Читать книгу History of the Adriatic - Egidio Ivetic - Страница 12

While it was essentially the Adriatic that determined the characteristic appearance of the Apennine Italian peninsula, this was not the case in the Balkans. The question arises as to what the Balkans actually are.¹¹ To be precise, it is not really a peninsula but rather a Balkan region, as the base of the peninsula that lies between Rijeka and the mouths of the Danube is actually wider than the longitude area between the Danube and Sava rivers and the Peloponnese peninsula: the 1,100-kilometre base is longer than the 1,000-kilometre European isthmus between Odessa and Kaliningrad. The northern border of the Balkans runs from east to west, following the course of the Danube, Sava and Kupa rivers, as far as the Gulf of Rijeka. Between Rijeka and Karlovac lies the threshold to Croatia, the shortest route between the Mediterranean and the Pannonian Plain, which is where the Balkans and central Europe end. Starting from the concept identified by the renowned Serbian geographer Jovan Cvijić, later developed by other experts, the Balkan region can be conceived as a trapezoid with northern vertexes along the Rijeka–Belgrade–Dubruja axis, and southern vertexes along the Bay of Vlorë–Thessaloniki–Istanbul axis.¹² Or, again, using Cvijić’s concept, it could include Epirus and part of Macedonia, between the gulfs of Arta and Thessaloniki, then onwards to Istanbul. The Greek peninsula, which extends from this Balkan bloc, should be examined separately. Considering the Balkan region in these terms, it is characterized by mountain ranges, few accessible roads and therefore relative isolation, especially as far as the Mediterranean and Pannonian context is concerned. It is nevertheless clear that no matter how this part of Europe is defined, the Adriatic makes up its western side. With this in mind, it is not surprising that whether Istria, Trieste, the Karst area and Rijeka should be positioned in the Italian or in the Balkan geographical region was greatly discussed throughout the twentieth century, with no common view emerging.

Today, the geographic space, the geographic text, can be interpreted in various ways. Considering Europe as a giant peninsula divided into different branches or other peninsulas that emerge from its continental mass, the Balkans could be perceived as a mountainous extension of Eastern Europe that joins the Mediterranean at the Adriatic, the Ionian and the Aegean seas. Or perhaps, following the ideas of the well-known Balkan scholar Traian Stoianovich, the region could be considered as a shield that extends from the Adriatic across the Aegean towards Anatolia, its Asian counterpart, forming a single world – a bridge between Asia and Europe, a place where Europe and Asia come together. After all, in the nineteenth century, the Balkans were still the Near East and therefore Asia. In all this discussion about geographical facts, it is clear that the Adriatic surrounds a Balkan world that is important to the continent.

It is a Balkan world, or a south-eastern European one. According to Croat geographers, Croatia belongs to central Europe on one side and to the Mediterranean on the other, and it defines the Balkan region (south-eastern Europe). There is also a revival in Germany of the vision of Europe based on cultural regions, Kulturkreise. From this perspective, Mitteleuropa, the central Europe which has formed in the last two centuries includes on its southern side Trieste, Istria, present-day Slovenia and Croatia, and Dalmatia. In other words, central Europe is expanding southwards. And the Mediterranean, as a geographic region, is perhaps retreating. In short, the geography of the Adriatic, especially on its eastern side, is still evolving.

There is no doubt that multiple geographies converge within and around the Adriatic. The Adriatic area also has a linguistic geography, where its western part is historically associated with Italian, the eastern part with Slovenian, with ramifications of Italian (in Istria and Rijeka), Croatian, Serbian, Albanese and Greek. That is today a total of six languages for seven states. Naturally, there are also dialect variations, the true linguistic panorama of the sea: various versions from Apulia, Molise, Abruzzo, Marche, Romagna, Veneto and Friuli. And then there is the Slovene spoken along the coasts, various forms of Čakavian Croatian, Štokavian Croatian/Serbian/Bosnian/Montenegrin, the two variants of Albanian, Gheg and Tosk, and neo-Greek. And underlying the standard national cultures is the religious and confessional geography. Catholicism is the main religion in Italy, Slovenia and Croatia (four-fifths of the coast), and also northern Albania. The Serbian Orthodox Church prevails in the Dalmatian and Herzegovina hinterland, along the coasts of Montenegro and in the small community of Trieste and Rijeka. The Montenegrin Orthodox Church dominates in Montenegro, and the Greek-Albanian Church in southern Albania. Islam is found in the Herzegovina hinterland and throughout most of Albania, especially in the central part (Durrës and Tirana). Until the nineteenth century, these were lands that evoked the Orient but also a certain Homeric classicism.

