A report on Veneto, Dalmatia and Italy

The countries with coasts on the Adriatic are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Italy, Montenegro, and Slovenia.

The Adriatic Sea is a semi-enclosed sea, bordered in the southwest by the Apennine or Italian Peninsula, in the northwest by the Italian regions of Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and in the northeast by Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Albania—the Balkan peninsula.

An active 200 km fault has been identified to the northwest of Dubrovnik, adding to the Dalmatian islands as the Eurasian Plate slides over the Adriatic microplate.

It is shared by three countries: Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy.

However, after the Third Italian War of Independence (1866), when the Veneto and Friuli regions were ceded by the Austrians to the newly formed Kingdom Italy, Istria remained part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, together with other Italian-speaking areas on the eastern Adriatic.

To get Italy to join the war, the secret 1915 Treaty of London the Entente promised Italy Istria and parts of Dalmatia, South Tyrol, the Greek Dodecanese Islands, parts of Albania and Turkey, plus more territory for Italy's North Africa colonies.

The Kingdom of Italy (Regno d'Italia) was a state that existed from 1861—when King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia was proclaimed King of Italy—until 1946, when civil discontent led an institutional referendum to abandon the monarchy and form the modern Italian Republic.

Italy declared war on Austria in alliance with Prussia in 1866 and received the region of Veneto following their victory.

The Triple Entente promised to grant to Italy – if the state joined the Allies in World War I – several territories including former Austrian Littoral, western parts of former Duchy of Carniola, Northern Dalmatia and notably Zara, Šibenik and most of the Dalmatian islands (except Krk and Rab), according to the secret London Pact of 1915.

Italy was unified by the Roman Republic in the latter part of the third century BC. For 700 years, it was a de facto territorial extension of the capital of the Roman Republic and Empire, and for a long time experienced a privileged status but was not converted into a province.

The fall of Gaeta brought the unification movement to the brink of fruition—only Rome and Venetia remained to be added.

Under the Treaty of Peace with Italy, 1947, Istria, Kvarner, most of the Julian March as well as the Dalmatian city of Zara was annexed by Yugoslavia causing the Istrian-Dalmatian exodus, which led to the emigration of between 230,000 and 350,000 of local ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians), the others being ethnic Slovenians, ethnic Croatians, and ethnic Istro-Romanians, choosing to maintain Italian citizenship.

The Republic of Venice (Repubblica di Venezia; Repùblega de Venèsia) or Venetian Republic (Repubblica Veneta; Repùblega Vèneta), traditionally known as La Serenissima (Most Serene Republic of Venice; Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia; Serenìsima Res-piovega de Venèsia), was a sovereign state and maritime republic in parts of present-day Italy (mainly northeastern Italy) which existed for 1100 years from 697 AD until 1797 AD. Centered on the lagoon communities of the prosperous city of Venice, it incorporated numerous overseas possessions in modern Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Greece, Albania and Cyprus.

Gaining independence, Venice also began to expand on the coasts of the Adriatic Sea and so starting from 1109, following the conquest of Dalmatia and the Croatian coast, the doge formally received the title of Venetiae Dalmatiae atque Chroatiae Dux (English: Doge of Venice, Dalmatia and Croatia), a name that continued to be used until the eighteenth century.

The pope wanted Romagna; Emperor Maximilian I: Friuli and Veneto; Spain: the Apulian ports; the king of France: Cremona; the king of Hungary: Dalmatia, and each one some of another's part.

Italian nationalism is a movement which believes that the Italians are a nation with a single homogeneous identity, and therefrom seeks to promote the cultural unity of Italy as a country.

In particular, Italian nationalists were enraged by the Allies denying Italy the right to annex Fiume, that had a slight majority Italian population but was not included in Italy's demands agreed with the Allies in 1915, and a larger part of Dalmatia which had a vast majority Slavic population and an Italian minority, claiming that Italian annexation of large part of Dalmatia would violate Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points.

Regionalism and municipal identities have challenged the concept of a unified Italian identity, like those in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Naples, Sardinia, Sicily and Veneto.