Dalmatia is the Adriatic territory at the center of a dispute over what Italy would gain from the postwar settlement. In the account of the Rapallo Treaty, Italy relinquishes its claims to the region apart from Zadar, an Italian possession left without surrounding inland territory or nearby islands. Dalmatia consequently becomes more than a question of borders: it tests whether the fascist movement will accept a negotiated settlement or keep faith with the expansive claims associated with D’Annunzio and Fiume.

The settlement and its limits

Announced unexpectedly on November 12, the Rapallo Treaty shifts Italy’s eastern border to Monte Nevoso, leaving Trieste within Italy, while assigning Dalmatia to Yugoslavia apart from Zadar. The account emphasizes the restricted nature of that exception: Zadar is described as an Italian outpost without a hinterland or the adjacent islands. Fiume, meanwhile, receives independence, and Sussak, its eastern coastal suburb containing Port Baross, goes to Croatia. These provisions place Dalmatia within a broader Adriatic compromise, but they make clear that the settlement does not realize the Italian territorial aspirations attached to the region.

The treaty’s consequences are political as well as territorial. Mussolini, writing in Il Popolo d’Italia, says he is satisfied with the agreement overall, while expressing dissatisfaction over Dalmatia and leaving open the possibility of later revision. His approval gives priority to the negotiated settlement despite his stated objection. In Fiume, even fascists who hold membership cards burn copies of his newspaper carrying the article and send a protest telegram. The word betrayal circulates openly: agreement with the compromise has become a test of political loyalty.

A contested claim

At a meeting of the Central Committee of the Fasci di Combattimento, Mussolini presents the treaty as broadly acceptable, particularly regarding the new borders of Venezia Giulia and the arrangement for Fiume, but not Dalmatia. He argues that the agreement must nevertheless be accepted as accomplished, in the name of national discipline. His stated reasoning is practical: the country is exhausted, socialists could exploit a renewed crisis, and many people do not even know where Dalmatia is. He characterizes D’Annunzio’s insurrectional initiative as spectacular but gangrenous, and argues that it should be cut off rather than allowed to prolong the conflict.

That position meets resistance from Pietro Marsich, a leading Venetian fascist and supporter of D’Annunzio. Marsich denounces the treaty’s negotiators and insists that the movement begun against the old political order in 1915 must continue. Mussolini can defuse this attack by agreeing that the Fiume movement is not over. The more difficult challenge comes from the Dalmatian delegation, whose members claim an Italian identity extending back to the Roman Empire and object to being placed under Croatian authority. Their intervention turns a dispute among political leaders into a question of what the people concerned themselves want.

Mussolini repeatedly asks the delegation to specify its objective. Does it seek annexation from Zadar to Kotor, an Italian-Yugoslav republic, or full autonomy? He insists that support for the delegates does not answer the question of what they propose, and warns that they cannot simply follow D’Annunzio if he were to demand all of Dalmatia. As emotion continues to dominate the discussion, Mussolini emphasizes that the issue concerns the nation’s fate, not feeling alone. His insistence on definition and responsibility contrasts with the broad historical claim made by the delegates.

Compromise and rupture

Two hours into the meeting, Mussolini withdraws his proposed agenda and accepts a compromise. The agreed position welcomes the new borders, continues to object to the loss of Dalmatia, and reiterates that Fiume should be Italian. The crisis within fascism is averted, but the shift unsettles even Cesare Rossi, who had stood with Mussolini during the argument and votes against the revised agenda. The episode shows that compromise preserves the movement’s immediate unity without resolving its competing territorial commitments.

That evening, Mussolini writes to D’Annunzio asking him to choose between seeking all of Dalmatia from Zadar to Kotor and concentrating on the territory promised under the London Treaty. The letter presents the question as one of defining objectives and strategy, while affirming Mussolini’s confidence in D’Annunzio. The narrator calls the performance hypocritical, especially in light of Mussolini’s earlier defense of accepting Rapallo. D’Annunzio does not answer, and no further letter from him reaches Milan. The account then notes that several senior military figures leave the poet, while D’Annunzio is left isolated and speaks of standing alone against the world.

Dalmatia in the book’s political geography

Dalmatia appears through competing scales of political vision. The treaty reduces the immediate question to borders, Zadar, and the limits of Italian control; the delegates invoke a long claim of identity; and Mussolini weighs that claim against the exhaustion of the country and the danger of a renewed crisis. His request that the delegates specify their aims exposes the distance between a powerful national sentiment and a workable political program.

The book also places the dispute against a wider contest over the meaning of the postwar settlement. D’Annunzio presents Fiume as youthful, alive, and directed toward the future, in contrast to the exhausted world of diplomatic negotiation. Against that vision, Mussolini’s acceptance of Rapallo treats peace and recovery as political necessities, even while he preserves an objection to Dalmatia. Later, his fascist program describes the nation as overcoming regional identities in favor of Italians alone and links national greatness to an imperial ambition. Dalmatia’s contested status thus anticipates a tension within that rhetoric: the drive to consolidate a single national identity coexists with expansive claims to territory beyond Italy’s settled borders.

The region’s narrative significance lies less in a completed change of rule than in the conflict it keeps open. In the Rapallo debate, Dalmatia makes visible the cost of compromise, the fragility of fascist unity, and the difference between invoking a national claim and deciding what action should follow from it.