Karl Marx

Written about the end of November 1856.  
From the English.

["New-York Daily Tribune" Nr. 5082 vom 4. August 1857]

In an earlier article we set forth the natural conditions which have led to the revival of Adriatic trade in Trieste. The development of this trade is largely due to the exertions of the Austrian Lloyd, a company founded by Englishmen but in the hands of Triestine capitalists since 1836. At the beginning the Lloyd possessed only a single steamer, which sailed once a week between Trieste and Venice. This connection was soon extended to a daily service. Little by little the Lloyd’s steamers seized the trade from Rovigno, Fiume, Pirano, Zara and Ragusa on the Istrian and Dalmatian coasts. Next, the Romagna was drawn into the traffic, then came Albania, Epirus and Greece in turn. The steamers had not yet left the Adriatic when the Archipelago, Saloniki, Smyrna, Beirut, Ptolemais and Alexandria applied for admission to the network of communications the Lloyd was planning. Finally its vessels penetrated into the Black Sea and, right before the eyes of Russia and Turkey, took possession of the lines connecting Constantinople with Sinope, Trebizond, Varna, Braila and Galatz. Thus a society originally established only for the Austrian coastal trade in the Adriatic advances ever further into the Mediterranean, and having secured the Black Sea, is obviously only waiting for the cutting through of the Isthmus of Suez to press on into the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

The capital of the Lloyd, originally fixed at 1,000,000 florins, has risen to 13,000,000 florins through repeated issues of new shares and through loans. The movement of capital and the transactions of the company since 1836 are shown in the last directors’ report as follows:

1836/37                                              1853/54  
Capital                       1,000,000 fl.          8,000,000 fl.  
Number of steamers            7                      47  
Horse-power                   630                    7,990  
Tonnage                       1,944                  23,665  
Value of steamers             798,824 fl.            8,010,000 fl.  
Number of voyages             87                     1,465  
Miles traversed               43,652                 776,415  
Number of passengers          7,967                  331,688  
Precious metals transported   3,934,269 fl.          59,523,125 fl.  
Letters and despatches        35,205                 748,930  
Piece-goods                   5,752                  565,508  
Total expenditure             232,267 fl.            3,611,156 fl.  

In seventeen years the total expenditure of the company (including dividends) amounted to 25,147,403 florins; the total receipts 26,032,452 florins; consequently there remains a reserve of 885,049 florins.

As the above table shows, the Lloyd is a commercial undertaking of great importance and, wherever its ships have penetrated, has extraordinarily promoted the growth of industry and trade. The value of an Austrian quintal has been estimated at 300 florins and the baggage of each passenger at 10 florins, and it has been calculated on this basis that from 1836 to 1853 the Lloyd transported:

In goods                                             1,255,219,200 florins  
In baggage                                              84,847,930 florins  
In coin and precious metal bars                        461,113,767 florins  
Total                                                1,801,180,897 florins  

“It is certain,” says a French author, “that the quiet but persistent activity of this company of merchants has been, for years to come, at least as significant for the affairs of the Levant, and far more honourable, than the activity of Austrian diplomacy.”

The revival of trade and the development of steam navigation in the Adriatic must, sooner or later, call into being an Adriatic fleet, which has not existed since the decline of Venice.

