Trieste

   An ancient port city at the northeastern corner of the Adriatic Sea, which in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries became the most important sea harbor of the Habsburg monarchy because it offered direct access to the Mediterranean. The city was occupied three times by French troops during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. From 1857 to 1918, Trieste was among the most prosperous harbors on the Mediterranean, but it was also home to a strong irredentist movement seeking annexation to Italy. On the eve of World War I, approximately two-thirds of the population of Trieste were Italians, most of the rest Croats or Slovenes. James Joyce spent almost a decade in Trieste and for a time taught English to officers of at the Habsburg naval base in nearby Pola. After World War I, Italian troops occupied the city in accordance with the treaty of London of 1915.

   See also <>.

   FURTHER READING:

    Cornwall, Mark, ed. The Last Years of Austria-Hungary: A Multi-National Experiment in Early Twentieth Century Europe . Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002.

   GUENTHER KRONENBITTER