Slovenia Brief History

According to Prozipcodes.com, Slovenia is a central European state. It borders to the North with Austria, to the NE with Hungary, to the SE and to the South with Croatia, to the West with Italy ; it overlooks the Adriatic Sea for a short stretch (46 km) to SW.

Slovenia, as a historical territory, begins to have a very particular physiognomy with the settling of the Slovenes. From the Danubian plains, where, together with the other Slavs who later said they were southern, they had been transplanted in the century. VI as slaves of the Avars, they, after the passage of the Lombards in Italy (568), began to migrate westwards, especially going up the Sava valley. In the epoch of the most vigorous expansion they occupied the territory between the Isonzo, the upper Drava valley between Villach and Ptuj, the Sotla valley, the Usocchi mountains, the upper Culpa valley and the upper Timavo, while single veins they penetrated into Friuli in the Natisone valley, in the Salzburg area towards the Lungau and in Styria up to the Raab. The movement in these essentially alpine territories automatically rescued them from the yoke of the Avars, natural rulers of lowland steppe regions, and made them enter the sphere of influence and dominion of the Germanic peoples and states, under which they remained almost uninterrupted until 1918. Already from 623 to 658 they appear dominated by a Franco, the king Samo, who with their demographic mass constituted an independent state, partially rectified even after his death. Subsequently they passed under the dominion of the Bavarians (745-788), of the Franks (788-907), of the Magyars (907-955), again of the Bavaro-Franks, until, little by little, in the XI-XIII centuries, to the dominion more or less direct of the medieval unitary states did not replace the feudal lordship of a multitude of minor German dynasties, such as the Babemberg, who established themselves in most of the central-northern territories, the Andechs-Merano, the Spanheim, the counts of Gorizia, the patriarchate of Aquileia and others who established themselves in the southern part. Later the influence of the Babemberg also extended to the southern territories, so that when, after the brief dominion of Ottokar Přemysl (1262-1278), the Habsburgs were assumed to the Germanic throne, the complete passage of the Slovenes in the nexus of the Austrian state could already say potentially accomplished. The further history of Slovenia is identical with that of Austria. In the division of the empire made by Charles V in 1521, the Slovenian regions were included in the inner Austria with center in Graz. From 1783 to 1809 they were directly administered by the court chancellery of Vienna. From 1809 to 1813 they belonged to the Napoleonic government of the Illyrian Provinces with headquarters in Ljubljana. In 1814 they returned to Austria which formed the kingdom of Illyria which was maintained until 1849. In these events the Slovenes, all peasants linked to the land, without nobility, bourgeoisie and any ruling class, had no active part. A certain national awakening (Prešern, Bleiweis) was noticeable just towards 1848, but, no matter how many impulses and solicitations came from outside, the movement remained rigidly and deliberately confined to the literary field, the more conscious patriots having formed the conviction that supreme interest of the people was a powerful and independent Austria under the scepter of the good emperor (Bleiweis, Novice, March 22, 1848). An almost identical attitude took in 1917 the Slovenian deputies to the Austrian parliament, who, on May 30, through their president Antonio Korošec declared that they aspired to the unification of all the lands of the monarchy inhabited by Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, under the scepter of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty. However, the outcome of the world war meant that in 1918 they passed to the state of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, under the scepter of the Karagjorgjevićs.