'How Italy got Slovenia's coastline' Let me start by going back 3000 years...

I know a family that are Slovenian's dukes, had a castle and everything before the Nazis burnt it down. Then Italy took over the land and since they are Slovenian royalty, the Italian government doesn't recognize them. They are still really wealthy though and moved to Latin America.

Had no idea Trieste was so important and with such rich history, thank you.

Nice! But you kind of missed to explain the ethnic side of the story. This is a zone that has been ethnically mixed since the early middle ages, with the seaside towns being romance speaking and the hinterland being slavic speaking. Trieste itself had approximately 30% slovenes, and 60% italians (plus a few others, albanians, armenians, serbs, greeks, germans etc.) in 1910. The main issue of the 1954 partition is that the coast that was mainly slovene-speaking for centuries (north of Trieste), was given to Italy, while the current slovene coast has been traditionally italian/venetian-speaking. From here the issues of the italian exodus and of both current national minorities (italian in slovenia, and slovene in italy) derive.

I grew up in the 70’s and the 80’s in Yugoslavia and I appreciated the fact that Trieste was Italian because for us Trieste was a major shopping city. That’s where we went to buy clothes, jeans, shoes, household goods, cosmetics and luxury food items.

Slovenia mentioned

so basically it has more history connected to italy than it does to anyone else… and this applies for the whole area of the adriatic sea not just the city of trieste

Thanks for translating in Korean we really appreciate it 😅😅😅...

Wow it’s pretty cool to see this channel take a look at the Trieste border issue, we did a video on this topic last year!

i was beginning to think none of the history/geography channels i follow were ever going to talk about the important history of my city, also never thought it would be done in such a well done video

We did a day trip there while we were on a trip in Slovenia. It was such a cool experience! Love that city.

I believe, and you can correct me on this, that the Karst plateau is the origin of the term Karst that has been applied to similar areas around the world.

Post-World War I borders didn't make sense - Italy annexed some areas that had been German or Slavic since forever, but was denied Dalmatia (at least, Dalmatia's coastal cities, the interior was Croatian-speaking) and Fiume. That said, the whole region was so mixed, someone would've found themselves on the "wrong" side of the border anyway, and the locals, whatever their ethnic background, seemed to want things to stay as they were; ideally, the whole region should've been made up of autonomous provinces, with Slovenian being official in Italy-held lands and Italian being official in Yugoslavia-held lands, but European countries didn't work this way, back then. :P

Many buildings in Trieste in the center and next to the church (which is mentioned in the video) were built by Serbian merchants (Gopčević palace, Kurtović, Vukasović, Riznić, Todorović, Vučetić, Kvekić, Vidaković, ect.). Apart from 60 palaces, church and school and valuable treasury and library, the Serbs in Trieste also have their own cemetery, which is protected as a cultural and historical monument of Italy.

The creation of The Free State of Fiume after the collapse of D'Annunzio's Regency of Carnaro provided some extremely interesting border shenanigans. The League of Nations, Italy, and The Kingdom of Yugoslavia all agreed that Carnaro should be dissolved and its territory re-appointed, but in a strange game of strictly overt diplomatic rapprochment and a millennia long messy history of border redrawings, all the involved parties tried to palm off different sectors of control onto each other, desperately feigning cooperation by throwing poisoned chalices at each other whilst clinging onto parcels of controlled land that became increasingly muddled and divided. As such, Fiume (Rijeka) became a bizzare game of border hopscotch. National borders would change within the space of hours, cycling through the participating nations in a seemingly random fashion. Residents would go to work in the morning and come home to find a hastily unrolled bale of barbed wire running down the street and their house now in a different country. Exclaves and enclaves would bloom, burst, wither, and disappear depending on how many people were spotted within a given street, or building, or public square at the time of official observations. Long, rambling, crooked isthmuses and panhandles of borders would snake so chaotically through the streets that border checkpoints were set up in churches, homes, offices, etc, because the building's front and back doors were the only place where the borders met in a way that could be crossed by foot traffic. Roads and railways became split over two territories, or made into single nation corridors, meaning train passengers had to alight from one side of the carriage or the other to avoid illegally crossing a border, and omnibusses had to perform U-turns in the street to make sure their passenger could leave the bus on the 'correct' side of the border. A simple journey on foot across Fiume could warrant up to half a dozen border crossings, some of which were manned by officials from far distant countries such as Britain, France, and the US. Shipments of goods sometimes had to go through multiple customs clearances to travel 100yds inland, only to end up right back in the same territory they originally landed in. In 1924 the Italians and the Yugoslavians signed The Treaty of Rome which awarded Fiume (Rijeka) to Italy, and its sister city of Sušak to Yugoslavia, but for that brief period between D'Annunzio's failed corporatist experiment, and the ratification of The Treaty of Rome, life in Fiume and its surroundings was certainly a confusing and Kafkaesque kind of existence.

