Port cities played a special role in the development of European history. From the sixteenth century to the period of industrialization, these cities, with the exception of a few large capitals, represented the most dynamic elements in the evolving urban environment. As hubs of maritime and terrestrial links, they played a very important role in trade but also in social, cultural, and political integration between their hinterlands and other, increasingly transcontinental economic spheres.

The role and specific features of port cities have long been the focus of international historiography, which has produced many studies on this topic. However, they have not included certain regions of the European continent, including the Adriatic with its most important cities of Dubrovnik, Trieste, Koper, Venice, Rijeka, Split, and Ancona. Even when the Adriatic has been at the center of research, the latter has focused almost exclusively on national issues, or has been limited to (too) narrow national frameworks, which mostly apply for the national nineteenth century and onward. However, especially in this period, these areas experienced significant geopolitical and economic changes; their political and economic systems and strategic interests were repeatedly reconstructed as the Adriatic became a Habsburg hub. New ideas emerged, the most fascinating of which was Adriatic multinationalism. On the basis of wide research in multiple languages, and with a clear vision and vivid pen, Reill has written an essential account of nationalism and multinationalism. Analyzing the ideas, lives, stories, activities, and writings of six men of the Adriatic—Niccolò Tommaseo, Francesco Dall'Ongaro, Pacifico Valussi, Medo Pučić, Ivan August Kaznačić, and Stipan Ivičević—Reill has found that “thinkers and community leaders could and did argue specifically against the homogenization of their communities into just one nation” (3).

The author explains Adriatic multinationalism by using the preconditions that enabled its emergence: from the maritime dimension of Adriatic connections to the tide of European nationalism, and from common characteristics of the post-Napoleon generations to the policentricity of the Adriatic. Tommaseo marks the starting point and the center of the study (and of Adriatic multinationalism itself); the narrative then traces the networks of people who were active mostly on the route from Dalmatia, Trieste, and Venice. However, at the same time the narrative reveals the overlapping and fluid identities from the times when societies were not constructed along mononational lines. Here we can find the key to understand “nationalism with a human face” that would foster mutual (linguistic) understanding and enable multinationalism on the shores of the Adriatic.

In this context the author ascribes the key role to the year of 1848, which despite the relatively calm Adriatic waters (with the exception of Venice) marked an epochal cut. Perhaps it is an exaggeration, but a symbolically appropriate one, to argue that nationalism, in its several forms (including irredentism), separated the Adriatic in the way Moses separated the sea. In this way the author accurately sets the conflict of the Adriatic region in the historic context of the mid nineteenth century. As a consequence of European revolutionary events in 1848–1849, the paths of the six men parted. Beautiful thoughts of Adriatic multinationalism, in confrontation with the revolutionary reality, fell into crisis and in many aspects vanished. In the age of rising Italian imperialism and the emerging Slovenian and Croatian national aspirations, there was no more space for multiple choices.

This lucid book offers readers a topic that has not emerged so far in historiography. The author dedicates special attention to going beyond the common clichés and usual, stereotyped mental patterns that are often present not only in individual national and nationalist narration, but also in historiographical production. By explaining Adriatic multinationalism, Reill's book has, as any good historiographical work does, opened new questions. Following the author's example, resumed interpretation and wider discussion on nationalism in the Adriatic region in the nineteenth (but also the twentieth) century, remains one of the tasks for historians who deal with this region and Europe in general.