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584 Daniele Andreozzi

precious good in terms of competition in the financial and trading
markets but also a fundamentally important factor in insurance field
success. Trieste’s geographical location and ability to find a place for
itself in the Mediterranean ‘segmental trade routes’ allowed it to gain
40
an absolutely front rank role in information control .

5. The emporium

The global trade was a fluid and strictly interconnected whole,
despite the existence of principal ports and predominant powers made
up also of an ultra-dense interweaving of ‘segmental routes’ covering a
single sector of the long journeys undertaken by goods on their way to
their final market destinations. These ‘segmental routes’ interacted
with overall goods routes, integrating and intersecting these and, at
the same time, they were in competition with these. Trieste was part
of a dense network of ‘segmental routes’ and its mercantile class was
made up primarily of sector based firms. Global trade was also the sum
of trade segments and these were capable of determining the system’s
overall equilibria. Thus all the players involved in this ‘segmented trade’
and the way they interacted with the wider networks were key elements
in global trade. The circulation of its key players, the way trade worked,
the available technology and intersecting routes led to practice
standardisation in both trade management and mercantile company
management. Behaviours such as contraband, evasion and breaking
the law, disputes between partners, financial and accounting
irregularities, flag fraud, identity ambiguity and fluid crew make-up:
these can thus not be attributed to backward and marginalised
41
peripheries .

40 Sav, Savi, 760, I s., L’Osservatore triestino, 17 and 21 May 1788; for example, in
the May 17 issue there were reports of arrivals in the ports of Amsterdam, Copenhagen,
Hamburg and London. Then there was news about the performance of the shares at the
London Stock Exchange, the wars, the actions of piracy, and the news, arrived from
Copenhagen, of the shipwreck of a ship on the shores of Bengal. The control of the ‘seg-
mental routes’ made the circulation of news faster because of the reduction in waiting
times in the ports. ‘Segmental routes’ multiplied opportunities. In fact, at the intersection
of the ‘segmental routes’, the news was not entrusted to the fate, times and objectives of
a single ship. The news could choose the most convenient ship, the one that sailed faster,
which had more direct routes or that met the best winds.
41 From this point of view, these practices were not marginal and residual. They were
an integral part of the global traffic mechanisms. Around this argument, obviously, the
debate is very lively. As an initial moment, see D. Andreozzi, Mediterranean Doubts, cit.,
pp. IX-XVII; Moralités marchandes dans l’Europe Méditerranéenne au XVIIIe, cit.; B. Sal-
vemini, R. Zaugg (eds.), Frodi marittime tra norme e istituzioni (secc. XVII-XIX), cit.; D.

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