Page 124 - 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. 124
plex Gateways
No one here really thinks of Trieste recovery in the same sense as the
recovery of other OEEC countries; as long as the present internation-
al situation continues […] Trieste cannot hope to achieve full recov-
ery and self-sufficiency at any reasonable standard of living. […] Such
a policy also has had the political objective of keeping the Trieste pop-
ulation on the side of the West through demonstrating continual im-
provement in the material situation.16
The overexposure of the city’s political role had turned out to be the
best bargaining chip for attracting extraordinary resources to the city,
and not only for its reconstruction, but also to achieve a certain positive
transformation in living conditions, at least relatively, compared to what
had been done in Italy (Valdevit 2004, 259).
The combined action of the Italian government and the allied mili-
tary government of Trieste had determined the simultaneous interweav-
ing of two converging lines of intervention, generating the conditions for
a reconstruction of the Trieste maritime economy, which only partially
took into account the changed settlement of the international maritime
market. The result, already highlighted by Giampaolo Valdevit,17 was an
increase in the dependence of the local economic system on state inter-
vention, an involvement that followed operational criteria partly differ-
ent from the search for company profitability. Summing up, we can say
that, over the years, such misled use of the Marshall Plan resources led to
a weakening of the Trieste maritime positionality, precisely in the years
in which, even in the maritime sector, the economic presence of the new
Yugoslavia was significantly expanding.
[I]t was apparent that neither the Yugoslavs nor the Italians would
go along with this Free Territory of Trieste and we didn’t press it, A,
because we were pretty well committed politically to returning the
city to Italy, and, B, it didn’t make much economic sense to have a
Free Territory of Trieste since the city had been developed under the
old Austro-Hungarian Empire as a port for the whole empire, which
16 NARA, RG 59, State Department Central File, 850G.00 / 5–24 50, (copy in IRSML,
b. 76), US Political Adviser (Trieste) to State Department (Washington), 29 July
1950.
17 During the reconstruction years, the public actor was the dominant presence in
Trieste, in striking contrast with the basic vision permeating the Marshall Plan.
This kind of legacy would leave substantial traces also during the following dec-
ades, ‘in mentality, in practice, in results’. Cf. Valdevit 1999, 133.
124
No one here really thinks of Trieste recovery in the same sense as the
recovery of other OEEC countries; as long as the present internation-
al situation continues […] Trieste cannot hope to achieve full recov-
ery and self-sufficiency at any reasonable standard of living. […] Such
a policy also has had the political objective of keeping the Trieste pop-
ulation on the side of the West through demonstrating continual im-
provement in the material situation.16
The overexposure of the city’s political role had turned out to be the
best bargaining chip for attracting extraordinary resources to the city,
and not only for its reconstruction, but also to achieve a certain positive
transformation in living conditions, at least relatively, compared to what
had been done in Italy (Valdevit 2004, 259).
The combined action of the Italian government and the allied mili-
tary government of Trieste had determined the simultaneous interweav-
ing of two converging lines of intervention, generating the conditions for
a reconstruction of the Trieste maritime economy, which only partially
took into account the changed settlement of the international maritime
market. The result, already highlighted by Giampaolo Valdevit,17 was an
increase in the dependence of the local economic system on state inter-
vention, an involvement that followed operational criteria partly differ-
ent from the search for company profitability. Summing up, we can say
that, over the years, such misled use of the Marshall Plan resources led to
a weakening of the Trieste maritime positionality, precisely in the years
in which, even in the maritime sector, the economic presence of the new
Yugoslavia was significantly expanding.
[I]t was apparent that neither the Yugoslavs nor the Italians would
go along with this Free Territory of Trieste and we didn’t press it, A,
because we were pretty well committed politically to returning the
city to Italy, and, B, it didn’t make much economic sense to have a
Free Territory of Trieste since the city had been developed under the
old Austro-Hungarian Empire as a port for the whole empire, which
16 NARA, RG 59, State Department Central File, 850G.00 / 5–24 50, (copy in IRSML,
b. 76), US Political Adviser (Trieste) to State Department (Washington), 29 July
1950.
17 During the reconstruction years, the public actor was the dominant presence in
Trieste, in striking contrast with the basic vision permeating the Marshall Plan.
This kind of legacy would leave substantial traces also during the following dec-
ades, ‘in mentality, in practice, in results’. Cf. Valdevit 1999, 133.
124
