Page 84 - Mellinato, Giulio, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2022. Complex Gateways. Labour and Urban History of Maritime Port Cities: The Northern Adriaticin a Comparative Perspective. Koper: University of Primorska Press.
P. 84
plex Gateways
However, the fact remained that the Rijeka Company, in fact, the
Trieste-Rijeka Privileged Trading Company, was the largest and most suc-
cessful of all the Central European trading companies of the eighteenth
century. The records of contemporaries, such as the note that Emperor
Joseph II wrote in his diary on 13 May 1775, confirm its importance in the
life of Rijeka, as well as the fact that the Company, even at the peak of its
activities, did not ensure business vitality and great trade for the port.
The emperor’s impressions were very precise and clear. Arriving by boat
from the south, he toured the coast, the ports, and shipyards and said:
‘Then we travelled off towards Rijeka next to anchored boats between
which were also two foreign French boats that were delivering sugar. One
of those two boats did not load anything, so it was necessary to dispatch
it with stones.’18 Of everything in Rijeka, the emperor only praised the
Company and its overflowing warehouses.
Although the port began to grow more significantly only after its an-
nexation to Hungary in 1779, during the Napoleonic Wars, it lagged again,
together with the Company that in the new circumstances was coming
closer to the end. Many decades had to pass until the resurrection of the
port and its eventual rise.
18 From Joseph II’s diary, About the conditions in Croatia and on the Adriatic coast in
1775 (Dubrović 2001, 324).
84
However, the fact remained that the Rijeka Company, in fact, the
Trieste-Rijeka Privileged Trading Company, was the largest and most suc-
cessful of all the Central European trading companies of the eighteenth
century. The records of contemporaries, such as the note that Emperor
Joseph II wrote in his diary on 13 May 1775, confirm its importance in the
life of Rijeka, as well as the fact that the Company, even at the peak of its
activities, did not ensure business vitality and great trade for the port.
The emperor’s impressions were very precise and clear. Arriving by boat
from the south, he toured the coast, the ports, and shipyards and said:
‘Then we travelled off towards Rijeka next to anchored boats between
which were also two foreign French boats that were delivering sugar. One
of those two boats did not load anything, so it was necessary to dispatch
it with stones.’18 Of everything in Rijeka, the emperor only praised the
Company and its overflowing warehouses.
Although the port began to grow more significantly only after its an-
nexation to Hungary in 1779, during the Napoleonic Wars, it lagged again,
together with the Company that in the new circumstances was coming
closer to the end. Many decades had to pass until the resurrection of the
port and its eventual rise.
18 From Joseph II’s diary, About the conditions in Croatia and on the Adriatic coast in
1775 (Dubrović 2001, 324).
84
