Which are the main factors in the economic and social structure in the Slovene part of Carinthia that exercised during the period from the Revolutions in 1848 to the outbreak of W arid War I their influence over the national consciousness and the political orientation of the there living population? How were this kind of consciousness and the orientation making themselves felt in the course of that period? These are the two fundamental questions to which the present work seeks to give an answer, and on which the character of the work and the conception of it depend. We are accordingly not concerned with an economic or social historical account in the usual sense of the terms, although it has been necessary to rely on both types of historic writing.