School Associations of Imperial Trieste: From the Defense of the Italian Language to the Fight for Nation

Abstract

The article examines activities of Italian school associations in the imperial city of Trieste, namely, the Societ. pedagogico-didattica (after 1904, La Lega degli insegnanti triestini) and the Federazione degli insegnanti italiani della Regione Giulia, from the establishment of the former in 1869 to their dissolution during World  War I. The members of both associations, mainly primary and secondary school teachers, claimed their main goal was to maintain the italianit. of the Triestine schoolchildren. They sought to realize their goal along several directions, which the author of the article identifies as the struggle against denationalization, the struggle against linguistic “hybridism”, the struggle against the “other’s” schools, and the fight in the “bastions of the nation”. The school associations’ activities and rhetoric significantly influenced the municipal authorities of Trieste, who provided the associations with long-standing financial and propagandistic support. Owing to their radicalized nationalistic position, however, the school associations confronted the city’s political elite in 1908 and subsequently lost its support. The analysis of the school associations’ activities contributes to the understanding of how Trieste, a loyal multicultural Habsburg city, could relatively quickly transform into an Italian irredentist centre on the eve of the First World War.