ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

The "Istrian Society of Archaeology and Homeland History", 1884-1920s: Nationalist or Transnational Science?

• In Event: Histories of Archaeology 1

English Abstract

Istria belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918-19. It was mostly inhabited by Croats, Italians, and Slovenes. Among the Italians, there was an irredentist movement to unite Istria with the unified Kingdom of Italy. In this context, an Italian-speaking "Istrian Society of Archaeology and Homeland History" ("Società istriana di archeologia e storia patria") was founded in 1884 in the Istrian city of Parenzo (Poreč). The society established a museum and a library, promoted historical research and archaeological excavations, and published the results in a periodical. My paper investigates to what extent the society used Istrian archaeology and history for the irredentist cause. Sources are the society's periodical and its extensive archive, which is today kept in Trieste but has rarely been used. Istria had been ruled by the Romans in antiquity, and by the Venetians from the Middle Ages to 1797. This past could serve as an argument for Istria's belonging to Italy rather than to Austria-Hungary or Slavic nations. A preliminary analysis suggests that the society's research portrayed Istria's Italian inhabitants as culturally superior to the Slavic ones. Yet in everyday practice, it seems that the society's leading and scholarly members routinely and unreservedly cooperated with Austro-Hungarian/German-speaking colleagues and institutions in Istria, Trieste, and Vienna, and that the Austro-Hungarians had no misgivings about the society either. Hence, the transnational, multilingual scientific community was stronger here than political, nationalist conflicts, although this may have been forgotten in the 1920s, after Austria-Hungary's dissolution in 1918-19 and Italy's annexation of Istria.

Author

• Maximilian Georg, Austrian Academy of Sciences