Building a maritime empire: The foundations of Ante Topić’s shipping enterprise (1910–1945)

Between the two world wars, Croatian shipowner Ante Topić (1880–1974), originally from the Adriatic island of Vis, developed a transnational shipping enterprise organised through joint-stock companies in Zagreb, Sušak and Trieste. Amid post-imperial collapse, economic crisis and global war, when many Adriatic firms struggled, the Topić system proved resilient and adaptable. Drawing on archival shareholder registers, company minutes and internal records, supplementing these with private family papers, oral testimony and genealogical reconstruction, the analysis shows how organisational coherence was sustained across legally autonomous firms without a formal hierarchy, while coordination remained in Topić’s hands. It argues that continuity rested on a kinship–equity network in which trust, reputation and intergenerational ties reinforced formal governance across a multi-entity corporate structure. By reconstructing the formative interwar phase of the enterprise, the study contributes to maritime business history in the Mediterranean and highlights the role of informal governance under volatile institutional conditions.