Istrian Italians (; ; ) are an ethnic group from the Adriatic region of Istria in modern northwestern Croatia and southwestern Slovenia. Istrian Italians descend from the original Latinized population of Roman Histria, from the Venetian-speaking settlers who colonized the region during the time of the Republic of Venice, and from the local Croatian people who culturally assimilated.
More than 50% of the total population of Istria for centuries, Istrian Italians were 36% in 1910. Today, as a result of the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus (1943–1960), the majority of Istrian Italians live outside of the Istrian peninsula; however, a significant Italian minority still lives in the Croatian County of Istria (5.01%) and in Slovenian Istria (3.3%), where they are granted minority rights. According to the official Slovenian and Croatia censuses conducted in 2001 and 2002 respectively, they number around 22,000. The Istrian–Dalmatian exodus, on the other hand, numbers between 230,000 and 350,000 Istrian Italians.
Throughout history, Istrian Italians exerted a vast and significant influence on Istria, especially cultural and architectural. The number of people resident in the Croatian part of Istria declaring themselves to be Italian nearly doubled between 1981 and 1991 (i.e. before and after the dissolution of Yugoslavia).
History
Early period
Historian Theodor Mommsen wrote that Istria (the X region of Roman Italia since Augustus) was fully romanized in the 5th century AD.
Between 500 and 700 AD, Slavs settled in Southeastern Europe (Eastern Adriatic), and their number ever increased, and with the Ottoman invasion Slavs were pushed from the south and east. This led to Italic people becoming ever more confined to urban areas, while some areas of the countryside were populated by Slavs, with exceptions in western and southern Istria which remained fully Romance-speaking.
By the 11th centuries, most of the interior mountainous areas of northern and eastern Istria (Liburnia) were inhabited by South Slavs, while the Romance population continued to prevail in the south and west of the peninsula. Linguistically, the Romance inhabitants of Istria were most probably divided into two main linguistic groups: in the north-west, the speakers of a Rhaeto-Romance language similar to Ladin and Friulian prevailed, while in the south, the natives most probably spoke a variant of the Dalmatian language.
One modern claim suggests the original language of the romanized Istrians survived the invasions, this being the Istriot language which spoken by some near Pula. Republic of Venice influenced the neolatins of Istria for many centuries from the Middle Ages until 1797, until conquered by Napoleon: Capodistria and Pola were important centers of art and culture during the Italian Renaissance. Other historians have attributed the ancient language of romanized Istrians as being the Istro-Romanian.
Venetian rule
In the 14th century, epidemics such as the Black Death decimated in those years the Istrian population, which was still mostly of Romance ethnicity. As a consequence of depopulation, Venice started settling Slavic communities to repopulate the interior areas of the peninsula. These were mostly Čakavian and partially Štokavian speaking South Slavs from Dalmatia and present-day Montenegro (differently from Kajkavian and proto-Slovene speakers that lived in the northern areas of the peninsula).
At the same time, settlers from the Veneto region were used to resettle the towns. This caused a language shift of the local Romance population who replaced the old Romance (either Rhaeto-Romance or Italo-Dalmatian) languages with the Venetian language. Only in the extreme south of the peninsula did the original Istrian Romance language survive: under strong Venetian influences it transformed itself into the modern Istriot language. Until the early 19th century, Dalmatian continued to be spoken on the island of Veglia / Krk, and a dialect of Friulian in the town of Muggia: both became extinct in the mid 19th century, replaced by Venetian.