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574 Daniele Andreozzi

and relaunch its development objectives there. In so doing it took
account of the role played by the mercantile class which had
consolidated its presence on the Trieste market. The provenance of
these merchants was diverse (the Italian peninsula, continental and
northern Europe, the Levant and the Balkans) as was their religion
(Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant). In these years this
class built an initial shared community of opinion based on
capitalisation needs which required all contributions to be taken on
board and, at the same time, the first rudimentary forms of market
closure to outside forces to be enacted. The mercantile class, the
Viennese court, international financial circuits, the aristocracy and the
great imperial bureaucracy, sea traders and the peripheral bureaucracy
located in the city: these were the main players in emporial Trieste’s
12
development and its bonds with the Atlantic .
While Trieste free port began to develop its identity in the 1750s,
the elements which began to link it more closely to the Atlantic was
the increasingly dense nature of the ‘segmented trade network’, i.e.
trade relating to only one sector of an overall trade route, the increase
in numbers of ships arriving from north-west European states and two
13
products in particular, Maria Theresa’s thalers and cereals .
Rudolf Chotek was a «high born knight», Maria Theresa’s influential
court chancellor, finance minister and head of Vienna’s city bank. He
was also president of the commerce directorate, the body entrusted
with Trieste development policies. In January 1752, while he was
working for Trieste’s economic relaunch, Chotek expressed himself in
favour of the coining of a new currency, against the wishes of other
members of the Imperial Court and bureaucracy. As the empire’s
imports from the Ottoman empire were much greater than its exports,
the only way this trade could be made possible was by allowing
currency to leave the empire given that ‘Turks’ and ‘Greeks’ were
willing to accept thalers on payment of a premium (paying a higher

12 C. Gatti, Uomini e politiche nella Trieste del Settecento, in R. Finzi, G. Panjek (eds.),
Storia economica e sociale di Trieste, I, La città dei gruppi, 1719-1918, LINT, Trieste, 2001,
pp. 359-380. D. Andreozzi, «Comincia a prendere il nome». Growth and Urban Development
in Trieste at the time of Maria Theresa, in D. Andreozzi, L. Mocarelli (eds.), The Empress
Cities: Urban Centres, Societies and Economies in the Age of Maria Theresia von Habsburg,
EUT, Trieste, 2017, pp. 101-123.
13 In this essay ‘segmented trade’ means a trade that could be divided into spatial
and operational segments. Global merchants controlled the entire goods circuit. Instead,
other merchants limited themselves to controlling only one segment of the overall routes
and they only acted in this segment. ‘Segmental routes’ mean merchant routes that could
be segmented into operational and spatial segments. On this G. Corazzol, Cineografo di
banditi sullo sfondo dei monti. Feltre 1634-1642, Edizioni Unicopli, Milano, 1997. Corazzol
refers to the timber trade in the Republic of Venezia.

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