Page 158 - 1

Androzzi (saggi)_6 14/12/18 09:32 Pagina 570

570 Daniele Andreozzi

A focus on relationships, interconnections and proximity, seen in a
systemic way, by contrast, brings out alternative hypotheses. It is not a
question of denying differences in power, wealth and social and
economic development. However, in a context characterised by these
differences in availability of material and immaterial resources,
relationships and interconnections do not take the form of encapsulation
or rigidly hierarchical geographies but rather of dense, complex and
multi-directional relationship flows. Extreme global network connections
require rigid compliance between all points on the network. Free or non-
compliant spaces are impossible because these would modify the
functioning mechanisms of the system as a whole requiring a rapid
search for equilibrium. The role of the peripheries is this. They are never
passive objects but play a central role in global equilibria and they are
places of government of societies and economies. Such interactions are,
as we have seen, determined by real proximity rather than geographical
distance. This is one of the elements which made the seas and waters
an especially significant element in the 18th century as places where
states’ theoretical and weak mercantilism clashed with the mechanisms
and practices of the goods, money, people and know-how networks. It
was via this proximity that the peripheries were globalised, becoming
part of circuits which connected up sea and land.
Furthermore, as regards proximity, it should also be underlined
that, in the 18th century, government was still a matter of face-to-face
contact chains. As a consequence of this, and of the technological tools
and available commercial techniques, the practices which
characterized global trading networks were closely interconnected to
each other. New hypotheses can thus be put forward on the practices
of those who played a centre stage role in these networks. In fact, if we
avoid falling into the teleological narrative trap, from a Mediterranean
point of view the differences tend to disappear. Trading techniques, flag
fraud, contraband, the functioning of the trading companies, merchant
practices, exclusion and breaking the law: all these would seem to have
been widespread and common to the various points on the trading
networks, unifying Mediterranean and Oceanic waters. It is for this
reason that comparisons and ‘global’ readings must begin with the
concrete material and social contexts in which norms and practices
which evaded and broke the law were located, avoiding resorting to
5
teleological and model based narratives .

5 A. Crespo Solana, Legal Strategies and Smuggling Mechanisms in the Trade with
the Hispanic Caribbean by Foreign Merchants in Cadiz: the Dutch and Flemish Case, 1680-
1750, «Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas / Anuario de Historia de América
Latina», 47 (2010), pp. 181-314; R. Escobedo, Sospechosos Habituales: contrabando de

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XV - Dicembre 2018 n.44
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)