2008 Reports

Goals and methodology : from bond to border : the transformation of the Adriatic in the nineteenth century

Reill, Dominique Kirchner

The aim of this paper was to offer an overview on my current research which examines a network of writers and community leaders living in Venice, Trieste, and Dalmatia, who, from the late 1830s to the 1850s, promoted a multinational vision of the Adriatic. This movement, which I have termed Adriatic multi-nationalism, foresaw the mutual development of more than one national community throughout an area where it was believed that at least three of Europe’s peoples or nations overlapped. By focusing on six of the most prominent figures in this network, I show the origins of this Adriatic multi-national ideology, how it spread to incorporate activists from different geographical and intellectual climates, and how the ideology transformed from one which posited the Adriatic as a forum for communication and harmonization between Europe’s nations to one which defined the Adriatic as a natural “no-man’s-land” or buffer zone between different peoples.