National Citizens from the International Peace in the Adriatic Borderlands, 1921-1926

• In Event: Habsburg Successor States as Nationalizing States: Between Ideology and Pragmatism

Abstract

The proposed paper is part of a larger project that examines the acquisition of Italian citizenship in the Adriatic provinces in the decade following World War I. The paper will explore the ways in which Italian civil servants manipulated liberal internationalist treaty stipulations and internationalist legal expectations to suit Italian liberal and then Fascist designs to nationalize borderland populations through adjustment of legal status, recognized in the international arena as a standard for membership and as the basis for rights in the nation-state. Juxtaposing the language of the Paris Peace Treaties of Saint Germain and Trianon, the Treaty of Rapallo (1920), the Santa Margherita Accords (1921), and the Treaty of Rome (1924) with the language of directives on citizenship requirements given to civil servants adjudicating uncertain or unsettled citizenship cases from 1920 to 1926, the paper will examine how individuals’ petitions were processed and how their eligibility or ineligibility for Italian citizenship was determined emphasizing the ways in which the laws forced them to articulate national identity and loyalty.

Author

• Maura Hametz, James Madison U