History of Rijeka - Corpus Separatum

Corpus Separatum

During the 1740s most of the trade from the Pannonian plain was starting to pass over Fiume and not Dubrovnik (Ragusa), which after the retreat of the Ottoman empire, never regained the lost ground. After a series of formal acts of protest of the Hungarian and Croat Landed Estates, Joseph II during his journey through Croatia, the Littoral and Venice in 1775, which was carried out one year later, in 1776, decided the abolition of the ‘Litorale Austriaco’. In the same year the “Provincia Mercantile” was suspended. In 1776, the City of Fiume and the Croatian seaboard, which had previously been under the same administration as the rest of the Austrian littoral, is annexed to the Kingdom of Croatia, with a Maria Theresa Handschrift. The Empress donated these lands and possessions to Croatia – Hungary as a compensation since many of their lands were put under the direct imperial administration as the osterreichische Militargrenze (Military Frontier) against the Turks, exclusively for defensive purposes.

Maria Theresa, with her sovereign decision from October the 2nd 1776, gave up the possession of Fiume, that so far belonged to the Habsburgs, and give it to the Hungarian kingdom, with a view of fostering its trade. Since Hungary proper was distant some 500 km, according to the act, understandably, the city was annexed to Croatia whose territory began right beyond the city walls. Although Croatia, as a kingdom, was united with Hungary and together they formed the “Lands of the Holy Crown of St Stephen”, the Fiumani protested, and with support of the Hungarian Vice Regency Council, two and a half years later, Maria Theresa (as Queen of Hungary) enacted the royal rescript on April, the 23rd 1779, with whom Fiume was annexed to Hungary directly as a corpus separatum adnexum sacra hungaricae coronae. From that moment on the two kingdoms never ceased to batter on the issue whose was Fiume. The Fiumani, as a third part, gave their reading that Fiume (or better: the corpus separatum) was autonomous from both. Given the institutional instability that characterized the whole period from 1779 up to 1848, this was more or less true. Fiume retained the autonomous status from the surrounding territory it enjoyed with the Habsburgs, since the function of the Governor was preserved, and who was now always drawn from the ranks of the Hungarian aristocracy. Fiume was the only city in Hungary (Croatia included) that had such an institution. The development of the port needed huge investments that only Hungary could offer and the leaning of all the local forces towards Hungary appears inevitable.