Nationalists who feared the nation: Adriatic multi-nationalism in Habsburg Dalmatia, Trieste, and Venice

This title examines a group of community leaders and writers in Venice, Trieste, and Dalmatia during the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s who proposed the creation of a multi-national zone surrounding the Adriatic Sea.

At the time, the lands of the Adriatic formed a maritime community whose people spoke different languages and practised different faiths, but identified themselves as belonging to a single region of the Habsburg Empire.

While these activists hoped that nationhood could be used to strengthen cultural bonds, they also feared nationalism's homogenising effects and its potential for violence.