gravestones, commemorative plaques, and celebrations of anniversaries in immediate postwar and interwar Fiume (Rijeka). The long and specific transition of Fiume to the Italian state was made up of various (inter-)national (e.g., D’Annunzio’s occupation, 1919–20, culminating in the ‘Bloody Christmas’) and local (e.g., elections for a Free State government and a fascist coup d’état in 1922) political episodes. These episodes were among the central points used by local actors in (re)presenting and creating an imagined, genuinely Italian—and even fascist—character of what had been a multiethnic Royal Hungarian port-city. References to an imagined Italian proto-history—namely recalling Ancient Rome and Venice—were used, despite the fact that the heritage of the latter was almost nonexistent in Fiume. Even the national Italian narrative of victory in World War One was embraced, even though locals’ wartime experiences were mainly linked to those of the Habsburg Empire. Minor local Italian irredentist stances were accentuated by evoking the memory and images of volunteers from Fiume who fought in the Italian army, and recalling Italian figures persecuted by the (Austro-)Hungarian authorities during the war. As such, this historical representation at the local level was received at the (Italian) national level, masking a far more complex political, social, and economic post-Habsburg reality behind a ‘smooth’ Italianity.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Povijest

POVEZANOST RADA