""How Italy Got Slovenia's Coastline"" Cmon man

you mean "how tito failed to give slovenia all Trieste coastline"

I am Italian and I come from Veneto, near Venice, I have always heard about Trieste, I often went to Trieste and my mother told me the story of Sad and Istria and how many Italians who lived there came to live here in Veneto and Friuli to escape from the Yugoslavs, because the Yugoslavs were not so "kind" in treating the Italians after Italy occupied Yogoslavia during fascism, in Trieste there is also a museum that shows the history the refugees who came from Istria. When Italy annexed Trieste shortly after, Yugoslavia placed troops on the border and was about to invade the city.

Good video about an area of Italy that not many people know about if they are not from Italy itself or Slovenia. Indeed, Trieste holds a unique place in European history, both in terms of centuries ago and mere decades ago: what happened to it between 1945 and 1954 still constitutes a rather sensitive subject for some Italians. What is not mentioned is that it is a quite important city for Italy as a whole - it is the capital city of the Italian north-eastern region of Friuli-Venezia-Giulia and it has a quite strong economy, based on industries and businesses that have thrived there for centuries, such as shipbuilding, port activities and (guess why) insurances (typically a business that is linked to the city’s naval history). Sadly, not a lot of Italian themselves visit Trieste, exactly because of the geographical location you mentioned at the start of the video: one really needs to “want to go there”, as it is in no way a transit city for any other destinations in the country (it is an obvious privileged transit point if you’re heading to Slovenia or Croatia of course, though).

Trieste was an important point in the travels of my past. I used to watch the ships in the sunset from the Grand canal that is very small.

Someone call GeoWizard and see if he wants to walk across this part of Italy in a completely straight line

07:31 Nett hier, aber waren Sie schon mal in Baden-Württemberg?

I always wondered that, thank you for explaining history of that weird border!

It is Italian. Actually even the outer less developed area, now called Slovenia, was part of the Venetian Republic that is Italian now.

Fun fact Vladimir Bartol the slovenian author of "Alamut" was born in Trieste

I visited Trieste in October.

An overview according to the Austro-Hungarian censuses, including regnicoli: Demographics of the City of Trieste: 1880: Italians 67,995 (91.2%); Slovenes 2,817 (3.7%) 1900: Italians 116,929 (87.1%); Slovenes 5,017 (3.7%) 1910: Italians 123,654 (76.8%); Slovenes 20,358 (12.6%) Demographics of Trieste with Hinterland: 1900: Italians 138,524 (77.5%); Slovenes 24,679 (13.8%) 1910: Italians 148,398 (64.6%); Slovenes 56,916 (24.7%) If the Austro-Hungarian censuses are to be believed, then the statistics clearly reveal a very high rate of Slovene immigration to Trieste in the years before World War I, which is consistent with the Austrian plan to replace the Italian population and Slovenize the city. The ethnic composition of Trieste dramatically changed from 91.2% Italian in 1880 to 76.8% Italian in 1910. The city of Trieste was being intentionally suffocated by a seemingly endless tide of Slavic migrants from the other regions of the Empire, guided by the Austrian government.

What a lovely city! Been there on a road trip from Slovenia to Veneto, and i really like to go again soon. Back then I had no clue about its complex modern history. Thanks for the info!

should have named the video "How Slovenia and Croatia got Histria and parts of Giulia"

It was Slovenia (at the time part of Yugoslavia) which got Italy's coastline, not the way you title.