The economic and social transformations that have taken place over the last century – modernization, the vision and national concept of territories and coasts, nationalization of the sea itself in legal and political terms, and in symbolic and imaginary terms, in short, all those aspects of a world that is closer to us today – have hidden the memory of an Adriatic that no longer exists. It was a sea of synergies between shores and peoples in a common Adriatic life. The historic relationship between the hinterland and the coasts has also been forgotten. It is hard today to imagine the duration, the continuity of customs, actions, ways of life, the resources, the sea. Historians themselves are divided into categories of scholars of antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Early Modern, Modern and Contemporary Ages, and they fail to see the structural features that lie beyond their particular period of study. Yet, on a local and regional scale, the first archaeological finds and earliest testimonies point to a continual repetition of activities from ancient times. It is a continuity, or rather a reinterpretation, that has only disappeared in the contemporary age with industrialization.

The Adriatic we have lost, just like the rest of the Mediterranean, was a sea that created interdependencies between the coasts, and between the coast and the hinterland. There was widespread economic synergy at various geographic levels, side by side with a migratory mobility between the coastal regions. Everywhere there was an economic and social, and also cultural, dualism between the sea and the hinterland. Regarding coast-to-coast relations, the Adriatic is a narrow sea that has always allowed those navigating it in rowing boats, or sailing boats, or ships with oars and sails to refer to both sides of the sea. From Ancona or Rimini, the Roman trireme, with their three banks of oars, stopped at Pola (Pula) on their way to the Gradus (Grado) in Aquileia. Zigzagging between one coast and the other, stopping on both sides, was taken for granted in Adriatic navigation, which required detailed knowledge of the coast, of the perilous reefs to the east and the shallows to the west. Mastering the Adriatic in a maritime context meant knowing its currents and its shores intimately, having a perception of its size which was measured in days of navigation. Adriatic navigation involved small vessels, which was the genuine maritime nature of the Mediterranean. To understand the intensity of relations between the coasts, the various contexts in the upper Adriatic (lagoons, Istria, Romagna), the middle Adriatic (Istria, Marche, Abruzzo, Dalmatia), and the lower Adriatic (Apulia, Albania, Greece) has to be allowed for. Account also has to be taken of the frequent and predictable navigation between the extremes, such as Trieste–Apulia or Venice–Ionian Islands, in other words the oblique dimension of the Adriatic.

The relationship between the coast and the hinterland was also important. The first example that comes to mind, because repeatedly cited in the literature, is the transhumance carried out between the mountains of Abruzzo and the Tavoliere Plain in Apulia. This is a seasonal movement of animals and people, the origins of which are lost in time. Reciprocity and difference: dualism. The ancient Samnites were proud of their pastoral civilization with respect to the Iapygians and the Daunians of the Tavoliere Plain who were farmers and open to Hellenization. The same can be said of the eastern shore where Greek colonies adjusted to living with, albeit separate from, Illyrian peoples. Archaeological finds from Roman Dalmatia show the integration between a strongly Romanized maritime front with a capital like Salona, and the deeper hinterland inhabited by Illyrian pastoralist peoples amenable to serve in the legions, as were the Dalmatians on the limites of the empire. The same dualism and reciprocity was perceived in the Middle Ages, and also in the Modern Age, despite the division between Venetian coastal Dalmatia and the Ottoman eyalet of Bosnia. It could also be seen in the late nineteenth century, when ‘Turkish’ caravans reached Šibenik and Split from the inland, represented as a picturesque curiosity of the Near East. Caravans crossed the Balkans and united the Aegean with the Adriatic Sea. It is said that the last camel caravans were travelling the route between Thessaloniki and Skopje, and then on to Sarajevo, as late as the 1920s.

