This article investigates the development of the Spanish–Italian mercury cartel from the end of World War II to the mid-1950s. Previous literature has singled out the cartel as one of the most robust international cartels of the twentieth century, but as this article shows, the cartel broke down toward the end of the 1940s, and although briefly reestablished in 1954, it quickly dissolved again. Building on access to original source material from archives in Spain, Italy, the United States, and United Kingdom, we investigate the underlying reasons why the cartel broke down, and how and why it was eventually reestablished. Because both the main Italian and the Spanish mercury producers were state-owned, this article pays special attention to the influence of the political relations between Spain and Italy on the development of the cartel. The study of the mercury cartel is used as a prism to investigate the point where industry strategies meet government strategies. This article thus contributes to two major strands of literature, both to the business history literature on international cartels in the post-1945 world and to the diplomatic history literature on the intricate relationship between Spain and Italy in the early phase of the Cold War.

本文研究了从第二次世界大战结束到1950年代中期西班牙-意大利汞卡特尔的发展。先前的文献将卡特尔列为20世纪最强大的国际卡特尔之一，但正如本文所显示的，卡特尔在1940年代末崩溃了，尽管在1954年短暂地重新建立了该卡特尔，但很快又瓦解了。建立在从西班牙，意大利，美国和英国的档案库获取原始资料的基础上，我们研究了卡特尔崩溃的根本原因，以及最终如何重建和重建的原因。由于意大利和西班牙的主要汞生产国均为国有，因此本文特别关注西班牙和意大利之间的政治关系对卡特尔发展的影响。汞卡特尔的研究被用作研究行业战略与政府战略的契合点。因此，本文为两大文学领域做出了贡献，包括有关1945年后世界国际卡特尔的商业历史文献，以及有关冷战初期西班牙和意大利之间错综复杂的关系的外交史文献。