Page 91 - 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. 91
The Free Port Debate: Economic Policies, International Equilibria and Mythologies ...
cially thanks to the success of Livorno (Peri 1638, 3:141; Worsley 1652;
Linda 1664, 40; Howell 1664, 3; Feliu de la Penya 1683, 111; Montanus and
Dapper 1671, 489). Soon, Marseille also rose as a positive model to be im-
itated (Savinien d'Alquié 1670, 494; Marchetti 1671, 27; Passerone 1681,
88). In both cases it was emphasized that the new status of free port had
given a decisive impulse to the development of international trade. Even
the first critics of the free port, such as Francis Brewster, could not fail to
acknowledge the success of the Tuscan experiment (Brewster 1695, 29).
This first phase of the public debate on free ports was mainly focused
on the analysis of existing free ports, and on the opportunity to establish
new ones in other countries, with a competitive function. The first results
were in fact a series of discussions, under Charles II of England, about the
possibility of establishing a free port in Bombay: ‘Would Your Worship
please, but for a few years, to make Bombay a free port […] no doubt you
would find it the readiest and best way for its establishment, as Leghorn,
Genoa, etc. many at this day give evidence’ (Fawcett 1936, 211). When this
project was rejected, the British government decided to create a free port
in Tangiers. The North-African one, however, was a brief and unsuccess-
ful attempt (Sheeres 1680, 46–7).
The key moment for the theoretical elaboration, with the attempt
to define precisely what a free port was, dates back to the early eight-
eenth century and to the elaboration of Jacques Savary’s Dictionnaire
universel du commerce, published posthumously in 1723 by his brother.3
In the Dictionnaire universel du commerce, starting from a text of a tech-
nical nature (the edict of Marseille of 1669), Savary described the free
port in a very simple and concise way: ‘Port franc en termes de com-
merce de mer. C’est un port où il est libre à tous Marchands, de quelque
Nation qu’ils soient, de décharger leurs marchandises, et les en retir-
er lors qu’ils ne les ont pu vendre, sans payer aucun droit d’entrée ni
de sortie’ (Dictionnaire universel du commerce 1726, 2:1191). Savary’s defi-
nition, translated throughout Europe and taken up literally both by
the Cyclopaedia and by the Encyclopédie, became the text from which,
around the middle of the century, a new debate on the free ports start-
ed. Montesquieu, Matthew Decker, and Adam Smith defended the insti-
3 A more comprehensive analysis of the eighteenth-century debate and definitory
struggle around free ports is in Delogu (2019b).
91
cially thanks to the success of Livorno (Peri 1638, 3:141; Worsley 1652;
Linda 1664, 40; Howell 1664, 3; Feliu de la Penya 1683, 111; Montanus and
Dapper 1671, 489). Soon, Marseille also rose as a positive model to be im-
itated (Savinien d'Alquié 1670, 494; Marchetti 1671, 27; Passerone 1681,
88). In both cases it was emphasized that the new status of free port had
given a decisive impulse to the development of international trade. Even
the first critics of the free port, such as Francis Brewster, could not fail to
acknowledge the success of the Tuscan experiment (Brewster 1695, 29).
This first phase of the public debate on free ports was mainly focused
on the analysis of existing free ports, and on the opportunity to establish
new ones in other countries, with a competitive function. The first results
were in fact a series of discussions, under Charles II of England, about the
possibility of establishing a free port in Bombay: ‘Would Your Worship
please, but for a few years, to make Bombay a free port […] no doubt you
would find it the readiest and best way for its establishment, as Leghorn,
Genoa, etc. many at this day give evidence’ (Fawcett 1936, 211). When this
project was rejected, the British government decided to create a free port
in Tangiers. The North-African one, however, was a brief and unsuccess-
ful attempt (Sheeres 1680, 46–7).
The key moment for the theoretical elaboration, with the attempt
to define precisely what a free port was, dates back to the early eight-
eenth century and to the elaboration of Jacques Savary’s Dictionnaire
universel du commerce, published posthumously in 1723 by his brother.3
In the Dictionnaire universel du commerce, starting from a text of a tech-
nical nature (the edict of Marseille of 1669), Savary described the free
port in a very simple and concise way: ‘Port franc en termes de com-
merce de mer. C’est un port où il est libre à tous Marchands, de quelque
Nation qu’ils soient, de décharger leurs marchandises, et les en retir-
er lors qu’ils ne les ont pu vendre, sans payer aucun droit d’entrée ni
de sortie’ (Dictionnaire universel du commerce 1726, 2:1191). Savary’s defi-
nition, translated throughout Europe and taken up literally both by
the Cyclopaedia and by the Encyclopédie, became the text from which,
around the middle of the century, a new debate on the free ports start-
ed. Montesquieu, Matthew Decker, and Adam Smith defended the insti-
3 A more comprehensive analysis of the eighteenth-century debate and definitory
struggle around free ports is in Delogu (2019b).
91
