History of Sardinia
In the Early Middle Ages, through barbarian movements, the waning of the Byzantine Empire influence in the western Mediterranean and the Saracen raids, the island fell out of the sphere of influence of any higher government. This led to the birth of four kingdoms called "Judicates" (Latin: "Judicati"; Sardinian: "Judicados") in the 8th through 10th centuries. Falling under papal influence, Sardinia became the focus of the rivalry of Genoa and Pisa, the Judicates and the Crown of Aragon, which eventually subsumed the island as the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1324. The Kingdom was to last until 1718, when it was ceded to the Piedmontese House of Savoy; later, in 1861, it would thus become the Kingdom of Italy and finally in 1946 the Italian Republic.
Sardinian people
The Spanish era ended in 1713, when the whole island was ceded to the Austrian House of Habsburg, followed with another cession in 1718 to the Dukes of Savoy, who assumed the title of "Kings of Sardinia". During this period, Ligurian colonists, escaped from Tabarka, settled on the little islands of San Pietro and Sant'Antioco (at Carloforte and Calasetta), in the south-west area of Sardinia, bringing with them a Gallo-Italic dialect called "Tabarchino", still widely spoken there. Then, the Piedmontese Kingdom of Sardinia annexed the whole Italian peninsula and Sicily in 1861 after the Risorgimento, becoming the Kingdom of Italy.
Since 1850, with the reorganization of the Sardinian mines, there had been a considerable migration flow from the Italian peninsula towards the Sardinian mining areas; these mainland miners came mostly from Lombardy, Piedmont, Tuscany and Romagna. According to an 1882 census realised by the French engineer Leon Goüine, in the south-western Sardinian mines worked 10.000 miners, one third of which coming from the Italian mainland; most of them settled in Iglesias and "frazioni" .