7:13 is pure political map for German exist on south sea. If we take geometrical line from north Adriatic sea point to north Black sea point all bellow that is peninsula, called Balkan peninsula, so Trieste is bellow this line on peninsula, although politically part of Italy state (which is mostly another peninsula, Apeninne peninsula country). And north border of Balkan peninsula can be above this line or as natural mountains borders line of Alpes- Tatres-Carpathes.

More like "how Slovenia and Croatia stole Italian coast"

To claim it they should have been Fastvenia instead of Slovenia.

The all-important railway link between Trieste and Vienna was built 1854 to 1857: The final section across the Karst Plateau was built. 12 July 1857: personally I didn't know that Trieste had been a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until relatively recently and that as soon as the railway technology (locomotive power) could cope with the hills; this all-important, unique, (it was the Empire's only port other than the Black Sea) trade link to the West was built regardless of expense. worth a moment with Wikipedia. A great video; Worth a tick and subscribe :)

Not seeing that one 🤣 - well played \m/

Italy and Croatia teaming up to get all the coastlines haha

Trying to calculate the odds of a channel I follow posting a video about Trieste days after I start reading a book about someone from there, Leo Castelli, having never heard of Trieste before...

That's classic: '99 for me and 1 for you'. Italy is located on peninsula and got islands, it should let Slovenia at least have its small coast. Im not suprised though, i got an Italian neigboirs on two sides and they both pushing hard into my property with their bushes and trees, its a land grab but I dont let them have their way, I keep triming a line of their bushes that want to reach 4 feet inside of my property, they refused to prune it or move it so it grows entirely on their land🙄 They are so land greedy I swear.

“Not showing this one” had me dying 🤣

Good Lord, KhAnubis, do you wanna start yet another war over some Damn Fool Thing in the Balkans!? You know how those former-Yugoslavs are and their eternal grudges! Really though, very interesting to know about more about how these territorial holdings came to be, especially over sea-accessible territories.

Your mum switched side....

@khanubis You may want to continue on former city states: Fiume Danzig Saarland Hatay

Italian cities once spanned the whole Adriatic coast, the slavs are basically just temporary squatters from the hills.

How about where did the native Italian speakers of Istria go?

Low tier bait title you could do better

I went there in early '80's with a New Orleans Jazz Group. I enjoyed my time working there too, and bought my favorite medium blue suit there.

Thanks 🌐 A lot of things about Trieste I diddent know 🌐👍🐱

My uncle, who was obsessed with Italian opera, always identified as Italian -- despite the fact that his parents were Serbian and Central European, respectively. He justified this with a claim that Trieste is Italian -- although he had no reason to believe that the Serbian ancestors were ever in Trieste and in defiance of his father not having spoken Italian at all, only Serbian and German. People make up whatever they want to be true.

Chile and Croatia: hey I get this one

You should mention that the ethnic Italians living in Trieste during WW1 were conscripted in the Austro-Hungarian KundK army and sent to fight on the Russian front.

As a Kiwi I already knew the story of how Trieste would surrender only to us but it was nice to hear it again.

Great video.

Funniest title ever 😂😂😂

I knew this dispute existed but I didn’t realize people were still mad enough to comment on it. Not trying to be dismissive I just figured it was one that sort of fell by the wayside

I LOVE YOU KHANUBIS

It was also part of Czechoslovenia at one point.

Nova Lectio channel explains in more details. Especially in regards of Istria, Fiume and Zara. The Italian population in those are was more than 50%. People tend to forget about the “Foibe” and “Esodo Giuliano”.

What you might not know is that city of Trieste was the biggest shopping mall of SFR Yugoslavia, bak in the day. :)))))

I am going three tomorrow

Fun fact, many people from Trieste go to Slovenia once a week to buy cigarettes and some other stuff, thanks to Schengen zone (no borders between countries). And its only 10-15 km away.

I agree with everything except the last word (which is kind of funny). You said Trieste tells the story of "the Balkans"?? What does that even mean? Trieste is by no definition part of the Balkans, neither is Slovenia (by Wikipedia). If anything, Trieste tells the story of Austria, Italy and Slovenia.

