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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2010

The heritages of the cross-Alpine transport nets, a geographical contribution to the European geopolitics

Résumé

Cross-Alpine transport nets are a kind of mirror of successive European geopolitical layouts. From the military mule tracks nets to the new basis tunnels still under working, we can consider the continental background through the configurations of their realizations. The first railway tunnels are the expression, for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of a will to assure the territorial continuity with its southern possessions. The theme of the territorial continuity is also present with the Fréjus or the Gotthard, sustained by the issue of the continental transit. The Gotthard is the expression of Bismarck's political context and its alliance strategy: it is an opening between two parts of Switzerland as well as a line drawn between two allies, Germany and Italy. The maritime geopolitics is not so far either: the Gotthard is a way for Italian harbours to attend the German markets, by competing with the French ones on the Mediterranean field. Presently, the key theme of cross-Alpine transport is a speech on the disappearing of the boarders in Europe. The Semmering base tunnel project is an illustration of this characteristic: due to its un-political correctly position in front of the new EU's boarder situation, it is not unscripted to the TEN-T. Cross-Alpine transport nets are a key theme of the boarders rearranging. Since the earlier railway tunnels to the new basis ones, the question of the boarders' opening and of its reversibility explain some parts of the Alpine transports choices. The poster and the paper will approach a representation of the systemic dimension of it, from the connecting of the upper forts to the European symbolic sense of the cross boarder transit. The communication will focus on a national dimension, with the example of Italy. This country, which presents an interesting paradox in its relation with Alps, grew with the invention of the first tunnel era. Railway tunnels of the 19th century and of the beginning of the 20th were, initially (Semmering 1854, Brenner 1864), the way of the submission to the former territorial political authority on the northern part. Italy was born in 1861 and its geopolitical birth is bound to the inventions of Gotthard (1882) and of Simplon (1906) tunnels, so that they became a way for the Italian state to assert itself as a real European state. Thus, it became an issue for the state to invent a national social cohesion projected to European scale as well as to the inner scene: the tunnels, by the sacrifice of the Italian workforce, appear as a voice for the affirmation of a nation. The central state is a main actor in this process using different monuments which translate spatially the political speech. In the same time, works in progress and traffic ways are spatial inscriptions of an Italian popular national invention, an invention of an external Italy with its own spatial inscriptions, monuments and institutions, commemorating the emigration in the whole Europe as local miss-development solution. The recent inauguration of the Museo nazionale dell'emigrazione italiana in Roma shows it: the cross-Alpine transports interrogate the national identity by standing as a mirror of the national development history and by being the way of the seasonal return. Thus, the cross-Alpine transports belong to the Italian identity patrimony by commemorating, until the families scale, the recent history of the national development.
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halsde-00553927 , version 1 (10-01-2011)

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  • HAL Id : halsde-00553927 , version 1

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Kevin Sutton. The heritages of the cross-Alpine transport nets, a geographical contribution to the European geopolitics. 8th Annual Conference of the international Association for History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility, Dec 2010, New Delhi, India. ⟨halsde-00553927⟩
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