The author analyzes discourse about the river Sotla in Slovenian newspapers from the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The Sotla river marked both the border between Styria and Croatia and that between the Austrian and Hungarian provinces. At the same time, it was the border between Slovenians and Croats. The first part of the article is dedicated to the problem of natural borders in history and geography. In the second part, newspaper articles are used to develop a thesis about the Sotla as a “natural border” between Slovenians and Croats. In the then-valid Slovenian value system, the Sotla was a river that connected and divided; however, it was a border that connected more than it divided.
COBISS.SI-ID: 3059060
Boundary-making in Istria is an old undertaking. It has actually never ceasesed, not even today. Istrian peninsula has thus undergone substantial boundary shifts during the last couple of centuries (especially after the Venetian demise in 1797). But Istria carries its worldwide fame also due to one of probably the harshest disputes on the post-war European grounds – the Trieste territory dispute. In author's perspective, this dispute is one of the four main corner-stones of the current Slovenian-Croatian boundary dispute.
COBISS.SI-ID: 12209229