The Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca (; ; ), historically sometimes shortened to and spelled "Goritz", was a crown land of the Habsburg dynasty within the Austrian Littoral on the Adriatic Sea, in what is now a multilingual border area of Italy and Slovenia. It was named for its two major urban centers, Gorizia and Gradisca d'Isonzo.
Geography
The province stretched along the Soča/Isonzo River, from its source at Mt. Jalovec in the Julian Alps down to the Gulf of Trieste near Monfalcone. In the northwest, the Predil Pass led to the Duchy of Carinthia, in the northeast Mts. Mangart, Razor and Triglav marked the border with the Duchy of Carniola (Upper Carniola).
In the west, Mts. Kanin and Matajur stood on the border with the Friulian region, which until the 1797 Treaty of Campo Formio was part of the Republic of Venice, from 1815 onwards belonged to the Austrian Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia and finally to the newly established Kingdom of Italy from 1866. In the south the province bordered on the territory of the Imperial Free City of Trieste and the Margraviate of Istria.
History
Province of the Habsburg Empire The medieval estates of the Counts of Görz had been acquired by the Austrian Habsburgs in 1500, when the last Meinhardiner count Leonhard died without heirs. In the period shortly after 1500, Gorizia was administered by the stadtholder (captain) Virgil von Graben. Habsburg suzerainty was interrupted briefly by the Venetians in 1508/09, before Görz was finally incorporated into the Inner Austrian territories of the Habsburg monarchy. In 1647 Emperor Ferdinand III elevated the Görz town of Gradisca to an immediate county for the descendants of privy councillor Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. After the princely House of Eggenberg had become extinct, Gradisca was re-unified with Gorizia in 1754, creating the County of Gorizia and Gradisca (; ).
During the Napoleonic Wars, the territory of Gorizia and Gradisca became the battleground on several occasions. By the Treaty of Pressburg (1805), French dominance was established in the region, resulting in Austrian loss of the most western parts of the County. Those territorial issues were resolved by the Treaty of Fontainebleau (October 10, 1807): all Austrian territories on the right (western) bank of the Isonzo river (including the town of Gradisca d'Isonzo and the westernmost suburbs of Gorizia) were assigned to the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy.
The remaining territory of the county was left under Austrian rule until 1809, when it was incorporated into the Illyrian Provinces under direct domination of the French Empire.
In 1813, Austrian rule was restored. The county was re-established in its former borders, including the former enclaves of Monfalcone and Grado, which had been under Venetian control before 1797. However, in 1816 the county was combined with the Duchies of Carniola and Carinthia, the Imperial Free City of Trieste, and the March of Istria and its associated islands (Cres, Krk, Lošinj and numerous smaller islands) to form a wider administrative unit named the Kingdom of Illyria, with the capital in Laibach. In 1849, the Kingdom of Illyria was dissolved, and the Austrian Littoral was then formed, comprising the County of Gorizia and Gradisca, Trieste and Istria. In 1861, the territory of the county gained autonomy as the Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca (; ; ), a Cisleithanian crown land within Austria-Hungary. The county had its own provincial parliament and enjoyed a large degree of self-government, although it was formally subjected to an Imperial Governor () with the seat in Trieste, who carried out the government supervision for the whole territory of the Austrian Littoral.
In 1915, Italy entered World War I against Austria-Hungary. The western part of the county was devastated by the Battles of the Isonzo, fought between the two armies. In August 1916, Gorizia was occupied by Italian troops for the first time in its history, but in November 1917 the Austro-Hungarian Army threw the Italian forces back in the Battle of Caporetto. Large numbers of the population were interned in civil camps around Austria-Hungary and Italy, while almost half of the province's territory laid in ruins.
In Spring 1918, two mass political movements emerged in the county, demanding larger autonomy within a federalized Habsburg Monarchy. The Slovenes demanded the union with other South Slavic peoples into a sovereign Yugoslav state, The two movements did not clash, since they did not contest the same territories. The only open issue was the town of Gorizia, claimed by both the Slovenes and the Friulians. An underground movement, known as Italia irredenta (Unredeemed Italy), demanded the unification of Gorizia with Italy. With the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in late October 1918, a short interim period followed, in which no movement was able to establish its authority. In November 1918, the whole territory of the county was occupied by the Italian military which suppressed all political movements challenging her claims on the region.
Border region of Italy
In November 1918, the county was officially abolished and incorporated in the provisional administrative region of Julian March. With the treaties of Rapallo and Saint Germain-en-Laye of 1920, the whole territory of the county became an integral part of the Kingdom of Italy. The former Habsburg policy favouring local autonomy was replaced by a strict centralism. The Province of Gorizia was established, which had very little self-government compared to the old county. The borders of the new province were also partially changed. The new province included some areas of the former Austrian Duchy of Carniola that were assigned to Italy by the Peace Treaty (the districts of Idrija, Vipava, and Šturje). On the other hand, most of the territory in the Karst region, which had belonged to the County of Gorizia and Gradisca, was incorporated in the Province of Trieste, while the district of Cervignano was included in the Province of Udine.
