How did free trade emerge in early-modern times? How did the Mediterranean as a specific region – with its own historical characteristics – produce a culture in which the free port appeared? What was the relation between the type of free trade created in early-modern Italy and the development of global trade and commercial competition between states for hegemony in the eighteenth century? And how did the position of the free port, originally a Mediterranean ‘invention’, develop over the course of time? The contributions to this volume address these questions and explain the institutional genealogy of the free port.
Free Trade and Free Ports in the Mediterranean analyses the atypical history and conditions of the Mediterranean region in contradistinction with other regions as an explanation for how and why free ports arose there. This volume engages with the diffusion of free ports from a Mediterranean to a global phenomenon, whilst staying focused on how this diffusion was experienced in the Mediterranean itself. The contributions to this volume bring together the traditional issues of religious openness and tolerance in physically separated areas and the role of consuls and governors, via fiscal techniques, architectural and administrative aspects, with questions about geopolitical balance and primacy.
The book will be of interest to scholars in a wide range of historical sub-disciplines (early modern, Mediterranean, global economic, political, and institutional, just to mention a few) and to students wishing to perfect their knowledge of the Mediterranean and its global interconnections, and of the origins of free trade.
Edited by:
Giulia Delogu (University of Venice Italy),
Koen Stapelbroek (Erasmus University,
The Netherlands),
Antonio Trampus (University of Venice,
Italy)
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
Weight: 694g
ISBN: 9781032069289
ISBN 10: 1032069287
Series: Political Economies of Capitalism, 1600-1850
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 12 July 2024
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Chapter 1 The history of Mediterranean free ports as the invention of free trade? Koen Stapelbroek and Antonio Trampus Chapter 2 Ports and free ports in the Old World: political economy in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean (1500–1750) Corey Tazzara Chapter 3 What is a free port? The shaping of the concept in dictionaries, edicts, and governance Giulia Delogu Chapter 4 Free ports in a controlled market: Ancona, Livorno, Genoa, and Trieste in the eighteenth-century Italian grain trade Giulio Ongaro Chapter 5 Territorial control, economic provision, and republican order: the free port of Genoa from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century Paolo Calcagno Chapter 6 English perspectives on Genova and Livorno: rivalry and complementarity between two eighteenth-century free ports Danilo Pedemonte Chapter 7 The free port of Nice-Villafranca and Savoy maritime politics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Luca Lo Basso Chapter 8 ‘Dire straits’: the free ports of Tangier and Gibraltar in the English Mediterranean Francesca Savoldi Chapter 9 The British debate on Mediterranean free ports: Livorno, Gibraltar, and Port Mahon (1712–1783) Antonella Alimento Chapter 10 A ‘source of gold and prosperity’? The Neapolitan free-port debate from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century Antonio Iodice Chapter 11 The free port of Messina in the ancien régime: spaces, institutions, and practices Ida Fazio and Rita Foti Chapter 12 Free trade and the ghost story of the Bourbon alliance: Spain, free ports, and the Mediterranean Sea (1648–1765) Edward Jones Corredera Chapter 13 The evils of ‘beguiling Liberty’: a comparative perspective on free ports in a manuscript by Manuel María Gutiérrez (1830) Marcella Aglietti Chapter 14 The Habsburg portchain: a decentralised empire in the eighteenth century David Do Paço Chapter 15 The evolution of the free port of Trieste from 1717 to the present Daniele Andreozzi
Giulia Delogu is Assistant Professor of Early Modern History at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her main research interest is political communication and the reciprocal influences between information and institutional changes. A second research field is the construction of images of economic and political power starting from the case of Napoleon. Her latest monograph is L’emporio delle parole. Costruire l’informazione nei porti franchi d’età moderna (2017). She published several articles in Past & Present, History of European Ideas, Studi Storici, Rivista Storica Italiana, and Società e Storia. Koen Stapelbroek is Professor of Humanities and Dean of the College of Arts, Society and Education at James Cook University. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge (2004) and published widely in the field of European eighteenth-century political thought and intellectual history. His research focuses on the history of political thought, global aspects of political economy and trade, as well as their legal, cultural, and institutional dynamics. Antonio Trampus is Professor of Early Modern History at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. His scholarly interests cover European and International history from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, and the impact of Enlightenment’s legacy in the Mediterranean area, in Europe, and in the Americas. He is interested particularly in the free ports of the Adriatic and Mediterranean. His recent publications include the edited volume, with Koen Stapelbroek, The Legacy of Vattel’s Droit des gens (2019), and Emer de Vattel and the Politics of Good Government: Constitutionalism, Small States and the International System (2021).
