 In many cases ethnic Italians were killed or summarily executed during the first years of the exodus, in what became known as the "foibe" massacres.After 1947 they were subject to less violent forms of intimidation, such as nationalization, expropriation, and discriminatory taxation, which gave them little option other than emigration.A Romance-speaking population has existed in Istria since the fall of the Roman Empire, when Istria was fully Latinised.