Abstract

This paper describes shortly how the «Trentino issue» appears during the last two centuries. Under this phrase, we mean the intricate construction process of territorial and institutional identity. We’ll deal in the beginning with the first times when the name «Trentino» came into use within the Tyrolean County and the larger Austrian Empire, the unsuccessful struggles for administrative autonomy and the cultural competition with the South Tyrolean German group herein. Then we’ll deal with the «mission» as an Italian borderland carried out from Trentino before the establishment of Bolzano as a province and finally with the acknowledgement of regional and provincial self-government in the republican age. The basic thesis here affirmed is that the «Trentino issue» is closely intertwined with the «South Tyrol issue» and cannot be dealt with regardless of it.