WHAT ABOUT TRIESTE?

Exploring my news feed today, I came upon an article from the Strategic Cultural Foundation. The article just happened to involve a city that has been brought to my attention through two unrelated circumstances. First, I am going to partake in my third cruise in a year to five separate European countries (Greece, Montenegro, Croatia, San Marino and Italy). This will be the first time visiting the country, Croatia, that my father’s ancestors are from. My wife and I extended the trip to spend an extra day in Athens (Our departing port) and a few extra days in…Trieste (Our return port). Through my own mistaken ability to read a map properly, I thought our final port was going to be Venice, Italy. But Venice is not part of the itinerary even though the city of Ravenna (South of Venice) and Trieste, Italy (Across the Adriatic Sea) are. As the reality of missing Venice began to matriculate, this article popped up into my newsfeed about my final port, Trieste (Who says Windows 10 and the Microsoft Edge Browser are not spying on your email?). The article discusses recent geo-political meetings occurring inside this smaller sized, strategically located city between some powerful forces:

Members of NATO
Members of the Atlantic Council
Members of the Hungarian think tank Danube Institute linked to Viktor Orbán
Members of Donald Trump’s entourage
Members of the Italian Armed Forces and Police forces
Representatives of the Trieste city government

Two of those organizations are heavy hitters. NATO is a powerful Western military organization currently involved in Ukraine, and the Atlantic Council is an infamous global organization that exists to promote and endorse Western power (And famously monitors content on Facebook). The Danube Institute represents Central European powers and promotes their conservative ideals, liberal economic policies and an Atlanticist foreign policy. Throwing in Donald Trump, the Italian security forces and city reps got me thinking. What is it about this unknown town that has attracted such powerful interests? Turns out, Trieste may be one of the most important cities in Central Europe that no one knows about.

First, it is important to gain some historical context. After doing some basic research, this geographical area at the northeast top of the Adriatic Sea turns out to have a very interesting history. Trieste is located east of Monfalcone where Italy narrows and is located southeast of that town at the northeastern border of Italy. While it is only attached to Italy to the northwest and borders the Adriatic Sea to the west, Slovenia surrounds the city from the north down to the southwest. The port of Koper, Slovenia was once part of Trieste. This area, due to its prime northern Adriatic Sea location, has been a primary source of commerce for over 2000 years. Being part of the Roman Empire, the ancient city of Aquileia was nearby here in the year 181. During its history, this region has been conquered many times by various European powers. Charlemagne as part of the Frankish Empire captured it in 774 but it was eventually partitioned into a frontier region between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Germany. This unique status in this region would continue till the present day. It became the March of Friuli, a borderland, between the powers of Western Europe and the rising Slavic populations to the east and was eventually recognized as an autonomous region by the Holy Roman Emperor in the 11th Century after Otto the Great established the Holy Roman Empire in the 10th Century. Just to the east in 177 BC after the conquest of the Istrian peninsula, the area around Trieste became a Roman principality called Tergeste. After the Roman Empire, Trieste became part of the Kingdom of Italy but fell and was occupied by Justinian I of the Byzantine Empire who turned it into a military colony during the Gothic Wars before being recaptured. It was eventually destroyed by the Lombards in the 6th Century and slowly rebuilt over the next 200 years where it was eventually recognized by the Franks. From here on out, the history of Trieste and Aquileia begins to overlap.

