Nationalists Who Feared the Nation: Adriatic Multi-Nationalism in Habsburg Dalmatia, Trieste, and Venice (Stanford Studies on Central and Eastern Europe)

We Can Often Learn As Much From Political Movements That Failed As From Those That Achieved Their Goals. Nationalists Who Feared The Nation Looks At One Such Frustrated Movement: A Group Of Community Leaders And Writers In Venice, Trieste, And Dalmatia During The 1830s, 40s, And 50s Who Proposed The Creation Of A Multinational Zone Surrounding The Adriatic Sea. At The Time, The Lands Of The Adriatic Formed A Maritime Community Whose People Spoke Different Languages And Practiced Different Faiths But Identified Themselves As Belonging To A Single Region Of The Hapsburg Empire. While These Activists Hoped That Nationhood Could Be Used To Strengthen Cultural Bonds, They Also Feared Nationalism's Homogenizing Effects And Its Potential For Violence. This Book Demonstrates That Not All Nationalisms Attempted To Create Homogeneous, Single-language, -religion, Or -ethnicity Nations. Moreover, In Treating The Adriatic Lands As One Unit, This Book Serves As A Correction To National Histories That Impose Our Modern View Of Nationhood On What Was A Multinational Region. The Adriatic And The Romance Of National Variety -- Niccolò Tommaseo : Progress Through Multi-nationalism -- Trieste : The Center Of A Multi-national Adriatic -- Multi-nationalism In Dalmatia : From A Means To An End -- 1848 : A Rupture In Experience -- 1848 : A Crisis For Multi-nationalism? -- Conclusion : From Bridge To Border : The Adriatic In The Nineteenth Century. Dominique Kirchner Reill. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Illustrations xiii Names and Languages xv Introduction 1 Part I The Birth of Adriatic Multi-Nationalism 1 The Adriatic and the Romance of National Variety 17 2 Niccolò Tommaseo: Progress Through Multi-Nationalism 47 3 Trieste: The Center of a Multi-National Adriatic 81 4 Multi-Nationalism in Dalmatia: From a Means to an End 115 Part II 1848 and Beyond: An Epoch for Adriatic Multi-Nationalism? 5 1848: A Rupture in Experience 161 6 1848: A Crisis for Multi-Nationalism? 201 xii Contents Conclusion : From Bridge to Border— The Adriatic in the Nineteenth Century 233 Abbreviations for Archive Materials 247 Notes 249 Index 305 A history of the efforts of community leaders and intellectuals in Venice, Trieste, and Dalmatia to create a multi-national region along the shores of the Adriatic Sea, based on a nationalism that valued diversity, not homogeneity.