page_title: Albania veneta
section_title: History of the Venetian speaking population of Albania Veneta
hierarchical_section_title: Albania veneta / History of the Venetian speaking population of Albania Veneta
caption_attribution_description: English: Budva (ital. Budua) in Montenegro, austrian Postcard ca. 1900 Deutsch: Budva (italienisch Budua) in Montenegro, österreichische Postkarte um 1900
context_page_description: Albania Veneta was the name for the possessions of the Republic of Venice in southern Dalmatia from 1420 to 1797.
context_section_description: According to the Dalmatian historian Luigi Paulucci (in his book "Le Bocche di Cattaro nel 1810") the population of the Albania Veneta, during the centuries of the Republic of Venice, was mainly Venetian speaking (approximately 66%) in the urban areas (Cattaro, Perasto, Budua, ecc..) around the "Bocche di Cattaro" (Bay of Kotor).
  But in the inland areas more than half of the population was Serbo-Croatian speaking, after the first years of the eighteenth century. Paulucci wrote even that near the border with Albania there were big communities of Albanian speaking people: Dulcigno (Ulcinj) was half Albanian, one quarter Venetian and one quarter Slavic-speaking.
  During the French rule of the area of Cattaro the schools were in Italian, when the former Albania Veneta was part of the Napoleonic "Kingdom of Italy".
  The Slovenian Marko Trogrli in his essay "The French school system in French Dalmatia" wrote that "Vincenzo Dandolo, the French governor of Dalmatia as well as Bartolomeo Benincasa, an official from the local (Dalmatian) Education Department, published in May 1807 a plan for the province's public education (Il piano generale della pubblica istruzione in Dalmazia), which had to be consistent with the education system throughout the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy....Instruction was to be in Italian".
  During the nineteenth century, according to the historian Scaglioni Marzio, the wars of independence of Italy from the Austro-Hungarian empire created a situation of harassment against the Italian (or Venetian speaking) communities in the Austrian southern Dalmatia.
  The result was that in 1880 there were in Cattaro, according to the Austrian census, only 930 ethnic Italians (or only 32% of a total population of 2910 people).
  Furthermore, in the Austrian census of 1910, the Italians were reduced to only 13.6% in that city, according to Diego De Castro in his book Dalmazia, popolazione e composizione etnica. Cenno storico sul rapporto etnico tra Italiani e Slavi nella Dalmazia.
  There are currently 500 Italian speakers in Montenegro, mainly in the area of Cattaro (Kotor) and Perasto (Perast), who constitute the "Comunitá Nazionale Italiana del Montenegro".
  The "disappearance" of the Italian speaking populations in Dalmatia was nearly complete after World War II. The linguist Matteo Bartoli calculated that the Italians were 33% of the Dalmatian population during the Napoleonic wars, while currently there are only 300 Italians in Croatian Dalmatia and 500 Italians in coastal Montenegro. .
caption: The Venetian walls of Budua (Budva) in a 1900 postcard
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