Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/194



This can be seen from the new statutes drawn up in the era of the Venetian supremacy.

All the necessary elements for the creation of a « Roman » State were present on the Adriatic coast. It could have had a language of its own, since a special form of vulgar Latin had been evolved in the region, besides the Roumanian dialect spoken by the shepherds or caravan-leaders in the mountains (a variety of the Ratin tongue which is today extinct. Bartoli was able to cull this treasure from the lips of the last survivors of this « Roman » population).

Instead, after Venice had been expelled by the treaty of 1358, Hungary was able to retain possession of Dalmatia until a new Venetian victory regained the inheritance of Doge Orseolo. Ragusa alone preserved, as before, her special position on the former Roman coast. Later, the Turks extended their domination to the Adriatic, and, masters of Albania, they took the place of the former suzerains of Ragusa, receiving annual tribute from the ambassadors of the tiny republic, whose days of liberty were only ended by the Napoleonic edict of 1804. At the same time the Slavonic language ousted the old Roman still spoken and used in the Senate at the end of the 15th century, and the Venetian of common usage.

What was the reason for this political failure — a definitive one, inasmuch as, when Austria collapsed, the considerable majority of Serb-speaking Dalmatians caused the district to be allocated to the new Southern Slav State ?

Firstly, it was because these free cities had lost their peasant populations, from the early days of the Slavonic invasion. Under the influence of the unceasing flood of peasant immigrants, the numerous Romance population, which existed in the 7th century, lost its language and therewith, the assurance of its origin. Ethnography alone can