Pahor was born into a Slovene minority community in Trieste, the main port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the capital of the Austrian Littoral region at the time.
Under the Treaty of Rapallo, the Kingdom of Italy annexed territories that included a substantial ethnic Slovene population, and that included a quarter of Slovene ethnic territory and approximately 327,000 out of total population of 1.3[REF] million Slovenes [REF].