Venetian Albania
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Venetian Albania
Venetian Albania (Italian: Albania Veneta) was the name for the possessions of the Venetian Republic in southern Dalmatia that existed from 1420 to 1797. It originally covered the coastal area of what is now northern Albania and the coast of Montenegro, but the Albanian and southern Montenegrin parts were lost to the Ottomans in 1571.[1]
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Name and geography
The word "Veneta" in the Italian name Venetian Albania was used to differentiate the area from the Ottoman Albania, an area stretching from Kosovo to southern Albania.[2]
The "Albania Veneta" were Venetian possessions that stretched from the southern borders of the Republic of Ragusa to Durrës in coastal Albania. The Venetian territories usually reached only 20 km from the Adriatic Sea. After 1573 the southern limit was moved to the village of Kufin near Budva, because of the Ottoman conquests of Bar, Ulcinj, Shkodër, and Durrës. The Venetian territory was then centered around the area of the Bay of Kotor (then called "Bocche di Cattaro"), and included the towns of Cattaro, Risano, Perasto, Teodo, Castelnuovo, Budua, and Spizza.
History
Venice periodically controlled the small southern Dalmatian villages around in the 10th century, but did not permanently assume control until 1420. The Venetians assimilated the Dalmatian language into the Venetian dialect quickly. The Venetian territories around Cattaro lasted from 1420 to 1797 and were called Venetian Albania, a province of the Venetian Republic.[3]
In the early years of the Renaissance the territories under Venetian control included areas from actual coastal Montenegro to northern Albania until Durrës: Venetians retained this city – that they called "Durazzo" – after a huge siege by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II in 1466 but it fell to Ottoman forces in 1501.
In those years Venetian Albania was relatively rich (by Balkan standards) and the area around the city of Cattaro enjoyed a huge cultural and artistic development.
When the Ottoman Empire started to conquer the Balkans in 15th century, the population of Christian Slavs in Dalmatia increased greatly. As a consequence of this, by the end of 17th century the Romance speaking population of the historical Venetian Albania was a minority, according to Oscar Randi in his book Dalmazia etnica, incontri e fusioni.[4]
After the French Empire conquered and dissolved the Venetian Republic in 1797, the area of Venetian Albania became part of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy,[5] and then in 1809 it was included in the French Illyrian Provinces. In 1814 it was included in the Austrian Empire.
Under the Habsburg domination, the "Albania veneta" was called even "Austrian albania" and in 1878 (in the Congress of Berlin) were added another 40 km² to the Austrian Dalmatia around Spizza (a few kms north of Antivari (or Bar).
The borders of the Venetian Albania-Montenegro changed again in 1918, but were reinstated from 1941 to 1943 during WWII, when Mussolini annexed the area of the "Venetian albania-montenegro" to the Kingdom of Italy. The area was part of the Italian Governatorato di Dalmazia and was called Provincia di Cattaro.
Actually the old "Albania veneta" is a coastal region of the newly independent Montenegro.
Old Perasto
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An enduring example of the Venetian presence in coastal Montenegro is the small town of Perast (Perasto in Italian) in the Bay of Kotor.
Perasto was at its peak in the 18th century under the Republic of Venice, when it had as many as four active shipyards, a fleet of around one hundred ships, and 1,643 residents. At that time a number of architecturally significant buildings were constructed in this fortified town. Many ornate baroque palaces and magnificent dwelling-houses decorated the town of Perast, full of typical Venetian architecture[6] Perasto had the privilege to keep a war-flag of the Venetian Navy in peacetime (it was called La fedelissma Gonfaloniera).[7]
The sailors of Perasto participated in the last battle of the Venetian navy, fought in Venice in 1797.[8] On 12 May of that year, the Republic of Venice ended, but a few places in the Albania Veneta remained loyal to the Venetian Republic for several months afterwards: Perasto was the last place of the Republic to surrender. On 22 August 1797 the Count Giuseppe Viscovich, Captain of Perasto, lowered the Venetian war-flag of the Lion of Saint Mark pronouncing the farewell words in front of the crying people of the city, then buried the "Gonfalon of Venice" under the altar of the main church of Perasto.
