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‘Segmented Trade’. Merchants, Mercantile Practices and Mercantilism 579

states which, while they do not produce these goods, receive them from
26
their plants in Asia, Africa and America» .
In the 1770s and 80s intersecting ‘segmental routes’ linked up
Trieste port, and through this to continental and eastern European
markets, with the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the northern European
seas and global goods circuits. Key players were the English ports
London and Portsmouth, and Hamburg, Amsterdam, French oceanic
ports such as Le Havre, Nantes and Bordeaux, Lisbon, Cadiz and
Mediterranean ports such as Marseilles, Livorno, Messina, Dubrovnik,
Ancona and Goro. These routes were dominated by Hapsburg, English,
Dutch, Swedish, French, Venetian, Papal State, Neapolitan, Genoese
and Dubrovnik ships. These ships sometimes sailed directly to Trieste
from their port of origin but frequently the journey involved multiple
stages. Trading logics took account of price differentials and ease of
trade which were fundamentally important in reducing costs due to
difficulties in grouping goods together with consequent lengthy waiting
times in the port in relation to overall travel costs. Thus load make up
- which varied at each stage - responded to the complexity of overall
trading mechanisms rather than the profitability of each single type of
goods. Loads were sometimes owned by Trieste based merchants,
sometimes merchants living elsewhere which, in some cases, used local
27
contacts to sell or send their goods on .
Official data is mainly unreliable as a result of the frequency of
contraband and tax avoidance and in any event trading logics get lost
in analyses of aggregate data . However, the identity and provenance
28
of the ships arriving at Trieste port from 1785 to 1786 and the
composition of the cargoes in its hold give us an overview of this

26 Sat, Intendenza, 281-288, 30 April 1770.
27 Sav, Savi, I. s, 756, 757, 758, 759, 760.
28 In 1782 the Hapsburg authorities estimated the value of the imports from the
French ports in 480,000 florins and value of the exports in 177,000 florins. Almonds,
coffee, sugar and indigo came from these ports and the Trieste merchants traded verdi-
gris, tobacco, skins, canvases, potash and wheat towards them. Goods that were
imported from Hamburg amounted to 62,000 florins (sugar, tin, fish oil, lead, pepper
and cod) and the export amounted to 264,000 florins (tobacco, grapes, rice, oil, tobacco,
potash, licorice and fruits). The value of exports to Spain was 61.300 florins, to Holland
87,300, to England and Flanders 2,739,000. The cargo of the ships coming from Trieste
encompassed Levant drugs, oil, potash, rice, silk, tea, and raisins (SAV, Inquisitori, 181,
Stato del commercio di Trieste del 1782). On the inaccuracies of the state estimates on
the Trieste trade see D. Andreozzi, “La segretezza degli affari suoi”. Commerci, regole e
reati a Trieste nella seconda metà del ‘700, in «Quaderni Storici», 143 (2013), pp. 467-
496. The mercantile class and the peripheral bureaucracy sent to Vienna false news on
the trades of Trieste and on the economic situation to maximize their profits and avoid
the control of the center.

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