1 minute in and you keep repeating the question and explain nothing.

❤

I didn't think there was anything worth mentioning about the region other than familiar WW I and WWII history. I wrong I was.

This will shock everyone but... SHOCK with Schengen there is no need for any more border changes since you can freely travel between Slovenia and Italy, or any other EU country, the dream of "reclaiming Istria" or "reclaiming Trst" is really sad... it happened, this is the final border, get over it, a border doesn't change some one's life like it did before.

Great story and illuminating video! But, for all the folks in the comments worried about borders, haven't we had enough wars about who owns which parcel of land? Enjoy the benefits of free trade and open borders, live your life and let others live theirs in peace.

"Trieste is no Vienna" (from Gottlob Frege) is an important example in philosophy of language, and so probably the most frequent context in which philosophers refer to Trieste.

Nice video, you ticked all the boxes and even mentioned the Ancient Veneti who according to the parchments stored in the Kremlin in Moscow refer to the Veneti as early Slavs and built the city in 1200 BC and named it Trust. This news only came out in Nov. 2021 and showed on Moscow News. The Veneti had to kick the Illyrians out of Trieste and also occupied Istria and known as the Histri and Liburni who occupied Eastern Istria and Dalmatia and had a large navy and merchant ships.The other thing I know as my father married a lady from Trieste and her sister married a NZ soldier who was in Trieste in 1945 and later made a television program and shown on NZ TV 40 years ago, which told how the NZ Army threatened the Yugoslav Partisan Army which had taken the city 3 months before in 1945 to blow up the whole or downtown if they did not leave. The Yugoslavs not wanting that retreated to the hills 10 km above Trieste and that is how the border was formed. The NZ Army was well within their rights as Stalin had signed the treaty with Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta that the iron curtain would be on the East side of Trieste in exchange for the USSR getting Poland.

We the Slovenians lay our claim for Trieste down in exchange for a little more Alps which did have a Slovenian majority for - well forever really. The mountains are more our thing anyway...

There is a lot of "we wuz kangz n shiet" in the comments. Clearly Trieste is Bulgarian

Plz don't call Trentino-Alto Adige Tirol. Tirol is a geograpichal region that spans both in Austria and Italy, with South Tirol, that it's only half of Trentino-Alto Adige (More commonly used in Italian way to talk about South Tirol, and means high Adige, an Italian river, because its northern part is located in south tirol). Trentino is the southern province of the region.

Boarders have always changed throughout history and will again.

Six flags over Trieste. Just like six flags over Texas.

Irish author James Joyce went to live there after he left Ireland.

4:36 Is it just a meme or did Italy really switch sides in WW2? I can't find a true answer, because some people tell me that it was a civil war between fascist italians/nazis vs allies/Kingdom of Italy and others say it was a straight betrayal.

How Slovenia took italian land?

I see many proud and loud comments coming frome croatians especially... Don't forget that the allies gave you theses lands, you would never be able to take them from Italy by yourselves. Not then, not now, never. Don't forget that.

Slovenia took all italiano coast look at Capodistria It was once an italian city inhabited by italian people after wwII they gave It to Jugoslavia and all the Italians had to flee or get killed in the foibe

First i thought this was map of Hatay region of Türkiye from thumbnail

How is that Slovenia's coastline escapes me

“Istria, a country of Italy, joyning to Illyricum.” -E. P., The New World of English Words: A General Dictionary, 1663 “Istria, a peninsula of Italy, lying on the N. part of the Adriatic, long divided between Austria and the republic of Venice.” -R. Brookes, The General Gozeiteer, 1791 “Istria, a peninsula of Italy, in the territory of Venice, lying in the north part of the Adriatic sea.” -Encyclopaedia Britannica, Volume 11, 1810

I have been there recently and Trieste is a very weird city: Many huge old buildings but not many people, a port but only cruise ships, a lot of homeless refugees and old Italians etc.!

