Inner Carniola ( ; ) is a traditional region of Slovenia, the southwestern part of the larger Carniola region. It comprises the Hrušica karst plateau up to Postojna Gate, bordering the Slovenian Littoral (the Gorizia region) in the west. Its administrative and economic center of the region is Postojna, and other minor centers include Vrhnika, Logatec, Cerknica, Pivka, and Ilirska Bistrica.
Name
The English name
Inner Carniola,
like the Slovene name
Notranjska, is a translation of German
Innerkrain, referring to the southwest part of
Carniola. The name was created by analogy with
Inner Austria (), referring to the southwestern Habsburg hereditary lands.
History
Inner Carniola was a
kreis of the Duchy of Carniola, ruled by the archducal House of Habsburg within the
lands starting in the 14th century. The territorial arrangement was described by the scholar Johann Weikhard von Valvasor (1641–1693) in his 1689 work
The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola. Part of the Napoleonic Illyrian Provinces from 1809, Carniola returned to the
Austrian Empire by the 1814 Treaty of Paris. First administrated within the Austrian Kingdom of Illyria, the Carniolan duchy again became a
Austria-Hungary crown land from 1849 until 1919.
Part of Italy
After World War I, the western part of the region was occupied by the Italian military. In 1920, the Treaty of Rapallo transferred the western part of the region (with around two-thirds of the population) to the Kingdom of Italy. The eastern third was included into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed
Yugoslavia).
Italy was given the districts of Vipava, Postojna, Ilirska Bistrica, Senožeče, and Idrija. The region was divided among the provinces of Gorizia, Trieste, and Fiume (Rijeka). With the rise of Fascism, it was subjected to a policy of violent Italianization until the downfall of Fascism in Italy. In 1947, it was transferred to Yugoslavia, which had occupied it since 1945.
An effect of the nearly three decades of Italian administration of the area is that the western part of Inner Carniola is now popularly perceived as being part of the Slovene Littoral.
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