For centuries, mule caravans came down to Trieste from Carinthia and Carniola; flocks and herds travelled from the Venetian Pre-Alps to the lagoons; herds were brought by the Morlachs from Herzegovina to the islands of Korčula and Mljet (Meleda). There are many examples of this phenomenon and involve all the Adriatic regions. A detailed census would show similar occurrences around the sea: transhumances, Alpine pasture, migration from the mountains to the coast, towards the cities. And each region of the Adriatic – upper, middle or lower – has its own connections and interconnections. In the upper Adriatic, a regional economy developed on the basis of the synergy of their individual segments from ancient times. Thus Istria, lacking cereals, exchanged its oil with the grain of the Friulan and Venetian plains. In this case, the lagoon was a zone of mediation, even regarding transport. Venice utilized all the resources available in the range of 100 kilometres: timber from Montello, Istria and Cadore; trachyte from the Euganean Hills, marble from the area around Verona, and white stone from Istria. It fed its population with wheat from the areas of Padua, Polesine and Treviso; with livestock from Dalmatia and Istria; fish from the lagoon and the open sea; and with wine from Friuli and Istria. Venice produced salt, but more often it dispatched salt from Istria, Dalmatia and Apulia to its hinterland. Venice flooded the entire Adriatic, the Pre-Alps, Carniola and Carinthia with its artisan products. In short, it was a regional economy driven by Venice and by the sea. From the Middle Ages to modern times, trade was well documented, and it was common practice to record even minor daily navigation. Commerce followed ancient trading routes: this can be seen in the circulation of glass and vases in antiquity, and of amphoras, tiles, terracotta objects, building stone and marble in Roman times.

From all perspectives, the Adriatic reveals itself to be an enormous system that united the coasts and, as a consequence, the hinterlands. It was a measurable Mediterranean. Ancient customs could still be observed here and there up until a century ago: large Dalmatian boats at the Senigallia fair or at Port Recanati for the pilgrimages to Loreto; boats from Chioggia and Burano in the Istrian ports; ships from Kotor tied up in Trieste; boats from Ancona and Fano at Lošinj, Zadar and Split. Photographs and paintings, like the lovely ones by Ugo Flumiani, and postcards from the beginning of the twentieth century have fortunately captured a picturesque world which survived in the age of steamships and the first airplanes. In the everyday world of coastal navigation, there were bragozzi, trabaccoli, pieleghi, brazzere – names of boats typical of the Adriatic, rather than other Mediterranean seas, which continued to be used until the end of the Second World War.¹³ At a certain point, in the 1930s, hydrofoils, a futuristic expression of the Adriatic to come, and the old vessels that gave the impression of a continuing Middle Ages could be seen at Zadar at the same time. The image was the same in 1940 from Fano to Senigallia, Šibenik and Ragusa: a line-up of prows, a forest of rigging, faces of sailors and fishermen; each prow painted with two eyes, the last signs of an ancient tradition.

There existed, therefore, a koinè and a tradition that we must recognize and that undoubtedly united the Adriatic world of the past. It nonetheless did not ignore the diversity between each individual segment of shore when considering their maritime, economic and social dimensions. In other words, there was participation in the overall maritime world of the Adriatic, which was one of the most maritime seas in the Mediterranean, a maritime transport territory. From ancient times, the east coast was more seafaring: from Trieste to the Bay of Kotor, a multitude of small settlements lying on the sea characterized the jagged coastline and the islands, with respect to the west coast and the present-day Albanian coast, which is mainly uninhabited. It might be said there were active and passive shores when considering their maritime nature. The Venetian lagoon holds its own special place, largely inhabited and part of an Adriatic world from the late Middle Ages. It is therefore unsurprising that the Venetian lagoons, Istria and Dalmatia were linked by a common maritime synergy for 2,000 years. It was a transversal dynamism that also occurred in Apulia with respect to the Albanian and Greek coasts from antiquity to the nineteenth century.

It seems as though for centuries everyone knew one another in this Adriatic conceived and perceived as a maritime world. Consulting the notary deeds of the sea cities and the coastal towns, there are constant references to peoples on the opposite coast. A Schiavone was as much at home in Ancona and Pescara as in Venice. The term ‘Schiavone’ does not only mean Slav; it was also used to refer to people who came from Schiavonia, a name used in the western Adriatic to refer to Dalmatia. Dalmatia and Illyria were terms used in European geography in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. It was in Illyria that Sebastian and Viola, the protagonists of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, were shipwrecked. Nevertheless, for both coastal peoples, as for all coastal populations, the sea represented the route to a universal maritime world, to the Mediterranean and then on to the oceans. Awareness of the oceans began from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, when Dutch, British and Nordic ships manned by sailors who spoke non-Mediterranean languages became a common occurrence, especially along the east coast. If antiquity and the Middle Ages necessarily had a Mediterranean boundary in the Adriatic, the Modern and Contemporary Ages reflected the oceanic dimension, therefore a worldwide prospect, even though on a local scale.