2:50 I just bought book from one of those Serbian traders in Trieste, Spiridon Gopcevic (from Herceg Novi near Dubrovnika area) "Old Serbia and Mecedonia". Serbs like Italian people, but due what Slovenes did to Serbia in 1980s with meddling into Kosovo against Serbs, I wonder why Serbs did such stupid thing against Italian interests after 1918., although it is said that Trieste had bigger Slovenes population then Ljubljana. We also must notice that where was not Yugoslavia (Italy, Kertner Austria... ) there is no Slovenes anymore. Similar with Macedonians, there is no Macedonians in Macedonian Greece and Bulgaria, so only Serbs preserved native population without expelling, even muslims while AustroHungary, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria expelled all muslims to Turkey and removed all alien mosques.

Well that whole part has been Italian for centuries and centuries

TRST JE NAŠ🇸🇮🇸🇮🇸🇮

The title is misleading, since Trieste has never been part of Slovenia!

To be correct. Majority were Italians. Second group by number were Slovenians. Third were Croats

Italy and Serbia should have a border at east coast of Adria, agreement from London 1915...

In my opinion the video title is misleading, because it actually was the other way round: it was Slovenia who got the Italian coastline of Istria after the WWII (Italy was defeated), with the exception of Trieste and Muggia, which remained in Italy.

Good title and good video. Italians always hated Slovenians and Croatian with passion. They see us as subhuman, and call us Slavs instead of our national demonym. I'm not saying average Italian thinks that way (hell, most of them probably barely know we exist), but their political establishment sure does, on a national and on a regional level.

Ah, yes, the slings and arrows of European history are so much fun! Cities/regions changing hands so many times you loose count. Then someone develops a bit of a grudge about something that happened 800 years back and kaboom 🌩WAR breaks out!

'45 Život damo Trst nedamo! '45-'95 shoooping!!!

There are very few ideas that have caused as much trouble in Europe as modern age nationalism. Especially in central and eastern Europe and in the balkans, the idea is extremely ill-suited to the way people of different ethnicities, languages, and religions are living in mixed settlements. Thankfully, today we have the European Union and borders have lost their character as obstacles to trade and exchanges. However, history remains an obstacle in communication, and sadly the current Italian authorities have turned down the combined efforts of Italian and Slovenian historians to reach a common and agreed account of what happened in the last century. In the Italian mainstream, a narrative prevails which sees Italians as victims of Slavic aggression, completely glossing over what happened during the Italian occupation, and exaggerating and misinterpreting the history of the so called “foibe”. To overcome nationalism and its grasp of people’s minds, the first step is recognising your own country’s wrongdoings, and own up to them. Nationalistic propaganda thrives on taking the victim role, and it is especially true of the right wing parties, since people who are frustrated love to have an aim for the aggression that stems from frustration. Show them a supposed enemy, and they’ll take it and follow you in a crusade. It is an extremely dangerous stratagem in Europe, even if I wouldn’t go as far as expecting Italy to go to war against a neighbour today. But it is bad enough to antagonise them. The best way of entertaining good neighbours relationships is to think what you might be doing wrong yourself, and the Italian wailing about the supposed massacres of Italians - which objectively pale in comparison to other episodes of the Balkan war theatre, where Italians were among the perpetrators - is precisely the opposite. (And if you’re Italian and thinking about answering me - sono tedesco, sposato con un’italiana, e tutto quello che so sulle foibe l’ho letto su libri italiani, sentito da storici italiani che hanno studiato la materia e partecipato nella commissione Italo-slovena di storici, e i libri li ho comprati proprio a Trieste.)

It's how Slovenia got Italy's coastline :)

Lidia Bastianich has roots Trieste

This could be a 10s video saying “Italy stole it after trying to steal it for a long time” 😂👍

If it stayed independent i could easily imagine it becoming super rich tax heaven like Monaco, Andora or Lichtenstein, kinda sad it didn't.

The question should be: how could Slovenia get Capodistria and Pirano?

This is a story that would be perfect for „history matters“ but you beat him to the punch, seems like James bisonet was lazy today 😂😂

How did Slovenia and Croatia get to keep Italy's coastline, and get to kicked all the Italians away from Istria and Dalmazia..? that's the correct question