Page 112 - 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. 112
plex Gateways
grammes.5 The port itself was so damaged that the first supplies for the
city were landed on a shore outside the port, using landing craft, because
all the port’s wharves were mined, damaged by air bombing, or rendered
useless in other ways. Wreckage so cluttered the accesses to the port that
it was impossible for ships to approach.
The port facilities, slowly reactivated, were used for months to disem-
bark supplies for the troops and food for the starving population, includ-
ing in the direction of Yugoslavia, under the Unrra and other relief pro-
grammes. Normal commercial flows were simply non-existent, but the
military necessities helped in fostering the reconstruction of the dam-
aged facilities, and in keeping the whole port system busy. Moreover, the
reactivation of the main economic activities as soon as possible became
the first political requisite, in order to employ (and to appease) a poten-
tially dangerous mass of several thousand highly politicized workers, led
by the pro-Yugoslav faction of the local leftist political spectrum.
AMG officers quickly had to find a single solution for two categories
of problems. On the one hand, they had to find legitimacy for their role
as trustworthy guarantors, not only in maintaining the status quo, but
also as specialists in the transition from the disasters and famines of the
war to a peace based on freedom and prosperity, as the propaganda of the
time promised to everyone, including to the inhabitants of that Eastern
Europe which in practice began in Trieste. On the other hand, the slow
pace of economic stabilization and the poor prospects for a recovery in in-
ternational trade put two of the fundamental pillars of the Trieste econ-
omy in crisis, which therefore had to be at least partially reinvented and
adapted to the circumstances. These were the two fundamental determi-
nants that forced the officers of the Venezia Giulia AMG to invent a com-
pletely new intervention strategy to steady the situation in the adminis-
tered territory, both economically, but also socially and politically.
Looking at the same scene from a completely different point of view,
the international nature of the ‘Trieste question’ urged the USA and UK
5 Even in January 1946, the Chief Commissioner of Italian Allied Control Commis-
sion, the American admiral Ellery Stone, required instructions about the future
economic collocation of Trieste and its territory: ‘Broadly speaking, it appears that
the question to be decided is whether AMG Venezia Giulia is to be treated econom-
ically and financially for all purposes as part of Italy, or whether it is to be admin-
istered as a separate economic entity (as is being done on the political side) until
a final decision as to the future of the area has been taken.’ Ellery Stone to Allied
Force Headquarters, 18 January 1946 (NARA, WO, 204/411; in copy at IRSML, b.
72).
112
grammes.5 The port itself was so damaged that the first supplies for the
city were landed on a shore outside the port, using landing craft, because
all the port’s wharves were mined, damaged by air bombing, or rendered
useless in other ways. Wreckage so cluttered the accesses to the port that
it was impossible for ships to approach.
The port facilities, slowly reactivated, were used for months to disem-
bark supplies for the troops and food for the starving population, includ-
ing in the direction of Yugoslavia, under the Unrra and other relief pro-
grammes. Normal commercial flows were simply non-existent, but the
military necessities helped in fostering the reconstruction of the dam-
aged facilities, and in keeping the whole port system busy. Moreover, the
reactivation of the main economic activities as soon as possible became
the first political requisite, in order to employ (and to appease) a poten-
tially dangerous mass of several thousand highly politicized workers, led
by the pro-Yugoslav faction of the local leftist political spectrum.
AMG officers quickly had to find a single solution for two categories
of problems. On the one hand, they had to find legitimacy for their role
as trustworthy guarantors, not only in maintaining the status quo, but
also as specialists in the transition from the disasters and famines of the
war to a peace based on freedom and prosperity, as the propaganda of the
time promised to everyone, including to the inhabitants of that Eastern
Europe which in practice began in Trieste. On the other hand, the slow
pace of economic stabilization and the poor prospects for a recovery in in-
ternational trade put two of the fundamental pillars of the Trieste econ-
omy in crisis, which therefore had to be at least partially reinvented and
adapted to the circumstances. These were the two fundamental determi-
nants that forced the officers of the Venezia Giulia AMG to invent a com-
pletely new intervention strategy to steady the situation in the adminis-
tered territory, both economically, but also socially and politically.
Looking at the same scene from a completely different point of view,
the international nature of the ‘Trieste question’ urged the USA and UK
5 Even in January 1946, the Chief Commissioner of Italian Allied Control Commis-
sion, the American admiral Ellery Stone, required instructions about the future
economic collocation of Trieste and its territory: ‘Broadly speaking, it appears that
the question to be decided is whether AMG Venezia Giulia is to be treated econom-
ically and financially for all purposes as part of Italy, or whether it is to be admin-
istered as a separate economic entity (as is being done on the political side) until
a final decision as to the future of the area has been taken.’ Ellery Stone to Allied
Force Headquarters, 18 January 1946 (NARA, WO, 204/411; in copy at IRSML, b.
72).
112