In 1924, the Province of Gorizia was abolished and its territory incorporated into the Province of Friuli, whose capital was Udine, except for the administrative district of Monfalcone and the town of Grado that became part of Province of Trieste. In 1927 the Province of Gorizia was recreated with approximately the same territory, except for the district of Cervignano del Friuli which remained under the Province of Udine, and the area of Monfalcone and Grado remained part of the Province of Trieste. With the establishment of the Fascist regime, a violent Italianization of the area started. This policy was carried out in three stages: first, all public administration was Italianized, with the Slovene and German losing their previous status of official languages; second, all education (both public and private) was Italianized; third, all visual presence of Slovene and German in public was prohibited. The latter included changing names of villages, prohibition to use a language other than Italian in public, prohibition to give Slavic names to children, forcible changes of Slovenian surnames, etc. This policy was accompanied by political persecutions and intimidations. By 1927, all Slovenian organizations were outlawed, including all media, publishing houses, cultural associations, as well as financial and economic companies owned by Slovenian organizations. Only one publishing house, the Catholic Hermagoras Society, was allowed to publish books in Slovene, although only religious literature. Most Slovene intellectuals and small business owners were forced to leave the region, many of them settled in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia or emigrated to Argentina.
Between 1927 and 1943, the Province of Gorizia was an administrative territorial entity of the Fascist regime, governed by a Government-appointed prefect and the local Fascist hierarchy. All municipal autonomy was abolished and the podestà, appointed by the prefect, replaced the elected mayors. All legal political activity outside the regime became impossible and most of the civil society institutions, at least the Slovenian ones, were dismantled.
In 1927, the first militant anti-fascist organization, known as TIGR, was established. The organization, founded by local Slovenes (mostly young people of liberal, nationalist and social-democratic orientation) carried out several attacks on Italian military and administrative personnel, which further exacerbated the situations in the region. Several Slovenian cultural and political figures were imprisoned, exiled or killed, with the most famous being Lojze Bratuž.
World War II and post-war division
In 1941, with the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, the situation became even worse. By 1942, the Yugoslav resistance penetrated in the region from the bordering Province of Ljubljana. Several important clashes between the resistance and the Italian military happened. After the Italian armistice in September 1943, Nazi Germany occupied the region, incorporating it into the Operational Zone Adriatic Coast, led by the Gauleiter Friedrich Rainer.
Already in September 1943, large portions of the region were taken over by the Communist-led Liberation Front of the Slovenian People, which established several important bases in the area, including the famous Franja Partisan Hospital. Fights between the Communist-led resistance and the Nazis were frequent. Soon, German authorities adopted a pragmatic approach regarding the local Slovenian population: public use of Slovenian was allowed again. The anti-Communist collaborationist militia called Slovene Home Guard was also allowed to establish some units in the area, although they had little success in recruiting the locals. At the same time, politically motivated assassinations were carried out by the Communist cells within the resistance movement. Among the victims, there were several Roman Catholic priests and anti-fascists opposed to the Communist ideology.
After the end of World War II in 1945, almost the entire region was liberated by the Yugoslav People's Army, but was forced to withdraw from its western part. During the forty days of Yugoslav occupation, thousands of Italians were arrested by Communist authorities; most of them were released, but several hundred of them perished in the Foibe massacres.
For two years, Gorizia and Gradisca was a contested region between Italy and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, divided by the so-called Morgan Line. The territory west of the line (including the entire Soča valley, the lower Vipava Valley and most of the Karst Plateau) were occupied by British and U.S. forces, while the east remained under Yugoslav military administration. In September 1947, the region was finally divided between the two countries: Yugoslavia got most of the rural territory of the eastern part, while all of the western lowlands and the urban center of Gorizia were left to Italy. A small portion of the Karst region between Trieste and Duino was incorporated into the Zone A of the Allied-administered Free Territory of Trieste (which became part of Italy in 1954).
Gorizia and Gradisca thus ceased to exist as a unified historical region. Its Yugoslav portion became an integral part of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia: most of its territory was included in the Goriška region, except for the Karst Plateau, which was incorporated into the Littoral–Inner Carniola Statistical Region. A new urban center, called Nova Gorica ("New Gorizia") was built between the late 1940s and in the early 1950s. The Italian portion became part of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia autonomous region, mostly included in the Province of Gorizia.
Culture