The Province of Zara (Italian: Provincia di Zara) was a province of the Kingdom of Italy, officially from 1918 to 1947. In 1941 it was enlarged and made part of the Italian Governorate of Dalmatia, during World War II, until 1943.
The Province of Zara (Italian: Provincia di Zara) was a province of the Kingdom of Italy, officially from 1918 to 1947. In 1941 it was enlarged and made part of the Italian Governorate of Dalmatia, during World War II, until 1943.
An institutional referendum (Italian: referendum istituzionale, or referendum sulla forma istituzionale dello Stato) was held by universal suffrage in the Kingdom of Italy on 2 June 1946, a key event of contemporary Italian history. Until 1946, Italy was a kingdom ruled by the House of Savoy, reigning since the unification of Italy in 1861 and previously rulers of the Kingdom of Sardinia. In 1922, the rise of Benito Mussolini and the creation of the Fascist regime in Italy, which eventually resulted in engaging the country in World War II alongside Nazi Germany, considerably weakened the role of the royal house.
Following the Italian Civil War and the Liberation of Italy from Axis troops in 1945, a popular referendum on the institutional form of the state was called the next year and resulted in voters choosing the replacement of the monarchy with a republic. The 1946 Italian general election to elect the Constituent Assembly of Italy was held on the same day. As with the simultaneous Constituent Assembly elections, the referendum was not held in the Julian March, in the province of Zara or the province of Bolzano, which were still under occupation by Allied forces pending a final settlement of the status of the territories.
The Constitution of the Italian Republic (Italian: Costituzione della Repubblica Italiana) was ratified on 22 December 1947 by the Constituent Assembly, with 453 votes in favour and 62 against, before coming into force on 1 January 1948, one century after the previous Constitution of the Kingdom of Italy had been enacted. The text, which has since been amended sixteen times, was promulgated in an extraordinary edition of Gazzetta Ufficiale on 27 December 1947.
The Constituent Assembly was elected by universal suffrage on 2 June 1946, on the same day as the referendum on the abolition of the monarchy was held, and it was formed by the representatives of all the anti-fascist forces that contributed to the defeat of Nazi and Fascist forces during the liberation of Italy. The election was held in all Italian provinces, except the provinces of Bolzano, Gorizia, Trieste, Pola, Fiume and Zara, located in territories not administered by the Italian government but by the Allied authorities, which were still under occupation pending a final settlement of the status of the territories (in fact in 1947 most of these territories were then annexed by Yugoslavia after the Paris peace treaties of 1947, such as most of the Julian March and the Dalmatian city of Zara).
The Governorate of Dalmatia (Italian: Governatorato di Dalmazia; Croatian: Guvernatorat Dalmacija) was an administrative division of the Kingdom of Italy that existed during two periods, first from 1918 to 1920 and then from 1941 to 1943. The first Governorate of Dalmatia was established following the end of World War I, given the London Pact (1915), and was disastablished following the Treaty of Rapallo. The London Pact also promised Italy part of Dalmatia (for the presence of Dalmatian Italians). However, both the peace settlement negotiations of 1919 to 1920 and the Fourteen Points of Woodrow Wilson, who advocated self-determination, took precedence, with Italy being permitted to annex only Zadar from Dalmatia, with the rest of Dalmatia being part of Yugoslavia. Enraged Italian nationalists considered the decision to be a betrayal of the promises of the London Pact, so this outcome was denounced as a "mutilated victory".
The second Governorate of Dalmatia was established following the military conquest of Yugoslavian Dalmatia by General Vittorio Ambrosio, during World War II. It had the provisional purpose of progressively importing Italian national legislation in Dalmatia in place of the previous one, thus fully integrating it into the Kingdom of Italy. It was a territory divided into three provinces of Italy during the Fascist Italy and Italian Empire epoch. It was created as an entity in April 1941 at the start of World War II in Yugoslavia, by uniting the existing province of Zara with occupied Yugoslav territory annexed by Italy after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers and the signing of the Rome Treaties.