Dalmatian Italians
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Dalmatia, former Albania Veneta | |
| Languages | |
| Primarily Italian and Croatian, formerly some Dalmatian | |
| Religion | |
| Roman Catholic |
Dalmatian Italians are the historical Italian national minority living in the region of Dalmatia, now part of Croatia and Montenegro. Since the middle of the 19th century, the community, counting according to some sources nearly 20% of all Dalmatian population in 1840, suffered from a constant trend of decreasing presence and now numbers only around 1,000-4,000 people. Throughout history, though small in numbers in the last two centuries, it exerted a vast and significant influence on the region.
They are currently represented in Croatia and Montenegro by the Italian National Community (Italian: Comunità Nazionale Italiana) (CNI). The Italo-Croatian minorities treaty recognizes the Italian Union (Unione Italiana) as the political party officially representing the CNI in Croatia. The Italian Union represents the 30,000 ethnic Italians of former Yugoslavia, living mainly in Istria and in the city of Rijeka. Following the positive trend observed during the last decade (i.e., after the dissolution of Yugoslavia), the number of Dalmatian Italians in Croatia adhering to the CNI has risen to around one thousand. In Dalmatia the main operating centers of the CNI are in Split, Zadar, and Kotor.
Roman Dalmatia was fully Latinized by 476 AD when the Western Roman Empire disappeared During the Barbarian Invasions, Avars allied with certain Slavic tribes, invaded and plundered Byzantine Illyria. This eventually led to the settlement of different Slavic tribes in the Balkans. The original Roman population endured within the coastal cities and in the inhospitable Dinaric Alps. The Dalmatian cities retained their Romanic culture and language in cities such as Zadar, Split and Dubrovnik. Their own Vulgar Latin, developed into the Dalmatian language, a now extinct Romance language. These coastal cities (politically part of the Byzantine Empire) maintained political, cultural and economic links with Italy, through the Adriatic sea. On the other side communications with the mainland were difficult because of the Dinaric Alps. Due to the sharp orography of Dalmatia, even communications between the different Dalmatian cities, occurred mainly through the sea. This helped Dalmatian cities to develop a unique Romance culture, despite the mostly Slavicized mainland.
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