The disintegration of Yugoslavia, accompanied by the emergence of new borders, is paradigmatically highlighting the relevance of borders in processes of societal change, crisis and conflict. This is even more the case, if we consider the violent practices that evolved out of populist discourse of ethnically homogenous bounded space in this process that happened in the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990ies. Exploring the boundaries of Yugoslavia is not just relevant in the context of Balkan area studies, but the sketched phenomena acquire much wider importance, and can be helpful in order to better understand the dynamics of b/ordering societal space, that are so characteristic for our present situation.

Traces the changing identity and ownership of the important city of Trieste in a turbulent period. The port of Trieste, standing at a crucial strategic point at the head of the Adriatic, had a turbulent history in the mid-twentieth century. With the disappearance of the Habsburg empire after the First World War, it passed intoItalian hands. During the Second World War, the Nazis reclaimed the city as part of the Reich. In 1945, Trieste slipped through Tito's fingers and was internationalised under Allied military government control, returning to Italian sovereignty in 1954. This book examines Trieste's transformation from an imperial commercial centre at the crossroads of the Italian, German and Balkan worlds to an Italian border city on the southern fringe of the iron curtain. Concentrating on local sources, the book shows how Triestines, renowned for their cosmopolitan Central European affiliations, articulated an Italian civic identity after the First World War, and traces the fitful process ofaffirming Trieste's Italianness over the course of nearly four decades of liberal, Fascist and international rule. It suggests that Italianisation resulted from complicated interactions with Rome and interference by internationalpowers attempting to strengthen western Europe at the edge of the Balkans.