So am flipping through a bunch of books on the Balkans I checked out from my local library in Ossining before heading to Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia in two more days…. yay!And came across this word id actually never heard before. Apparently the term gained currency when Italians who had been a pretty large percentage of Croatian inhabitants for several centuries-as the Dalmatian coast had been “acquired” by the Venetian Empire from the 1400s till the 1800s–started being forced out by the middle of the 20th C by the Slovenians thanks to the fallout from WW2 and cried, “‘Italia irredenta!”‘ meaning ” unredeemed Italy”‘ Thus was born ” irredentism” — a “disease that plagues Eastern Europe … [where] it’s easy to find bitter people who ‘want land back that was historically ours'” (Francis Tapon, The Hidden Europe, p328). Clearly, Ethnic cleansing has been going on here for a long time. Yet, this has also been a region where many ethnicities, cultures, religions and languages have also Co existed over centuries. History is a strange beast
Irredentism….
Published by pakistaniamericanfeministtravels
I’m a Professor of English with teaching and research interests in Women’s and Gender Studies, and Postcolonial Performance and Cultural Studies. I have been traveling the world beyond my native Pakistan since I was 8 years old and my family became the first in my parents’ circle to go to live in Africa. I left Lahore at 21 to come to the USA for my PhD and have lived a peripatetic professor and performer’s existence ever since. In my in between sedentary moments i am a wife and mother to two beautiful grown children. View all posts by pakistaniamericanfeministtravels
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