El Estado y el Ferrocarril. La nacionalizaciòn de la red italiana y los modelos europeos (1840-1905)

The railways are the first modern enterprise to be regulated and, in some cases, managed directly by the State as a company of public interest. In the nineteenth century and until World War I the issue of control of the railways was an important test both for liberalist theories and for the hypothesis of State centralization. In England they opted for free trade, in other countries such as France alliances were signed with big private companies that were strongly regulated by the central State. In other countries the State ended up by taking public control of the railway lines that had not worked well in the private system (e.g. Belgium). In Germany both the imperial State and the German States prior to unification played an important role. Meanwhile Switzerland was the first country to carry out the passage from the private system to the public one. In Italy the railway governance patterns adopted abroad were a constant reference point in the debates between the supporters of State control and free-traders. Yet the nationalization of the railway system was determined more by political inactivity, by corporative claims, and by reciprocal vetoes among the great economic interests at stake than by clear choices about what the general interest was, in this way revealing the inadequacy of many members of the political class and of the national élite.