The population afterwards decreased to 430 in 1910 and around 360 in 2001. According to the "Comunita' nazionale italiana del Montenegro",[9] in Perast there are currently 140 persons who still speak at home the original Venetian dialect of Perasto (called "veneto da mar"), and call themselves in the census "Montenegrins".
Population
Albanians lived in the south of the Venetian Albania around Ulcigno and Durazzo. The area around Cattaro was populated by Croats and Romance-speakers and was fully Catholic.[10] Many klans from Albania Veneta had immigrated to Italy, Korfu and Constantinople: Klanlarets in Istanbul is an example of Venetian Albanians today.
According to the Dalmatian historian Luigi Paulucci (in his book "Le Bocche di Cattaro nel 1810") the population of the Albania veneta, during the centuries of the Venetian Republic, was mainly Venetian speaking in the urban areas (Kotor, Perast, Budva, ecc..) around the Bay of Kotor. But in the inland areas more than half of the population was Serbo-Croatian speaking, after the beginning of the eighteenth century. Furthermore, near the border with Albania there were big communities of Albanian speaking people: Ulcinj was half Albanian, one quarter Venetian and one quarter Slav speaking.
After the disappearance of the Venetian Albania, during the nineteenth century (according to the historian Scaglioni Marzio) the wars of independence of Italy from the Austro-Hungarian empire created a situation of harassment against the Italian (or venetian speaking) communities in the Austrian southern dalmatia. The result was that in 1880 there were in Cattaro, according to the Austrian census, only 930 ethnic Italians (or only 32% of a total population of 2910 people). Furthermore, in the Austrian census of 1910, the Italians were reduced to only 13.6% in that city. Actually there are 500 Italian speaking in Montenegro, mainly in the area of Cattaro (Kotor), who constitute the "Comunitá Nazionale Italiana del Montenegro".
There have been notable Italian writers in the 15th to the 18th century who originated from Venetian Albania, notably Giovanni Bona de Boliris, Cristoforo Ivanovich and Ludovico Pasquali.
Gallery
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Cathedral of Saint Tryphon in Cattaro (Kotor)
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Church in Perasto (Perast)
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Roman mosaic in Risano (Risan)
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Old Perasto (Perast)
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Old Cattaro (Kotor)
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Venetian walls of Cattaro (Kotor)
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Postcard showing the venetian architecture of Perasto in 1900
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Castelnovo, near Perasto
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Abandoned Venetian Church in Cattaro
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"Piazza degli Armi" of Cattaro (Kotor) in 1900
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Saint-George and Our-Lady-of-the-Reef, two islands with venetian buildings off Perasto.
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Venetian walls of Budua in a 1900 postcard
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References
- ^ Cecchetti, Bartolomeo. pp. 978–983.
- ^ Paulucci, Luigi. Le Bocche di Cattaro nel 1810. pag. 24
- ^ Durant, Will. The Renaissance. pag. 121
- ^ Randi, Oscar. Dalmazia etnica, incontri e fusioni. pp. 37–38
- ^ Sumrada, Janez. Napoleon na Jadranu / Napoleon dans l'Adriatique.pag. 159
- ^ Citizens of the Venetian Perasto (in that period the city had 1,600 citizens) became privileged in the Venetian Republic. They were allowed to trade with large ships and to sell goods without tax on the Venetian market, which made them very rich. As an example of the wealth of people from Perast, at the end of 18th century they managed to collect 50,000 Venetian gold coins (about 200 kg of gold) in order to pay the famous Venetian constructor Giuseppe Beati to build them the highest campanile (55 m) on the East-Adriatic coast. Right in front of Perasto there are two small islands. St George with its small church from the 12th century and the artificial island "Gospa od Skrpjela" (in venetian Madonna dello Scarpello) with a very interesting legend. On the reef whose top was 1 m above the surface of the water, people from Perasto had been throwing rocks and sinking old shipwrecks for 200 years, thus creating a plateau of 3,030 square meters, which they then built a church on. Along with the impression that the island gives with its architecture, for centuries the church received many gifts and now it is a type of gallery and treasury of various objects. Beside 68 oil on canvas works done by Tripo Cocolia (the most talented baroque painter on the East-Mediterranean coast during the 17th century), on the church walls there are 2,500 golden and silver votive tablets which people from the Cattaro area donated to the church, in order to avoid various human disasters.
