- The legend of the Argonauts describes the pursuit of the Colchidians after the
ship Argo and the Golden Fleece. The subjects of the king of Colchis gave up
further pursuit after the death of their king's son. Fearing that they would be
punished for his death and the failure of the quest if they returned to Colchis,
they decided to settle where the prince had died. Pula therefore became not only
a harbor of refuge to the Colchidian fugitives, but also their place of exile.
The most famous geographer of the antiquity - Strabo - claims that this is how
Pula was founded and according to this legend, it was about three thousand years
ago.
- Pula was thus bound to Venetian economical and political aims, which defined its development for the next few centuries. During the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries
Pula was attacked and conquered by Genoese, Croatian-Hungarian and Habsburg
armies, causing the devastation of numerous medieval settlements and
villages.
- Besides the war calamity, the population of Pula and Istria was decimated by numerous epidemics of plague, malaria, typhoid and small-pox.
As a result of the dilapidation of monumental buildings, ruined economy and
decimated population Pula fell into disrepute. Nevertheless, due to its
geographical position and the importance of its harbor for trade routes, Pula
simply could not disappear. The town was saved by organized Croatian and
South-Slav settling.
After the revolutionary year 1848, the Austro-Hungarian Empire realized the
importance of Pula's harbor and started an intensive development of a huge naval
port and shipyard. This resulted in the gradual settlement of Pula and within 50
years the population increased from 1,126 people to about 40,000
- Pula was still described as a village cut off from the rest of the world, but later on vast sums were invested in the sewage system and infrastructure.
Eventually the investments transformed rural Pula into a prosperous town. With
the new railway Pula gradually took over the role of Trieste and Rijeka as the
main port for Dalmatia. This enabled Pula to develop two functions at the same
time - the military and trading one. Under the protectorate of Vienna the
official language in Pula was German, but Italian remained the everyday language
in use among numerous social classes, while the use of Croatian very soon
completely disappeared. Such was the situation during World War II under the
fascist rule, when Pula, as an antifascist town, organized its battle for the
future under bomb raids and devastation, as well as reprisals over the
historically defeated side. After the War and German occupation Pula came under
the Anglo-American administration. In 1947 Pula finally turned to its natural
hinterland - Croatia (according to the 1943 Resolution that defined Istria as a
part of Croatia), and therefore Yugoslavia. This caused still another exodus of
the malcontent domiciliary Italian citizens. It marked the beginning of a new
period in the history of Pula that lasted until Croatia gained independence.
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