For anyone familiar with the violent breakup of the former Yugoslavia, the degree to which the serene elegance of towns along the Adriatic Sea now feels like a respite from the turmoil gripping many parts of the world can come as a surprise. With local politics now dominated by mundane disputes over property development and public services, accounts of wars that generated global crises seem like ancient history, rather than reflections of real events that happened only 30 years ago. And while many Adriatic countries still suffer from political polarization, the region is beginning to enjoy an era of prosperity and stability that would have once seemed unimaginable.
This recent shift is even more remarkable in the context of the Adriatic’s long history as a geopolitical space shaped by conflict among rival empires. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, the region’s culture was defined by a mix of warfare, diplomacy and trade between Venice’s colonies along the coast and the Ottoman Empire. During the same period, the expansion of the Austrian Habsburg empire through a succession of wars added a third key imperial center whose legal system and cultural ethos would profoundly influence Slovenia, Croatia and other states along the Adriatic.
This near-constant struggle between competing powers for control of the Adriatic Sea was equally traumatic for cities along Italy’s coast. While Venice remained a Mediterranean power for centuries, other Italian cities were conquered and exchanged between rival empires until Italy’s unification in the latter half of the 19th century. The territorial ambitions of Italian nationalists that flowed out of this process culminated with efforts by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime to tighten control over Croatian regions, as well as his decision to invade Albania and Greece with a level of brutality that continued to poison relations between Rome and the rest of the region long after Italy’s defeat in World War II.