Napoleon, entirely in accordance with his mentality, wanted to create this fleet without first waiting for the restoration of maritime trade – an experiment he carried out simultaneously in Antwerp and in Venice. Just as he had succeeded in raising armies without a people behind them, he entertained no doubt of his power to build war fleets without a mercantile marine as a basis. But apart from the impossibilities necessarily inherent in such a plan, Napoleon encountered utterly unexpected difficulties of a local character. After he had sent his ablest engineers to Venice, completed the fortifications of the city, repaired the floating matériel [inventory], and revived the dockyards to their former activity, it suddenly turned out that, owing to technical progress in naval warfare and navigation, the harbour of Venice was condemned to the same insignificance to which the new commercial routes had doomed its trade and shipping. It became evident that the harbour of Venice, however excellently suited it might be for the old galleys, lacked the necessary depth for modern ships of the line, and that even frigates were unable to enter without unloading their guns unless a southerly wind and a spring tide coincided. Now it is a vital question for modern naval harbours that they should afford entry to ships at all times and be deep and spacious enough to receive a whole fleet, whether for attack or defence. Bonaparte further perceived that he had committed still another error. By the treaties of Campo Formio and Lunéville he had cut Venice off from the eastern coast of the Adriatic and thus deprived it of the seamen it needed to man its vessels. From the mouth of the Isonzo to Ravenna he searched in vain for a seafaring population, since the gondoliers of Venice and the fishermen of the lagoons (a timorous and weakly race) are quite unable to turn out any able-bodied seaman. Napoleon now recognised what the Venetians had already discovered in the tenth century – that dominion over the Adriatic can belong only to the possessor of its eastern coasts. He grasped that his treaties of Campo Formio and Lunéville were colossal blunders, since they delivered up to Austria the seafaring population of the Adriatic and left to himself only the name of a decayed harbour (magni nominis umbram [the shadow of a great name]). To repair his earlier faults, he appropriated Istria and Dalmatia in the subsequent treaties of Pressburg and Vienna.

Strabo already pointed out long ago that the opposite coast of Illyria abounds in excellent harbours, while on the Adriatic coast of Italy bays and harbours are entirely wanting; and during the civil wars in Rome we see Pompey able to assemble large fleets without difficulty on the coasts of Epirus and Illyria, while on the Italian side Caesar succeeded, only after unparalleled exertion, in collecting a small number of boats to ferry his troops across in detachments. With its deep indentations, its wild rocky islands, its lurking sandbanks at every point, and its excellent hidden harbours, the coast of Illyria and Dalmatia is a first-class natural school for able seamen – sailors of powerful limbs and fearless hearts, hardened by the storms which almost daily agitate the Adriatic. The Bora, the great disturber of this sea, invariably rises without the slightest warning sign; it falls upon the sailors with the force of a tornado and permits only the boldest to remain on deck. Sometimes it rages for weeks on end, most violently between the Bay of Cattaro and the southern end of Istria. But the Dalmatian is used from childhood to defy it; he grows hard under its breath and despises the paltry winds of other seas. Thus air, land and sea conspire to beget the robust and sober seafarer of this coast.

Sismondi has remarked that silk-weaving belongs to the Lombard peasant as silk-spinning does to the silkworm. In the same way, life on the sea belongs to the Dalmatian as much as to the sea-bird. Piracy is the theme of their popular songs, as land-raiding is the theme of old Teutonic poetry. The Dalmatian still cherishes the memory of the wild exploits of the Uskoks, who for a hundred and fifty years held in check the regular troops of Venice and Turkey, and whose campaigns were put an end to only by the treaty between Austria and Turkey in 1617, until which time the Uskoks had enjoyed the proper protection of the Emperor. The history of the Uskoks can only be compared with the history of the Cossacks of the Dnieper – the one were driven out of Turkey, the other out of Poland; the former spread fear and terror over the Adriatic, the latter over the Black Sea; the first were at first secretly supported by Austria and then destroyed, the latter by Russia. The Dalmatian sailors in Admiral Émeriau’s Mediterranean squadron excited Napoleon’s admiration. There is no doubt, therefore, that the eastern coast of the Adriatic possesses the human reserves to man a first-class fleet. The only thing they lack is discipline. By a census in 1813 Napoleon ascertained that 43,500 seamen lived on that coast:

In Trieste                        12,000  
In Fiume                           6,000  
In Zara                            9,500  
In Spalato                         5,000  
In Ragusa                          8,500  
In Cattaro                         2,500  
Total                             43,500  

Today there must be at least 55,000.

