Irredentism
The Italian nationalist ideology was initially referred to as irredentism , the aim of which, after the unification of Italy in 1861, was the annexation of the Italian-populated areas of Trentino and Trieste that remained under Austrian rule . The claimed area abroad is called 'Irredenta' or in Italian: 'terra irredenta' (the land [still] not liberated, lost land ). Irredentism was also transferred to Italian-speaking Switzerland by a politically isolated minority in the Italian-speaking Swiss canton of Ticino .
Today, irredentism is understood as the bringing together of all representatives of a particular ethnic group into a state with fixed territorial borders. This ideology is part of many pan movements , such as Pan- Germanism , Pan-Slavism or Panhellenism .
In a historical sense, the word denotes Italian irredentism , which is itself a pan movement. One also speaks of "Panitalianism".
etymology
The word irredentism comes from the Italian term terre irredente ('unredeemed areas'), which means 'parts of the people' who seek connection to their mother country (often in the sense of 'native-speaking country'), or the nation that has its territory everywhere wants to expand where people live from her. It was also efforts of this kind that led in 1918 to the division of the Habsburg multi-ethnic state Austria-Hungary into new states: Czechoslovakia , German Austria , Hungary and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes .
Language or ethnicity-related nationalisms harbor the risk of territorial conflicts wherever political solutions for the coexistence of many ethnic groups cannot be achieved without disadvantaging individual groups, for example internally with regard to the borders between cantons or Banats , but also between large states.
history
After the national unification of Italy with the new capital Rome in 1871 under King Viktor Emanuel II , areas with an Italian-speaking population remained under the rule of Austria-Hungary. In 1878 the Federation Italia Irredenta was founded in Italy , whose main objective was the annexation of "unredeemed Italian national areas " (Italia irredenta, terre irredente) to Italy. The main areas were Trentino-South Tyrol and Istria , which Italy had renounced in the Peace of Vienna (1866) , as well as Dalmatia . Both this political movement in Italy and the national revolutionary organizations in these areas, which sought to break away from the multi-ethnic state of Austria-Hungary and join the national state of Italy, were referred to as “the Irredenta” .
Many pan movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries were irredentist. So the Pan-Bulgarists strove to establish a Greater Bulgaria . The idea was realized through the Peace of San Stefano in 1878 . The modern Panhellenists aspired to a Greater Greece .
Under Hitler , the German Reich carried out numerous irredentist acts, especially in Eastern Europe such as the Heim-ins-Reich-Aktion , but also the annexation of Austria in 1938, which, in the irredentist tradition of the Greater German Solution, served to establish the Greater German Reich .
The annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014 was also an irredentist act. Today Magyar Gárda still advocates the idea of a Greater Hungary . Further historical examples are Greater Albania , Greater Finland , Greater Israel , Greater Romania and Greater Serbia .
See also
- Revanchism , recapturing lost territories
- Contract revisionism, repurchase of lost areas
literature
- Edgar Bonjour : History of Swiss Neutrality , Vol. 3: 1930-1939 . 4th edition, Helbing and Lichtenhahn, Basel 1970, DNB 456159622 ; Abstract 1978, ISBN 3-7190-0736-7 .
- Kurt Huber: The Italian irredentism against Switzerland (1870-1925) . Dissertation at the University of Zurich , Fehlmann, Seengen 1953, DNB 570720575
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Silvano Gilardoni: Irredentism. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . August 21, 2008. Retrieved June 21, 2019 .
- ↑ Tilman Lüdke: Pan ideologies. In: European History Online. August 30, 2012, accessed October 1, 2014 .