Page 108 - 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. 108
plex Gateways
on thus become points of view, the necessary starting points to begin an
analysis that considers the material and immaterial infrastructures of
the port system as equally important.
Looking at the Trieste case, the Marshall Plan years are an excep-
tional point of view, since the destination of the Plan-related resources
were administered by Allied officials, almost entirely American nation-
als, engaged in the chase of an extremely difficult-to-find equilibrium be-
tween the local needs and the general aims of the European Recovery
Program. Actually, in the end, the local side prevailed, and the American
officials used this exceptional flow of financial resources to revive a typ-
ical assisted and parasitic economy. In other words, the American inter-
vention in Trieste produced a result strikingly opposite to the official mis-
sion of the Plan.
The Trieste exception
A large portion of the traditional port histories typically deals with the
complexity of port operations considering mainly one dynamic (the mo-
vement of goods and the organization of services), and then elaborates by
adding the interactions of the main dynamic with other notable aspects
of a port-system evolution (Fischer and Jarvis 1999; Palmer 2020).
Recently, new streams of study and approaches have enriched the
port historiography, coming from urban historians, cultural and so-
cial historians, international relation studies, and so on (Konvitz 2012;
Harlaftis 2020). At the same time, new studies have given new energy
to the traditional specialization. Summing up, the new studies all em-
phasize comparisons (Loyen, Buyst, and Devos 2003), long-term per-
spectives, the digital elaboration of datasets, and an integrative view of
the peculiarities and complexities characterizing the maritime economic
world (Rohou, Laube, and Garlatti 2017, 363–72; Harlaftis and Theotokas
2020).
On the other hand, the historiography about the Marshall Plan be-
gan to consider its wider infrastructural implications only recently, us-
ing the ERP experience in order to infer some evaluations concerning the
possible future impacts of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative on the
global commercial networks and, possibly, the entire world order (Shen
and Chan 2018). Since the beginning of the Chinese initiative, in 2014
(Chen 2014), a new stream of studies tried to look at the multi-purpose,
multi-faceted, multilateral integration achieved thanks to the Marshall
108
on thus become points of view, the necessary starting points to begin an
analysis that considers the material and immaterial infrastructures of
the port system as equally important.
Looking at the Trieste case, the Marshall Plan years are an excep-
tional point of view, since the destination of the Plan-related resources
were administered by Allied officials, almost entirely American nation-
als, engaged in the chase of an extremely difficult-to-find equilibrium be-
tween the local needs and the general aims of the European Recovery
Program. Actually, in the end, the local side prevailed, and the American
officials used this exceptional flow of financial resources to revive a typ-
ical assisted and parasitic economy. In other words, the American inter-
vention in Trieste produced a result strikingly opposite to the official mis-
sion of the Plan.
The Trieste exception
A large portion of the traditional port histories typically deals with the
complexity of port operations considering mainly one dynamic (the mo-
vement of goods and the organization of services), and then elaborates by
adding the interactions of the main dynamic with other notable aspects
of a port-system evolution (Fischer and Jarvis 1999; Palmer 2020).
Recently, new streams of study and approaches have enriched the
port historiography, coming from urban historians, cultural and so-
cial historians, international relation studies, and so on (Konvitz 2012;
Harlaftis 2020). At the same time, new studies have given new energy
to the traditional specialization. Summing up, the new studies all em-
phasize comparisons (Loyen, Buyst, and Devos 2003), long-term per-
spectives, the digital elaboration of datasets, and an integrative view of
the peculiarities and complexities characterizing the maritime economic
world (Rohou, Laube, and Garlatti 2017, 363–72; Harlaftis and Theotokas
2020).
On the other hand, the historiography about the Marshall Plan be-
gan to consider its wider infrastructural implications only recently, us-
ing the ERP experience in order to infer some evaluations concerning the
possible future impacts of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative on the
global commercial networks and, possibly, the entire world order (Shen
and Chan 2018). Since the beginning of the Chinese initiative, in 2014
(Chen 2014), a new stream of studies tried to look at the multi-purpose,
multi-faceted, multilateral integration achieved thanks to the Marshall
108