Having found the crews, Napoleon looked for the harbours for an Adriatic fleet. The Illyrian provinces were definitively acquired by the Peace of Vienna in 1809, but French troops had held them ever since the Battle of Austerlitz, and Napoleon used the advantages afforded by the state of war to prepare the great works which were to be carried out in time of peace. In 1806 M. Beautemps-Beaupré, assisted by several engineers and hydrographers of the French fleet, was sent to survey the coasts of Istria and Dalmatia in order to discover the most suitable place for the naval base planned in the Adriatic. The whole coast was explored, and the engineers’ attention finally fell upon the port of Pola, situated at the southern extremity of the Istrian peninsula. The Venetians, who struggled against stationing their naval power anywhere but in Venice, had not only neglected Pola but had zealously spread the rumor that a sandbank allegedly rendered it inaccessible to warships. M. Beaupré, however, established that no such sandbank existed, and that Pola fulfilled all the conditions of a modern naval harbour. At various times it had served as a stronghold of the naval forces of the Adriatic. It was the centre of the naval operations of the Romans during the Illyrian and Pannonian campaigns, and became a permanent naval station under the Roman Empire. At different times it has been occupied by the Genoese, the Venetians, and finally by the Uskoks. Deep and spacious in every direction, the port of Pola is protected from the sea by islands and in its rear by rocks that command the position. Its sole drawback consists in its unhealthy climate and the fevers, which, however, as M. Beautemps-Beaupré assures us, will disappear under a systematic drainage, a system of canals which has not yet been constructed.

The Austrians only very slowly familiarised themselves with the idea of becoming a sea power. Until very recently, in their own eyes the navy was merely a sub-department of the army. A colonel in the army was equivalent in rank to a captain of the line, a lieutenant-colonel to a frigate captain, a major to a corvette captain; and the same position in the rank list seemed to the Austrians also to guarantee the same position in the navy and the army. When it came to appointing a naval cadet, they considered it most advisable first to train him as a hussar ensign. Recruits were levied for the fleet in the same manner as for the army, with the sole difference that the provinces of Istria and Dalmatia were designated exclusively for naval service. The term of service was the same, eight years by land as by sea.

The separation of army and fleet, like every modern advance in Austria, is the result of the Revolution of 1848. Despite the experiences Napoleon had undergone, Venice remained Austria’s only arsenal until 1848. Venice’s deficiencies did not affect Austria, because it had virtually no modern fleet at all. Its sea power consisted of only 6 frigates, 5 corvettes, 7 brigs, 6 sloops, 16 steamers and 36 armed boats – in all 850 guns. To punish the Italian revolution, Austria moved the naval academy, the observatory, the hydrographic institute, the floating inventory and the artillery park from Venice to Trieste. The dockyards and the warehouses remained in Venice; and thus the naval establishment was cut into two parts out of bureaucratic revenge. Instead of punishing Venice, both parts were deprived of their efficiency. Gradually the Austrian government discovered that, however splendidly Trieste might suit as a commercial harbour, it was unsuitable as a naval base. It finally had to recall the lesson Napoleon had received in the Adriatic Sea, and make Pola the centre of naval administration. In true Austrian fashion, the first years after the removal of the Admiralty to Pola were spent building barracks instead of dockyards. The defence system consists of a cross-fire directed from the islands upon the harbour entrance, and a chain of Maximilian towers designed to prevent ships from throwing bombs into the harbour. Apart from its strategic advantages, Pola also possesses the condition indispensable for a good harbour, namely the capacity to supply a strong fleet. Istria has oaks like Naples; Carniola, Carinthia and Styria are inexhaustibly rich in fir-trees, which already form the chief article of Trieste’s exports; Styria possesses large iron deposits; for the exportation

of hemp from Ancona, Pola is the most convenient place; coal is as yet still imported from England, but in the Dalmatian mines near Sebenico coal of better quality is beginning to be extracted, and when the Trieste–Vienna railway line is opened, the best quality can come from the Semmering. The products of Istria, growing on calcareous soil, withstand long transports. Oil is plentiful, Hungarian grain quite close, the Danube valley supplies pigs in enormous masses. These pigs are now conveyed to Galatz and Hamburg, but the railway will bring them to Trieste and Pola.

With all these excellent conditions for the revival of a sea power in the Adriatic Sea, there is only one obstacle – Austria itself. If Austria, with its present organisation and under its present government, could found a strong commercial and naval power in the Adriatic, it would break with all the traditions of history, which have ever linked power at sea with freedom. But, on the other hand, to overthrow the traditions would mean to overthrow Austria itself.