The Julian March (Serbo-Croatian and ), also called Julian Venetia (; ; ; ), is an area of southeastern Europe which is currently divided among Croatia, Italy, and Slovenia. The term was coined in 1863 by the Italian linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, a native of the area, to demonstrate that the Austrian Littoral, Veneto, Friuli, and Trentino (then all part of the Austrian Empire) shared a common Italian linguistic identity. Ascoli emphasized the Augustan partition of Roman Italy at the beginning of the Empire, when Venetia et Histria was Regio X (the Tenth Region).
The term was later endorsed by Italian irredentists, who sought to annex regions in which ethnic Italians made up most (or a substantial portion) of the population: the Austrian Littoral, Trentino, Fiume and Dalmatia. The Triple Entente promised the regions to Italy in the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in exchange for Italy's joining the Allied Powers in World War I. The secret 1915 Treaty of London promised Italy territories largely inhabited by Italians (such as Trentino) in addition to those largely inhabited by Croats or Slovenes; the territories housed 421,444 Italians, and about 327,000 ethnic Slovenes.
A contemporary Italian autonomous region, bordering on Slovenia, is named Friuli Venezia Giulia ("Friuli and Julian Venetia").
Etymology
The term "Julian March" is a partial translation of the Italian name "Venezia Giulia" (or "Julian Venetia"), coined by the Italian Jewish historical linguist Graziadio Ascoli, who was born in Gorizia. In an 1863 newspaper article, Ascoli focused on a wide geographical area north and east of Venice which was under Austrian rule; he called it Triveneto ("the three Venetian regions"). Ascoli divided Triveneto into three parts: Euganean Venetia (Venezia Euganea or Venezia propria; Venetia in the strict sense), made up of Italy's Veneto region and most of the territory of Friuli (roughly corresponding to the present Italian provinces of Udine and Pordenone) Tridentine Venetia (Venezia Tridentina): the present Italian region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol Julian Venetia (Venezia Giulia): "Gorizia, Trieste and Istria ... including the land between the Venetia in the strict sense of the term, the Julian Alps, and the sea"
According to this definition, Triveneto overlaps the ancient Roman region of Regio X - Venetia et Histria introduced by Emperor Augustus in his administrative reorganization of Italy at the beginning of the first century AD. Ascoli (who was born in Gorizia) coined his terms for linguistic and cultural reasons, saying that the languages spoken in the three areas were substantially similar. His goal was to stress to the ruling Austrian Empire the region's Latin and Venetian roots and the importance of the Italian linguistic element.
The term "Venezia Giulia" did not catch on immediately, and began to be used widely only in the first decade of the 20th century. It was used in official administrative acts by the Italian government in 1922–1923 and after 1946, when it was included in the name of the new region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
History
Early Middle Ages to the Republic of Venice
At the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Migration Period, the area had linguistic boundaries between speakers of Latin (and its dialects) and the Germanic- and Slavic-language speakers who were moving into the region. Germanic tribes first arrived in present-day Austria and its surrounding areas between the fourth and sixth centuries. They were followed by the Slavs, who appeared on the borders of the Byzantine Empire around the sixth century and settled in the Eastern Alps between the sixth and eighth centuries. In Byzantine Dalmatia, on the east shore of the Adriatic Sea, several city-states had limited autonomy. The Slavs retained their languages in the interior, and local Romance languages (followed by Venetian and Italian) continued to be spoken on the coast.