The First Europeans: The Case Study in Slovene National Imagining in Diaspora

This paper explores the Venetological re-interpretations of Slovenian origins, according to which Slovenes are not Slavs but Venets, the autochthonous European population, unrelated to anyone around them, culturally distinct and ancient. Although this paper deals with questions of historiography, it does not purport to be a historiographical analysis. Instead, it should be seen as an examination of the phenomenology of historiographical revisionism and it makes specific reference to perceptions of Venetological theory in diaspora.