indeed the dalmatian italians were a fundamental presence in dalmatia, when the process of political unification of the italians, croats and serbs started at the beginning of the 19th century. the 1816 austro-hungarian census registered 66,000 italian speaking people between the 301,000 inhabitants of dalmatia, or 22% of the total dalmatian population. but in 2010 they were reduced to only a few hundreds.