Rijeka's 18th-century sugar factory Vedute ideate paintings reveal Austro-Hungarian slave labor

A series of idealized landscape paintings created by unknown artisans in the mid-18th century Austro-Hungarian sugar refinement plant in Rijeka, Croatia, depict racialized slave labor. These Vedute ideate artworks provide rare visual documentation of the invisible workforce that enabled industrial sugar production within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The paintings connect the peripheral port town of Rijeka to global capital flows and colonial history. As part of the Rijeka 2020 – Port of Diversity European Capital of Culture project, the industrial building has been repurposed, and the Vedute ideate will be publicly displayed by the Museum of the City of Rijeka. However, uncertainty remains about whether the museum will acknowledge colonialism's role in Rijeka's industrialization and development. The analysis draws on Catherine Baker's recent publication "Race in Yugoslavia" to examine how representations of slavery avoided critical assessment while racialization persisted across ethnic lines. The article notes that inhabitants of former Yugoslavia have themselves been racialized as Europe's "other." Published on April 30, 2021, the content is available through MIT Press as free content.