This article concerns the decline of the port of Thessaloniki in the interwar years, manifested by the failure of the Free Zone scheme. Establishing a transit center free of duty for the use of neighboring Balkan states was the flagship scheme of Thessaloniki to restore its economic trade with the historical hinterland. However, the Free Zone failed to meet expectations as it ended up attracting only a small proportion of the Balkans' maritime transport. The Greek historiography links this failure to the inter-Balkan conflicts, which hampered commercial cooperation. This argument oversimplifies the broader challenges that the Free Zone scheme actually faced. This article offers a much more comprehensive account of the mechanism that hindered the Free Zone's growth. It combines theoretical reasoning (the development paradigm) with empirical analysis of intra-national (Old Greece vs. New Greece, the uneven spatial policy) and international (Greek-Yugoslavia disputes) politics. This theoretically-informed case study sheds light on the geopolitical factors which undermined the pioneering efforts made to turn the waterfront of a Balkan port-city into a Free Zone with an international hinterland.

本文涉及塞萨洛尼基港在两次世界大战之间的衰落，表现为自由区计划的失败。建立一个免税中转中心供邻近的巴尔干国家使用是塞萨洛尼基恢复与历史腹地经济贸易的旗舰计划。但是，自由区未能达到期望，因为它最终仅吸引了巴尔干海上运输的一小部分。希腊史学将这一失败与阻碍商业合作的巴尔干内部冲突联系起来。这一论点过度简化了自由区计划实际面临的更广泛的挑战。本文对阻碍自由区发展的机制进行了更全面的说明。它将理论推理（发展范式）与国内（旧希腊与新希腊，不平衡的空间政策）和国际（希腊-南斯拉夫争端）政治的实证分析相结合。这个具有理论依据的案例研究揭示了地缘政治因素，这些因素破坏了将巴尔干港口城市的海滨转变为具有国际腹地的自由区的开创性努力。