The Mediterranean and central European. A contribution to the research on the idea of commercial welfare in Trieste in the last period of Habsburg rule

Abstract

In the 1860s in Trieste, the imminent opening of the Suez Canal created the conditions for reflection upon the possible advantages of the transformation of the Mediterranean Sea from a closed basin into a transit sea and what this transformation could bring to the local economy. In general, two perspectives emerged among the local intellectual elite: one that was substantially conservative and »legitimist« and tied to the valorisation of institutional continuity based on the Habsburg nexus, advocated by Pietro Kandler. The second view, more progressivist and »Mediterranean«, advocated by Pasquale Revoltella, aimed at taking advantage of all the liberties of movement and autonomies enjoyed by the Triestine commercial class. Since then, the dichotomy between the »continental« and »Mediterranean« visions of the path that commerce in Trieste should undertake has become recurrent in reflections of the economy and politics in the town, hiding much more concrete interests and aspirations interwoven in the town's intricate social tissue.