User:Vbrm/sandbox

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From the early Middle Ages to the fall of Venice Republic
With the end of the Roman Empire and the migration period, the geographical area which will be later included in the Julian March become an area of linguistic borders, where german and slavic language speakers occupied regions where latin and its dialects was previously used.

Germans tribes arrived for the first time in what is now modern Austria and surrounding areas between 4th and 6th centuries. Later on, the slav migration began; around the 6th century, they  appeared on Byzantine borders, and between 6th and 8th century had settled in the Eastern Alps regions. On the Adriatic sea, Slavs found cities subject to or influenced by the Byzantine empire; they failed to submit or integrate with this world, which since then remained largely autonomous from them. This marks the beginning of the peculiar linguistic structure of the area, where speakers of romance languages (local dialects such as Dalmatico, later venetian with its many variants and then italian) were mostly concentrated on the sea, while in the internal areas slavic speakers predominated.

Later, for many centuries, this area was shaped by two main political powers: the Republic of Venice and the Habsburg archdukes of Austria.

Since 11th century Venice began building its overseas empire (Stato da Màr), to set up and protect its commercial routes in the Adriatic and south-east Mediterranean seas. Coastal areas of Istria and Dalmazia were key part of these routes, since when doge Pietro II Orseolo, around year 1000, established the Venetian rule in the high and middle Adriatic. As the Republic was not interested in ruling lands not relevant for route management, its presence concentrated on coasts, thus continuing the political and linguistic separation between internal lands and shores in Istria and Dalmazia. Later, in 1420, during a century when for the first time the Republic showed its interest in expanding towards land in Italy, Venice acquired the territory of the Patriarchate of Aquileia, which included modern Friuli and an internal portion of Istria.

The Habsburg archdukes of Austria held since 1335 the March of Carniola (roughly corresponding to the central Carniolan region of present-day Slovenia). Starting from there, they moved in the following two centuries to gain control over some Istrian cities (Pazin and later Rijeka (Fiume)), the port of Trieste with Duino, Gradisca and Gorizia with its County in Friuli.

From the fall of Venice Republic to the end of I World War
The region remained relatively stable until the end of the Venetian state following the French invasion in 1797; then the Habsburg monarchy gained Venetian lands in the Istrian Peninsula and the Quarnero (Kvarner) islands, and further expanded it subsequently in 1813, with Napoleon's defeats and the dissolution of French Illyrian provinces, when it gained all of the adriatic littoral, all of Istria, some parts of current Croatia such as the city of Karlstadt.

The Habsburg put originally these new territories into the newly born Kingdom of Illyria, which they in turn dissolved in 1849 into a new administrative entity, the Austrian Littoral. This was established as a crown land (Kronland) of the Austrian Empire and consisted of three regions: the Istria peninsula, Gorizia and Gradisca, and the city of Trieste. The Littoral lasted until the end of the Austrian Empire, in 1918.