Page 216 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Aleksej Kalc

However, people from Tomaj came to Trieste not only for work and vo-
cational training but also for general education. Some pupils attended the
city’s Pavinato and Scuola Grande schools. These examples also reflect the
aspirations of certain Tomaj families and the circumstances that enabled
them to educate their children, even before the introduction of general
mandatory education with the Theresian School Ordinance of 1774 and the
establishment of the first normal school in Trieste and then the so-called
trivial schools in the countryside from 1775 onwards.
Although meagre, data from Trieste parish registers and population cen-
suses testify that, in early modern times, migration represented a more
prominent socio-economic praxis in Tomaj and the wider Karst area than
the general historiography acknowledges to rural, land-bound communi-
ties. It is true, nevertheless, that this emigration cannot be compared in
terms of scale and demographic effects to that of the nineteenth and the
first half of the twentieth century. The following section outlines some
characteristics of the ‘great’ emigration and the changes that occurred in
its character during accelerated urbanization. Due to the lack of direct mi-
gration statistics, this account also relies on alternative sources, namely
the Status Animarum.⁴
Figure 7.2 illustrates the course and extent of emigration over 120 years,
during which this phenomenon had the most significant impact on the de-
mographic and social development in the villages of the Tomaj curacy.⁵ As
demographic analysis has revealed, emigration began to intensify in the
middle of the nineteenth century and reached its initial peak in the years
preceding the First World War. The historical peak occurred during the
1920s. The period between the two world wars witnessed the most pro-
nounced emigration in the Tomaj curacy, followed by the decline of this
phenomenon after the Second World War.

⁴ The Tomaj Status Animarum registers only exceptionally indicate the year or a more pre-
cise date of departure of the absent parishioners. In most cases, only the place or country
where the person resides is recorded, and in principle only permanent emigrants are taken
into account. Reconstructions of families provided by the esteemed priest, Albin Kjuder,
constitute valuable assistance, significantly facilitating the detection of emigrants (Kjuder
1960;šak, žat,sa).
⁵ The figure includes migrations prompted by economic or other reasons (including or asso-
ciated with marriage) that led outside the Sežana district. Additionally, only cases in which
the destination of emigration is known and those in which the time of departure could be
determined are taken into account, totalling 843 out of 927 cases. The decade of emigration
was determined based on explicit information or implicitly from the context, with most
cases classified by adding twenty years to the decade of birth.

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