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‘Segmented Trade’. Merchants, Mercantile Practices and Mercantilism 571

It was within this context that the port of Trieste and the merchants
based there became centre stage players in the 18th century trading
circuits which linked continental and eastern Europe, the Levant and
the Mediterranean with the Atlantic ocean and the lands around it.

2. The birth of the free trade ports

Trieste was a Hapsburg port in the Adriatic located at the point at
which the Adriatic makes contact with the European continent, not far
from Venice. As early as the 17th century it began connecting the
Mediterranean with continental and eastern Europe, thus linking up
two different areas in climatic and geographical terms: West and East.
These areas also possessed different goods in type and quality terms
6
and it was this which was the basis for Trieste’s 18th century growth .
A long historiographical traditional linked Trieste’s development to
the mercantilist policies of the Hapsburgs, according to which the city
and its port were an ‘artificial’ product of the action of the Vienna court
and its development dates to 1717 and 1719, when two edicts by
Charles VI of the Hapsburgs made it a free trade port. However, the
documentary sources are open to a range of interpretations and some
of these indicate a diverse trajectory for Trieste’s development, without
7
denying the role and importance played by Hapsburg policies .

tabaco y commerciantes extranjeros en los puertos españoles, in M.B. Villa Garcia, P.
Pezzi Cristobal (eds.), Los Extranjeros en la España moderna, Junta de Andalucía,
Malaga, 2013, pp. 313-323; W. Farell, Smuggling Silk into Eighteenth Century Britain:
Geography, Perpetrators, and Consumers, «Journal of British Studies», 55 (2016), pp.
268-294; Moralités marchandes dans l’Europe Méditerranéenne au XVIIIe siècle: institu-
tions, appartenances, pratiques, «Rives Méditerranéennes», 49 (2014); B. Salvemini, Negli
spazi mediterranei della “decadenza”. Note su istituzioni, etiche e pratiche mercantili della
tarda età moderna, «Storica», 51 (2011), pp. 7-51; B. Salvemini, R. Zaugg (eds.), Frodi
marittime tra norme e istituzioni (secc. XVII-XIX), «Quaderni Storici», 143/2 (2013); D.
Andreozzi, Croissance et économie licite, illicite et informelle à Trieste au XVIIIe siècle, in
M. Figeac-Monthus, C. Lastécouères (eds.), Territoires de l’illecite: ports et îles. De la
fraude au contrôle (XVIe - XXe s.), Armand Colin, Paris, 2012, pp. 173-87; D. Andreozzi
(ed.), Mediterranean doubts. Trading Companies, Conflicts and Strategies in the Global
Spaces. XIV-XIX Centuries, New Digital Press, Palermo, 2017.
6 R. Finzi, G. Panjek (eds.), Storia economica e sociale di Trieste, I, La città dei gruppi,
1719-1918, Lint, Trieste, 2001; R. Finzi, L. Panariti, G. Panjek (eds.), Storia economica e
sociale di Trieste, II, La città dei traffici, Lint, Trieste, 2003; D. Andreozzi, Il peso delle
parole. Linguaggi di esclusione e linguaggi di inclusione nella storia di Trieste, in R. Scar-
ciglia (ed.), Trieste multiculturale. Comunità e linguaggi di integrazione, Il Mulino, Bologna,
2011, pp. 13-38.
7 D. Andreozzi, «La gloria di un dilatato commercio». L’intrico delle politiche e lo sviluppo
di Trieste nell’Adriatico centro settentrionale (1700-1730), «Mélanges de l’École française
de Rome - Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines», 127-1 (2015).

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