This Adriatic, which might be seen as traditional, has been replaced in the last two centuries by an increasingly scientific Adriatic, conceived as a well-defined maritime space, an ecological system or organism. The earliest maps of the Adriatic, which represented the sea as a symbolic concept, are found in the late medieval portolan maps. The Adriatic is clearly represented in Fra Mauro’s Mappamondo (c. 1450) in the Marciana Library in Venice, in the maps of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius from Anvers (1570), and especially in the magnificent map of Europe by Mercator (Gerhard Kremer from Rupelmonde in Flanders) in 1554.¹⁴ In the late fourteenth century, Ibn Khaldun portrayed the Adriatic as the Gulf of Venice, while in the sixteenth century the Ottoman cartographer Piri Reis showed the Adriatic as a fundamental segment of the Mediterranean. The famous Venetian cartographer Vincenzo Coronelli provided a detailed description of the Adriatic coasts and the eighteenth-century hinterland. The great French engineer and cartographer Charles-François Beautemps-Beaupré introduced a scientific approach in the calculation of the distances and the depth of the sea in his map of the coast, from Trieste to the Bay of Kotor, a reconnaissance carried out between 1806 and 1809, one of the first in the world.¹⁵

The entire Adriatic was systematically measured in 1826–1827 by a joint scientific expedition of the Kingdom of Naples, Great Britain and the Austrian Empire. Other Austrian and Italian expeditions followed in the late nineteenth century. The data collected were elaborated in the nautical maps of the hydrographic institute of the Italian navy in Genoa, which has been active since 1872, and focused on the Apennine area of the Adriatic. The Austrian (Austro-Hungarian) institute in Pula (Pola), active since 1866, conducted studies on the eastern part of the sea. This was the situation up until 1918. The Austrian work was then taken up by the Yugoslav navy hydrographic institute in Split which operated from 1923, and from 1991 by the Croatian navy.

Since the eighteenth century, the Adriatic has attracted scientists, fascinating scholars such as Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Vitalino Donati and Alberto Fortis. The first Zoologia adriatica was published in Bassano in 1792 by Abbot Giuseppe Olivi.¹⁶ Regular study of marine biology was established during the nineteenth century. It was formally adopted first by private initiatives or local associations, then after 1860 by the coastal states which decided to incorporate the sea as a regular feature of the land territory. The Civic Museum of Natural History was founded in Trieste in 1852, and in 1874 the Adriatic Society of Natural Science. In 1869, the governing heads of Austro-Hungary promoted a commission for the scientific study of the Adriatic, and in Trieste an institute of hydrobiology funded by the monarchy was set up in 1875. In 1891, this was matched in Rovinj in Istria by a zoological research institute of the Berlin aquarium, owned in fact by Germany. Of considerable importance in the scientific history of the Adriatic are the four joint expeditions in 1911–1914 by the Austrian navy ship Najade and the Italian naval ship Ciclope, which studied the physical and natural features of the Adriatic, conducting numerous geological, hydrological, biological and marine zoological surveys. In addition to the stations of Trieste and Rovinj (which was Italo-Germanic from 1930 to 1945), in 1930 the Yugoslav Institute of Oceanography was founded in Split. After the Second World War, oceanography grew exponentially on a world scale, equal to the exploitation of maritime resources. The geological and geophysical features of the Adriatic were further studied for the purposes of the utilization of natural gas. From the 1960s, the Italian National Research Council, often with the collaboration of the navy and in line with international research projects aimed at investigating the Mediterranean, has intensified studies in the Adriatic. There have been numerous expeditions with international collaboration. From the 1970s, the objective to monitor known areas – the closed seas, such as the Mediterranean and the Adriatic – was intensified. Today, the Adriatic is monitored transversally by national and international institutes in a research network which includes geology, seismology, climatology, ecology and biological oceanography.¹⁷

The progressively scientific approach to the Adriatic has uncovered many features of the sea, and there are few mysteries left. Distances and depths are measured by Global Positioning System (GPS), and there are regular weather forecasts in real time. It is now generally accepted that the sea is a natural and geological system, a living organism put to the test by human activity. At the same time, the morphological transformation of the seabeds in the upper Adriatic, the pollution due to fertilizers, the climate changes to the marina flora and fauna, the increasingly dramatic fate of Venice, anthropization, the total urbanization of the Italian coast that has created an Adriatic city 1,400 kilometres long, all testify to the fragility of this system.¹⁸ So-called ‘littoralization’, demographic and economic clustering along the coasts, leading to their disfigurement, the widespread banalization of seaside non-places and the commercial exploitation of every point with a sea view are now a fact of life. The geographic, scientific, economic and ecological finiteness of the Adriatic is now clear. Today, this is the first and often univocal perception of the Adriatic world which, in the collective imagination, covers the meanings and the symbologies that the sea has had in the past. Yet, in regard to all this, the history of the Adriatic as a concept, research and narrative has become a route we can no longer ignore in order to rediscover and therefore rethink this sea.