1918 saw the end of Austria-Hungary. The fall of the Empire and the advent of the national states profoundly changed the geopolitical situation of the entire central Europe.
Resia was not exempt from the influence of such important changes. Annexed by Italy in 1866, it followed the course of its history, although, at first, the mobility towards the Austrian Empire was not obstructed, as proven by many passports which are preserved in the Historical Archives of the Municipality of Resia .
The Great War tragically affected the Resian population too, and forced them to flee the valley in 1917 . Their destinations were mainly Central and Southern Italy.
In this difficult period of quick changes and hard international conflicts, the socioeconomic structure of the whole Alpe-Adria region changed as well.
Resian knife grinders, who were used to travelling to the East, towards the imperial regions of central-northern Europe, changed their destinations, leaving the Eastern European cities in favour of places more to the West. Seasonal and temporary emigration were gradually substituted by permanent emigration, which involved all the people who had already left, and their families too. Between the two world wars, some of them still chose to settle in the great centres of Eastern Europe.
In this period, European migration fluxes “discovered” new routes and aimed at new continents: the Americas and Oceania.
The Resians started to embark on trips towards these new countries as well, leaving from Italian harbours, or, if they were already living abroad, from other cities. Many of them didn’t come back to the Resia Valley. The system of departures from and returns to the valley was falling apart, thus deeply changing Resia’s demografic, social, and economic situation.
This new migratory flux has been analysed by Francesco Micelli and Javeier Grossutti in a publication (Ti Rosajanski po sfetü/ I resiani nel mondo”, in 2001 pag. 5), where, thanks to the study of the documents from the civil registry archives of the Municipality of Resia and from the A.I.R.E. archives (the civil registry for the Italians living abroad), the complexity of Resian emigration could be highlighted with the purpose of creating an emigration civil registry. This research considers the migratory movements from 1919 on, keeping a record of the destinations preferred by the Resians in various periods of the Twentieth Century.