Department of Alto Adige
Dipartimento dell'Alto Adige Ober-Etsch Departement | |
---|---|
Department of Kingdom of Italy (Napoleonic) | |
1810–1814 | |
![]() French map of Napoleonic Italy, with the department of Alto Adige (French: Haut-Adige) located in the north | |
Capital | Trento |
History | |
• Established | 1810 |
• Disestablished | 1814 |
The Department of Alto Adige (Italian and official Dipartimento dell'Alto Adige, German: Ober-Etsch Departement, French: département du Haut-Adige, translated into English Department of Upper Adige
Neither the Cisalpine district nor the department of the Kingdom of Italy correspond to the modern Italian province of Alto Adige (known as South Tyrol in English), although there is some geographical overlap.
History
Cisalpine Republic
Under the
Kingdom of Italy
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Napoleonic_Departement_Oberetsch_1810_District_Botzen.jpg/220px-Napoleonic_Departement_Oberetsch_1810_District_Botzen.jpg)
After the partition of the County of Tyrol between Bavaria and the Kingdom of Italy on 9 June 1810 by
Its capital was Trent and the administrative language Italian, but the German-speaking areas temporarily adopted bilingualism in the public notices and used German in city government. The department was known in German as "Ober-Etsch".[6]
The department included the area around Bolzano, while the northern parts of today's South Tyrol were left united to Bavaria.
The department was disbanded after the defeat of Napoleon in 1814. Its territory was divided over the actual Italian autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano/Bozen (also known as South Tyrol in English or Alto Adige in Italian).
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/Alto_Adige_in_history.png/300px-Alto_Adige_in_history.png)
Reuse of name
The name Alto Adige had no historical antecedent about the region it denoted, but merely described the geographic area of the upper reaches of the Adige river. This was something that was commonly done during the Napoleonic period when naming departments, ignoring any historical names or connotations but using geographical references. The name was dropped after the end of the Napoleonic period, but was used by the Italian irredentists in the mid 1800s.
The term "Alto Adige" was later used as the Italian name of the
References
- ^ The history of the reign of George III, p. 290, at Google Books
- ^ Cisalpine Republic (1797). Raccolta delle leggi, proclami, ordini ed avvisi, Vol 4 (in Italian). Milan: Luigi Viladini. p. 201.
- ^ Cisalpine Republic (1798). Raccolta delle leggi, proclami, ordini ed avvisi, Vol 5 (in Italian). Milan: Luigi Viladini. p. 184.
- ^ Province of Trento, trentinocultura, IL TIROLO NEL PERIODO NAPOLEONICO Archived 1 November 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Tirol at the time of Napoleon
- ^ Erich Egg, Meinrad Pizzinini (1971). Beiträge zur Geschichte Tirols: Festgabe des Landes Tirol zum 11. Österr. Historikertag in Innsbruck vom 5. bis 8. Okt. 1971. Land Tirol, Kulturabt. im Amt d. Tiroler Landesregierung, p. 148.
- ^ Bertuch, Friedrich Justin (1813). Allgemeine geographische Ephemeriden, Vol. 40 (in German). Weimar: Verlage des Landes-Industrie Comptoirs. p. 168.
- ^ Alto Adige under Napoleon
- ISBN 978-88-7223-365-8.
Further reading
- Reinhard Stauber, Der Zentralstaat an seinen Grenzen. Administrative Integration, Herrschaftswechsel und politische Kultur im südlichen Alpenraum 1750–1820 (Schriftenreihe der Historischen Kommission der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 64), Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001. ISBN 978-3-525-36057-6
See also
- Bolzano
- Kingdom of Italy (1805-1814)
- Alto Adige (District)
- South Tyrol