- ^ http://www.giovaniveneziani.com/index.lasso?page=/contenuti.lasso&cat=speciali&id=132
- ^ http://www.icsm.it/articoli/ri/liberateur.html
- ^ Comunita' italiana del Montenegro (in Italian)
- ^ Durant, Will. The Renaissance.pag. 139
Sources
- The struggle between Venice and the Ottoman empire for the Venetian Albania in the sixteenth century (Italian)
- Kotor and the Montenegro's Venetian speaking area (italian)
- UNESCO: Natural and Culturo-Historical Region of Kotor
- Historical review of the Italian traces in Montenegro (Italian)
Bibliography
- Bartl, Peter. "Le picciole Indie dei Veneziani". Zur Stellung Albaniens in den Handelsbeziehungen zwischen der Balkan- und der Appenninenhalbinsel. In: Münchner Zeitschrift für Balkankunde 4 (1981–1982) 1–10.
- Bartl, Peter. "Der venezianische Türkenkrieg im Jahre 1690 nach den Briefen des päpstlichen Offiziers Guido Bonaventura". In: Südost-Forschungen 26 (1967) 88–101.
- Bartoli, Matteo. Le parlate italiane della Venezia Giulia e della Dalmazia. Tipografia italo-orientale. Grottaferrata 1919.
- Cecchetti, Bartolomeo. "Intorno agli stabilimenti politici della repubblica veneta nell'Albania". In: Atti del Regio Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti. vol. 3, series 4, pp. 978–998. 1874.
- De Brodmann, Giuseppe. Memorie politico-economiche della citta e territorio di Trieste, della penisola d’Istria, della Dalmazia fu Veneta, di Ragusi e dell’Albania, ora congiunti all’Austriaco Impero. Venezia 1821.
- De Castro, Diego. Dalmazia, popolazione e composizione etnica. Cenno storico sul rapporto etnico tra Italiani e Slavi nella Dalmazia. ISPI 1978.
- Durant, Will. The Renaissance. MJK Books. New York, 1981.
- Gelcich, Giuseppe. Memorie storiche sulle bocche di Cattaro. Zara 1880.
- F Hamilton Jackson (2010). The Shores of the Adriatic (Illustrated Edition). Echo Library. pp. 287–. ISBN 978-1-4068-6761-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=ZyOYDrSkX80C&pg=PA287. Retrieved 21 February 2011.
- Martin, John Jeffries. Venice Reconsidered. The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797. Johns Hopkins UP. New York, 2002.
- Norwich, John Julius. A History of Venice. Vintage Books. New York, 1989.
- Paulucci, Luigi. Le Bocche di Cattaro nel 1810 Edizioni Italo Svevo.Trieste, 2005.
- Randi, Oscar. Dalmazia etnica, incontri e fusioni. Tipografie venete. Venezia 1990.
- Scaglioni Marzio. La presenza italiana in Dalmazia 1866–1943 Histria ed. Trieste, 2000.
- Schmitt, Oliver. "Das venezianische Albanien (1392–1479)". in Südosteuropäische Arbeiten. 110. München 2001.
- Sumrada, Janez. Napoleon na Jadranu / Napoleon dans l'Adriatique. Zalozba Annales. Koper, 2006.
- Tagliavini, Carlo. Le origini delle lingue neolatine. Patron Ed. Bologna 1982.
- Trogrli, Marko. Školstvo u Dalmaciji za francuske uprave/The French school system in French Dalmatia. Knjižnica Annales Majora. Koper, 2006.
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