STARIJA POVIJEST ISTRE I NEKI NJEZINI ODRAZI NA NOVIJE RAZDOBLJE
THE EARLY HISTORY OF ISTRIA AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON MODERN TIMES

Summary/Abstract: The article gives a historical survey of historiography concerning ancient Istria, i.e. protohistory, the late iron age up to the great migration period, with special emphasis on comprehending the ethnic character of the pre-Roman inhabitants of Istria, their Romanization and the settling of Italics, as well as inhabitants from other parts of the Empire. Namely, the ethnic orientation of the Histres had, since the turn of the century, been the subject of heated discussions occuring between Italian and Croatian historiography, each of which tried to instrumentalize this issue in view of their own political struggle for the awareness of the popular and national being of Istria. Romanization was comprehended in the same dual way, on the one hand as a "hateful foreign power", on the other as the "bearer of civilization". The settling of the Slavs, later Croats and Slovenes, had been purposefully neglected by Italian historiography, so that early medieval and late Croatian archeology started developing after 1947.

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