Page 89 - 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. 89
5
The Free Port Debate: Economic Policies,
International Equilibria and Mythologies
(Eighteenth-Nineteenth Century)
Giulia Delogu
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Department of Linguistics and Comparative
Cultural Studies
During the first half of the eighteenth century, a wide debate sparkled,
aiming at defining what were the salient features of a free port. The most
fortunate definition, later taken up in all the major encyclopedic works
from the Cyclopaedia to the Encyclopédie, was coined by Jacques de Savary,
based on the 1669 edict for the establishment of the free port of Marseille.
Once defined, the identity of the free ports began to be discussed and
criticized, among others, by Melon, Broggia, Forbonnais, and Genovesi.
Between the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, the free ports had
become a global phenomenon, which went beyond the Mediterranean ba-
sin in which they were born at the end of the sixteenth century. As noted
in several entries in the Encyclopédie méthodique, free ports were seen not
only as economic instruments, but also as tools to be used in the configu-
ration of the international relations.
This markedly political character of the free ports would again
emerge strongly during the beginning of the nineteenth century, when
the Napoleonic administration designed (unsuccessfully) a system of en-
trepôts wishing to connect the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, to gain
economic and political control of the seas and defeat the British. Until the
1860s, free ports continued to occupy the political and economic debate.
For instance, in Britain, they were seen as a premise for a more compre-
hensive system of free trade. Conversely, in the French, Italian, Spanish,
Habsburg, Russian and Latin-American areas, free ports were described
alternatively as the best solution to revive trade, or as an institution
Mellinato, Giulio, Aleksander Panjek, eds. 2022. Complex Gateways. Labour and Urban History of Maritime
Port Cities: The Northern Adriatic in a Comparative Perspective.
Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem. https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-191-9.89-105
89
The Free Port Debate: Economic Policies,
International Equilibria and Mythologies
(Eighteenth-Nineteenth Century)
Giulia Delogu
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Department of Linguistics and Comparative
Cultural Studies
During the first half of the eighteenth century, a wide debate sparkled,
aiming at defining what were the salient features of a free port. The most
fortunate definition, later taken up in all the major encyclopedic works
from the Cyclopaedia to the Encyclopédie, was coined by Jacques de Savary,
based on the 1669 edict for the establishment of the free port of Marseille.
Once defined, the identity of the free ports began to be discussed and
criticized, among others, by Melon, Broggia, Forbonnais, and Genovesi.
Between the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, the free ports had
become a global phenomenon, which went beyond the Mediterranean ba-
sin in which they were born at the end of the sixteenth century. As noted
in several entries in the Encyclopédie méthodique, free ports were seen not
only as economic instruments, but also as tools to be used in the configu-
ration of the international relations.
This markedly political character of the free ports would again
emerge strongly during the beginning of the nineteenth century, when
the Napoleonic administration designed (unsuccessfully) a system of en-
trepôts wishing to connect the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, to gain
economic and political control of the seas and defeat the British. Until the
1860s, free ports continued to occupy the political and economic debate.
For instance, in Britain, they were seen as a premise for a more compre-
hensive system of free trade. Conversely, in the French, Italian, Spanish,
Habsburg, Russian and Latin-American areas, free ports were described
alternatively as the best solution to revive trade, or as an institution
Mellinato, Giulio, Aleksander Panjek, eds. 2022. Complex Gateways. Labour and Urban History of Maritime
Port Cities: The Northern Adriatic in a Comparative Perspective.
Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem. https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-191-9.89-105
89
