A report on Veneto and Dalmatia

In 1866, Victor Emmanuel II allied with Prussia during the Austro-Prussian War, waging the Third Italian War of Independence which allowed Italy to annexe Venetia.

Italy, nominally allied with the German Empire and the Empire of Austria-Hungary in the Triple Alliance, in 1915 joined the Allies into World War I with a promise of substantial territorial gains, that included western Inner Carniola, former Austrian Littoral, Dalmatia as well as parts of the Ottoman Empire.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Venetian or Venetan (ƚéngua vèneta or vèneto ) is a Romance language spoken natively in the northeast of Italy, mostly in the Veneto region, where most of the five million inhabitants can understand it.

It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto: in Trentino, Friuli, the Julian March, Istria, and some towns of Slovenia and Dalmatia (Croatia) by a surviving autochthonous Venetian population, and Brazil, Argentina, Australia, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Mexico by Venetians and other Venetians in the diaspora.

It covered Savoy and the modern provinces of Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Trentino, South Tyrol, and Marche.

After the defeat of the Third Coalition and the consequent Treaty of Pressburg, on 1 May 1806, the Kingdom gained from Austria the eastern and remaining part of the Venetian territories, including Istria and Dalmatia down to Kotor (then called Cattaro), though it lost Massa and Carrara to Elisa Bonaparte's Principality of Lucca and Piombino.

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.