Transition and Reconfiguration of Globalization in Post-Habsburg Upper Adriatic and Central Europe (1918-1929)
One of the main consequences of the Habsburg collapse was the fragmentation of the economic space in Central Europe and its impact on globalization. As the major sea outlet of the Empire, Trieste had become a crucial hub for Mediterranean and global routes of trade up to 1914. Then it was particularly affected by the wartime crisis and by the following annexation to the Italian state in 1918. Its economic and commercial activities were thus dislocated by the disruption of the railway lines and the definition of the new borders and tariffs between the successor states. As euphoric as they might be because of their Italian nationalism, the local elites suffered from a profound complex of defeat: they had to cope with a completely unexpected situation of economic decline and strive for the reconstruction of the infrastructural connections of the northern Adriatic town with the ex-Habsburg hinterland, the Balkans, and the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. A partial recovery of the port activities of Trieste took place in the 1920s, but a massive state intervention was needed – one that substantially downgraded the local agency of the economic elites.
A special attention will be paid to the discussions and projects of the local Chamber of Commerce as far as regarded the reconfiguration of the railway connections between the port of Trieste and East Central and South-Eastern Europe, as well as the reconstruction of the economic activities in the 1920s. Projects of internationalization of the railway lines, of customs union between the successor states, as well as new ideas of empire were discussed in order to come to terms with the problematic post-Habsburg relation between political and economic sovereignty. Hence stemmed forms of economic liberalism which were consistent with economic and political nationalism, and even with fascism. This paper will thus try to show how, and to what extent, the local elites of post-Habsburg Trieste contributed to the fascist projects of commercial and cultural reglobalization and finally of political and military expansion in Central and Balkan Europe as well in the Adriatic, in the Mediterranean and beyond. In this regard it is understood as an attempt in shifting the understanding of Italian fascism within an East Central and South-Eastern European perspective, as well as a contribution to the discussion about the post-Habsburg interwar roots of neoliberalism and its twisted relations with authoritarianism.