As a transitional spot between two completely different parts of Europe, a mass conversion of Slavic tribes to Christianity began in the 10th Century. Trieste was eventually given to bishops to run while it maintained close ties to the Kingdom of Italy and repelled takeover attempts by nearby Aquileia. After maintaining the city over hundreds of years, the bishop gave up control and helped establish the free municipality of Trieste. While Aquileia would fall to the Venetians in the 1400s, Trieste fought off invasion attempts and influence from that empire. To maintain its sovereignty, Trieste took a deal with the Duke of Austria who protected the city’s autonomy. Under Austrian control, the city of Trieste became a free port with lots of civic freedoms. In fact, for all the warmongering that occurred in Europe over thousands of years, the area around Trieste was known for protecting the civic and mercantile rights of its citizens better than almost any other European state. Austria began to develop Trieste in the 18th Century, and it soon became a multicultural hub of Venetians, Dalmatians, Slovenes, Austrians, Hungarians, Serbs and Greeks. A stock exchange was built alongside the port as well as a general department store and shipyard. The city was captured by Napoleon on three separate occasions but after his defeat at Waterloo, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire took back control and kept growing Trieste. The city having a close relationship with the Italians to the West, the Austrians to the north, and the Slavs to the east made it the cultural hybrid town that it is today. Trieste was eventually annexed by Italy during World War I in 1918. After World War II due to the mixed population, the UN established the area as the Free Territory of Trieste resting between Italy and Communist Yugoslavia. The city was eventually divided up into two zones, Zone A and Zone B, in 1954. Thanks to the Treaty of Osimo signed in the mid-1970s, the borders became fixed. Zone A is now part of the nation of Italy where Trieste is located while Zone B is inside Slovenia and Croatia after the fall of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Understanding this history is why the power players of our present day have a fascination with the city. During World War II in 1942, a book title America’s Strategy in World Politics became the basis for the future United States imperial strategy. The Trimarium Doctrine also known as the Three Seas Initiative, became our policy. Involving Hamburg, Germany on the North Sea and Constanta, Romania bordering the Black Sea and Trieste, Italy on the Adriatic Sea made these three ports a triangle of influence to keep the Ottoman Turks and Russians under control. This effectively sealed off Central and Southern Europe from Eastern European influence. So having a meeting with NATO, the Atlantic Council and neutral politicians like Orban makes sense in terms of involving the historically free city of Trieste. Plus, the importance of its position cannot be overlooked. Its borderlands status truly allows Trieste to be the last Western city before the back wood ideologies of the Southern and Eastern Slavs, Poles, and Romanians take effect whose alliances with the Western and Eastern powers has always been conditional. Another great example of how this area ended up being “free” involves the Free State of Fiume (Now Rijeka, Croatia which is also on the Adriatic Sea and mere miles from where my ancestors lived and very close geographically to Trieste). After World War I and the creation of the Communist Yugoslavia (Called the Kingdom of Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes at the time) state, the city which had a unique autonomy within the Hungarian Empire since the late 18th Century (And a 20-year timeframe where a Croatian named Josip Jelacic occupied it), fought off demands to abandon its autonomy. Finding itself in a battle for control between Italians and the Southern Slavs, Italian General Gabriele D’Annunzio ruled the country and created a libertarian, anarchist state during his short reign. The city was eventually invaded and occupied by the UK, France and the United States which declared it an independent state. After this declaration, the Autonomous Party (Defeating the Fascist Party in an election) which was made up mostly of Croats elected their first president in 1921. But as usual with small, decentralized nations, Italian Fascists created a coup d’etat and took control of the city. The Italian Army invaded and put down this coup. After this, the city state was run by the Communist Party of Fiume, a more anarchist decentralized branch of Communism. The city succeeded economically and independently until January of 1924 when the Treaty of Rome turned the region over to the Italians. After the German occupation was thrown out in 1945, the autonomous voices of the city returned calling for Fiume/Rijeka to be a “free state.” This idea was quickly squelched as these voices were “silenced” and Rijeka and Istria officially became part of Yugoslavia in 1947 during the Paris Peace Treaty. With the fall of Yugoslavia in the 90s, both cities are now part of Croatia. For those interested in the political system of Fiume, the takeover of the country by D’Annunzio created an actual libertarian, anarchist state for a very short time.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this weird dive into history. Until next time. And now, I am looking forward to spending some time in this incredibly historical region.