Page 107 - Mellinato, Giulio, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2022. Complex Gateways. Labour and Urban History of Maritime Port Cities: The Northern Adriaticin a Comparative Perspective. Koper: University of Primorska Press.
P. 107
6
Trieste 1948–1952: A Contended Port City
and the Marshall Plan
Giulio Mellinato
University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics,
Management and Statistics
The relationship between a city’s institutional arrangement and its role
as a maritime international commercial crossway is often not simple, es-
pecially during periods of major political transition. During more or less
normal times (or, when changes could be kept under control) successful
port cities could be powerful attractors of wealth, but also socio-institu-
tional-economic structures so complicated as to require a wide range of
special administrative care, both for the management of current business
and for the development of strategies maintaining the equilibrium over
time (OECD 2006).
Typically, in port cities economics, society, and institutions inter-
act in peculiar ways, and, over time, almost every successful port city
has elaborated a specific settlement of the tensions originating from the
close interplay of different (even contrasting) interests, paving the way
for the emergence of a great variety of typified solutions.
In some aspects, the maritime identity of Trieste is more complicat-
ed than usual, being not only an international port, but also a borderland
city, and a link (or a chokepoint) between different nationalities and cul-
tures. For these reasons, the historical reconstruction of the local port
system activities is never a simple matter of recognition and reconstruc-
tion of roles, rules, the efficiency and efficacy of the businesses carried
out inside the port areas, and the extension and shape of the intercon-
nections. Instead, it is a matter of reconstructing the complexity of the
port system as a whole, with its interweaving of different and interacting
levels and dynamics, rather than a mechanical succession of causes and
effects. Within this research, politics, economics, society, culture, and so
Mellinato, Giulio, Aleksander Panjek, eds. 2022. Complex Gateways. Labour and Urban History of Maritime
Port Cities: The Northern Adriatic in a Comparative Perspective.
Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem. https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-191-9.107-132
107
Trieste 1948–1952: A Contended Port City
and the Marshall Plan
Giulio Mellinato
University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics,
Management and Statistics
The relationship between a city’s institutional arrangement and its role
as a maritime international commercial crossway is often not simple, es-
pecially during periods of major political transition. During more or less
normal times (or, when changes could be kept under control) successful
port cities could be powerful attractors of wealth, but also socio-institu-
tional-economic structures so complicated as to require a wide range of
special administrative care, both for the management of current business
and for the development of strategies maintaining the equilibrium over
time (OECD 2006).
Typically, in port cities economics, society, and institutions inter-
act in peculiar ways, and, over time, almost every successful port city
has elaborated a specific settlement of the tensions originating from the
close interplay of different (even contrasting) interests, paving the way
for the emergence of a great variety of typified solutions.
In some aspects, the maritime identity of Trieste is more complicat-
ed than usual, being not only an international port, but also a borderland
city, and a link (or a chokepoint) between different nationalities and cul-
tures. For these reasons, the historical reconstruction of the local port
system activities is never a simple matter of recognition and reconstruc-
tion of roles, rules, the efficiency and efficacy of the businesses carried
out inside the port areas, and the extension and shape of the intercon-
nections. Instead, it is a matter of reconstructing the complexity of the
port system as a whole, with its interweaving of different and interacting
levels and dynamics, rather than a mechanical succession of causes and
effects. Within this research, politics, economics, society, culture, and so
Mellinato, Giulio, Aleksander Panjek, eds. 2022. Complex Gateways. Labour and Urban History of Maritime
Port Cities: The Northern Adriatic in a Comparative Perspective.
Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem. https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-191-9.107-132
107
