particular. Especially in Sassari and across the strip of territory that goes from Anglona to Gallura, the Corsicans became the majority of the population at least since the 15th century. This migration from the neighboring island, which is likely to have led to the birth of the Tuscan-sounding Sassarese and Gallurese dialects, went on continuously until the 19th century. The Spanish era ended in 1713, when Sardinia 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" and ruled the island from Turin, in Piedmont. During this period, Italianization policies were implemented, so as to assimilate the islanders to the then Savoyard mainland (stati di terraferma). In 1738, the Ligurian colonists escaped from Tabarka (Tunisia) were invited by Charles Emmanuel III to settle 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 Ligurian 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 of Sulcis-Iglesiente; these Mainland miners came mostly from Lombardy, Piedmont, Tuscany and Romagna. According to an 1882 census realised by the French engineer Leon Goüine, 10.000 miners worked in the south-western Sardinian mines, one third of whom being from the Italian mainland; most of them settled in Iglesias and frazioni . At the end of the 19th century, communities of fishermen from Sicily, Torre del Greco (Campania) and Ponza (Lazio) migrated on the east coasts of the island, in the towns of Arbatax/Tortolì, Siniscola and La Maddalena. In 1931, only 3,2% of the island's population was estimated to be native of the Mainland. A central government policy would change this situation in the following years, which saw an immigration flow from the Italian peninsula: the Fascist regime resettled to Sardinia a number of Italians from a wide variety of regions like Veneto, Marche, Abruzzo and Sicily, who were encouraged to found settlements of their own like the new mining town of Carbonia, or villages like Mussolinia di Sardegna ("Sardinia's Mussolinia", now Arborea) and Fertilia; after World War II, Italian refugees from