Page 11 - 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. 11
Complex Gateways: The North Adriatic Port System in Historical Perspective
happens on the best of occasions, the answers to the first questions came
alongside the emergence of new queries.
In our perspective, ports could be, at the same time, gateways or
chokepoints for commercial flows, or springboards for national econo-
mies aspiring to expand abroad, but also openings for the infiltration of
unwanted influences, just to get the discussion started. Ports live, and
even prosper, amid the most fundamental contradiction of all: to be pri-
mary actors in the economic field, but politically subjected entities, inside
the institutional architecture of a modern state. Clearly, there is some-
thing in need of an explanation, in a way that primarily must pay respect
to the complexity of the problems under observation.
In the end, ports are not simply places where the interchanges link-
ing sea and land transport networks occur. Truly, they are locations con-
necting the greater part of the opportunities of the international econo-
my. Moreover, most of the time, they are spaces where the solution of the
contradictions arising from the confrontation of such different interests
are found, granting stability to the entire system.
The recent literature has seen seaports mainly as components of
wide networks of interconnections, stressing topics such as their govern-
ance (in order to guarantee the economic competitiveness and the tech-
nical viability of the entire network), their efficiency, and their resilience
in the face of perturbations, or confronting the inner instability of the
global trade system and the global supply chains. From another point of
view, the theoretical literature has highlighted some key distinctive fea-
tures among different kinds of seaports: links, gateways, nodes, hubs, or
corridors (Ng et al. 2018).
The question is not trivial, in the sense that the increasing trade net-
works complexity urged scholars to dig deeper in search of the specif-
ic properties and functions the different seaports are displaying inside
the global system of interconnectedness. The topic is not new (Hoyle and
Hilling 1984, 14; Stevens 1999), but we think that its key research ques-
tions can be observed in a new light nowadays. More importantly for our
analysis, this effort towards a more unambiguous definition of the sea-
port system’s main characteristics produced a new line of thinking about
the relations of port systems and the public authorities, stressing the dif-
ferences in the patterns observable around the world (Neilson, Pritchard,
and Wai-chung Yeung 2015). In some studies, the usual relation between
economic activities and political institutions was completely reversed, in
11
happens on the best of occasions, the answers to the first questions came
alongside the emergence of new queries.
In our perspective, ports could be, at the same time, gateways or
chokepoints for commercial flows, or springboards for national econo-
mies aspiring to expand abroad, but also openings for the infiltration of
unwanted influences, just to get the discussion started. Ports live, and
even prosper, amid the most fundamental contradiction of all: to be pri-
mary actors in the economic field, but politically subjected entities, inside
the institutional architecture of a modern state. Clearly, there is some-
thing in need of an explanation, in a way that primarily must pay respect
to the complexity of the problems under observation.
In the end, ports are not simply places where the interchanges link-
ing sea and land transport networks occur. Truly, they are locations con-
necting the greater part of the opportunities of the international econo-
my. Moreover, most of the time, they are spaces where the solution of the
contradictions arising from the confrontation of such different interests
are found, granting stability to the entire system.
The recent literature has seen seaports mainly as components of
wide networks of interconnections, stressing topics such as their govern-
ance (in order to guarantee the economic competitiveness and the tech-
nical viability of the entire network), their efficiency, and their resilience
in the face of perturbations, or confronting the inner instability of the
global trade system and the global supply chains. From another point of
view, the theoretical literature has highlighted some key distinctive fea-
tures among different kinds of seaports: links, gateways, nodes, hubs, or
corridors (Ng et al. 2018).
The question is not trivial, in the sense that the increasing trade net-
works complexity urged scholars to dig deeper in search of the specif-
ic properties and functions the different seaports are displaying inside
the global system of interconnectedness. The topic is not new (Hoyle and
Hilling 1984, 14; Stevens 1999), but we think that its key research ques-
tions can be observed in a new light nowadays. More importantly for our
analysis, this effort towards a more unambiguous definition of the sea-
port system’s main characteristics produced a new line of thinking about
the relations of port systems and the public authorities, stressing the dif-
ferences in the patterns observable around the world (Neilson, Pritchard,
and Wai-chung Yeung 2015). In some studies, the usual relation between
economic activities and political institutions was completely reversed, in
11
