Imperial Free City of Trieste
The Imperial Free City of Trieste and its Territory (German: Reichsunmittelbare Stadt Triest und ihr Gebiet, Italian: Città Imperiale di Trieste e Dintorni) was a possession of the Habsburg monarchy in the Holy Roman Empire from the 14th century to 1806, a constituent part of the German Confederation and the Austrian Littoral from 1849 to 1920, and part of the Italian Julian March until 1922. In 1719 it was declared a free port by Emperor Charles VI; the construction of the Austrian Southern Railway (1841–57) turned it into a bustling seaport, through which much of the exports and imports of the Austrian Lands were channelled. The city administration and economy were dominated by the city's Italian population element; Italian was the language of administration and jurisdiction. In the later 19th and early 20th century, the city attracted the immigration of workers from the city's hinterlands, many of whom were speakers of Slovene.
Imperial Free City of Trieste
1369–72
October 1382
14 October 1809
1813
1816–49
4 November 1918
12 November 1920
28 October 1922
95 km2 (37 sq mi)
229,995
History[edit]
Background[edit]
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, Trieste was a Byzantine military outpost. In 567 AD the city was destroyed by the Lombards, in the course of their invasion of northern Italy. In 788 it became part of the Frankish kingdom, under the authority of their count-bishop. From 1081 the city came loosely under the Patriarchate of Aquileia, developing into a free commune by the end of the 12th century.
After two centuries of war, Trieste came with the signing of a peace treaty on 30 October 1370 in front of St. Bartholomew's Church in the village of Šiška (apud Sisciam) (now part of Ljubljana) under the Republic of Venice.[1] The Venetians retained the town until 1378, when it became the property of the Patriarchate of Aquileia.[2] Discontent with the patriarch's rule, the main citizens of Trieste in 1382 petitioned Leopold III of Habsburg, Duke of Austria to become part of his domains, in exchange for his defence.[2] This united Charlemagne's southern marches under Habsburg rule,[3] subsequently consolidated as the Austrian Littoral (German: Österreichisches Küstenland).
Demographics[edit]
The particular Friulian dialect, called Tergestino, spoken until the beginning of the 19th century, was gradually overcome by the Triestine dialect (with a Venetian base, deriving directly from vulgar Latin) and other languages, including German grammar, Slovene and standard Italian languages. While Triestine was spoken by the largest part of the population, German was the language of the Austrian bureaucracy and Slovene was predominant in the surrounding villages. From the last decades of the 19th century, Slovene language speakers grew steadily, reaching 25% of the overall population of the municipality of Trieste in 1911 (30% of the Austro-Hungarian citizens in Trieste).[17]
According to the 1911 census, the proportion of Slovene speakers amounted to 12.6% in the city centre, 47.6% in the suburbs, and 90.5% in the surroundings.[20] They were the largest ethnic group in 9 of the 19 urban neighborhoods of Trieste, and represented an absolute majority in 7 of them.[20] The Italian speakers, on the other hand, were 60.1% of the population in the city centre, 38.1% in the suburbs, and 6.0% in the surroundings. They were the largest linguistic group in 10 of the 19 urban neighborhoods and represented the majority in 7 of them (including all 6 in the city centre). Of the 11 villages included within the city limits, the Slovene speakers had an overwhelming majority in 10, and the German speakers in one (Miramare).
German speakers amounted to 5% of the city's population, with the highest proportions in the city centre. A small number of the population spoke Serbo-Croatian (around 1.3% in 1911), and the city also counted several other smaller ethnic communities: Czechs, Istro-Romanians, Serbs and Greeks, which mostly assimilated either to the Italian or Slovene-speaking community.