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The Slovene lands or Slovenian lands ( or in short Slovensko) is the historical denomination for the territories in Central Europe and Southern Europe where people primarily spoke Slovene language. The Slovene lands were part of the Illyrian provinces, the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary (in Cisleithania). They encompassed Carniola, southern part of Carinthia, southern part of Styria, Istria, Gorizia and Gradisca, Trieste, and Prekmurje. Their territory more or less corresponds to modern Slovenia and the adjacent territories in Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Croatia, where autochthonous Slovene minorities live. The areas surrounding present-day Slovenia were never homogeneously ethnically Slovene people.
Although Slovenia did not exist as an autonomous administrative unit between 1921 and 1941, the Drava Banovina of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was frequently called simply "Slovenia", even in some official documents.Ivan Selan, Slovenija Kartografsko: Dravska banovina (Ljubljana: Kmetijska zbornica Dravske banovine, 1938)Vinko Vrhunec, Slovenija v šestletki cestnih del (Ljubljana: Banovinska uprava Dravske banovine, 1939)Andrej Gosar, Banovina Slovenija: politična, finančna in gospodarska vprašanja (Ljubljana: Dejanje, 1940)
Consequently, most Slovene scholars prefer to refer to the "Slovene lands" in English rather than "Slovenia" to describe the territory of modern Slovenia and neighbouring areas in earlier times. The use of the English term "Slovenia" is generally considered by Slovene scholars to be anachronistic due to its modern origin.Peter Štih, Vasko Simoniti, Peter Vodopivec, Slowenische Geschichte: Gesellschaft - Politik - Kultur (Graz: Leykam, 2008)
The Žumberak and the area around Čabar, which today belong to Croatia, were long part of the Duchy of Carniola, and thus generally regarded as part of the Slovene lands, especially prior to the emergence of Romantic nationalism in the 19th century, when the exact ethnic border between Slovenes and Croats had not yet been specified.
Not all of the territories referred to as the "Slovene lands" have always had a Slovene-speaking majority. Several towns, especially in Lower Styria, maintained a German language majority until the late 1910s, most notably Maribor, Celje and Ptuj.Janez Cvirn: Trdnjavski trikotnik (Maribor: Obzorja, 1997) The area around Kočevje in Lower Carniola, known as the Gottschee, had a predominantly Gottscheers between the 14th century and 1941 when they were resettled in an agreement between Nazi German and Italian fascism occupation forces.Mitja Ferenc, Kočevska: izgubljena kulturna dediščina kočevskih Nemcev (Ljubljana: Muzej novejše zgodovine, 1993) A similar German "linguistic island" within an ethnically Slovene territory existed in what is now the Italian comune of Tarvisio, but used to belong to the Duchy of Carinthia until 1919.Tina Bahovec, Das österreichisch-italienisch-slovenische Dreiländereck: Ursachen und Folgen der nationalstaatlichen Dreiteilung einer Region (Klagenfurt - Ljubljana: Hermagoras/Mohorjeva, 2006) The city of Trieste, whose municipal territory has been regarded by Slovenes to be an integral part of the Slovene lands, has always had a Romance-speaking majority (first Friulian, then Venetian and Italian language).Jože Pirjevec, "Trst je naš!" Boj Slovencev za morje (1848-1954) (Ljubljana: Nova revija, 2008) A similar case is that of the town of Gorizia, which served as a major religious center of the Slovene lands for centuries, but was inhabited by a mixed Italian-Slovene-Friulian-German population.Aldo Rupel et al., Krajevni leksikon Slovencev v Italiji (Trieste - Duino: SLORI, 1995) The towns of Koper, Izola and Piran, surrounded by an ethnically Slovene population, were inhabited almost exclusively by Venetian-speaking Italians until the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus in the late 1940s and 1950s, as were large areas of the comune of Muggia. In southern Carinthia, a process of Germanization started by the end of the 1840s, creating several German-speaking areas within what had previously been a compact Slovene territory. Since the late 1950s, most of southern Carinthia has had a German-speaking majority, with the local Slovene minority living in a scattered pattern throughout the area.Andreas Moritsch & Thomas M. Barker, The Slovene Minority of Carinthia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984)
On the other hand, other areas with historically important Slovene communities, such as the cities of Rijeka and Zagreb, as well as the Slovene villages in the Somogy County county of Hungary (the Somogy Slovenes), were never regarded to be part of the Slovene lands. Etnologija Slovencev na Madžarskem = A Magyarországi szlovének néprajza (Budapest: A Magyar Néprajzi Társaság, 1997 The same goes for the Slovene communities in south-west Friuli (in the villages of Gradisca, Gradiscutta, Gorizzo, Goricizza, Lestizza, and Belgrado in the lower Tagliamento area) which extinguished themselves by the end of the 16th century.Ferdo Gestrin, Slovanske migracije v Italijo (Ljubljana: Slovenska matica, 1998)
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