Page 92 - 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. 92
plex Gateways
tution, while Broggia, Forbonnais, Mirabeau, and Genovesi criticized it.4
The free port was mainly reckoned as an obstacle for internal develop-
ment. Meanwhile, the Encyclopédie méthodique (1784), taking into account
the contemporary debate and the political situation, renewed the defini-
tion of a free port, stressing for the first time its role not only from the
economic point of view, but also from the political one, as an instrument
within international relations. An example was the friendship treaty be-
tween France and the Thirteen American Colonies, which led to the es-
tablishment of two new free ports (Bayonne and L’Orient). To illustrate
the question of the free ports, the Encyclopédie méthodique did not limit
itself to the Mediterranean basin and continental Europe, but implicitly
recognized the existence of an actual global dimension, referring also to
similar institutions and projects in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean.
A few years later, during the French Revolution, the question of the
free ports emerged again, with a markedly political character. In fact, by
including them among the privileges of a feudal nature, the revolutionary
government decreed their total abolition in 1789, precisely because they
were contrary to the principles of equality and uniformity that had to
regulate the nation. The measure raised a wide debate among the defend-
ers of the free port. The one side emphasized the economic benefits of the
free port and rediscovered their (mythical) origins in classical antiquity.
The other side referred to Forbonnais and reaffirmed the economic disad-
vantages for the general prosperity and, at a political level, the incompat-
ibility with the new egalitarian France. Such discussions produced differ-
ent results in the various port cities under French dominon: if Bayonne
and Dunkirk regained the possibility of practicing preferential duties as
early as 1791, Nice saw similar requests rejected in 1794, and Marseille
would also see its petitions rejected by Napoleon, until 1815.
Therefore, defining free ports was not a neutral operation. Being eco-
nomic but also political institutions, since the seventeenth century and
then with even greater intensity in the eighteenth century, free ports
aroused intellectual debates. Above all they became the object of negoti-
ation between centres and peripheries, and between the different social
components that populated them, and therefore laboratories of concep-
4 Meanwhile, the free port also attracted criticism of a moral nature, being seen as
a lawless space in which people of different religions and customs could freely mix
(Lavenia 2009). Moreover, they were also considered immoral because they fos-
tered excessive luxury, as foreshadowed by Fénelon in his well-known Les aven-
tures de Télémaque (1699).
92
tution, while Broggia, Forbonnais, Mirabeau, and Genovesi criticized it.4
The free port was mainly reckoned as an obstacle for internal develop-
ment. Meanwhile, the Encyclopédie méthodique (1784), taking into account
the contemporary debate and the political situation, renewed the defini-
tion of a free port, stressing for the first time its role not only from the
economic point of view, but also from the political one, as an instrument
within international relations. An example was the friendship treaty be-
tween France and the Thirteen American Colonies, which led to the es-
tablishment of two new free ports (Bayonne and L’Orient). To illustrate
the question of the free ports, the Encyclopédie méthodique did not limit
itself to the Mediterranean basin and continental Europe, but implicitly
recognized the existence of an actual global dimension, referring also to
similar institutions and projects in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean.
A few years later, during the French Revolution, the question of the
free ports emerged again, with a markedly political character. In fact, by
including them among the privileges of a feudal nature, the revolutionary
government decreed their total abolition in 1789, precisely because they
were contrary to the principles of equality and uniformity that had to
regulate the nation. The measure raised a wide debate among the defend-
ers of the free port. The one side emphasized the economic benefits of the
free port and rediscovered their (mythical) origins in classical antiquity.
The other side referred to Forbonnais and reaffirmed the economic disad-
vantages for the general prosperity and, at a political level, the incompat-
ibility with the new egalitarian France. Such discussions produced differ-
ent results in the various port cities under French dominon: if Bayonne
and Dunkirk regained the possibility of practicing preferential duties as
early as 1791, Nice saw similar requests rejected in 1794, and Marseille
would also see its petitions rejected by Napoleon, until 1815.
Therefore, defining free ports was not a neutral operation. Being eco-
nomic but also political institutions, since the seventeenth century and
then with even greater intensity in the eighteenth century, free ports
aroused intellectual debates. Above all they became the object of negoti-
ation between centres and peripheries, and between the different social
components that populated them, and therefore laboratories of concep-
4 Meanwhile, the free port also attracted criticism of a moral nature, being seen as
a lawless space in which people of different religions and customs could freely mix
(Lavenia 2009). Moreover, they were also considered immoral because they fos-
tered excessive luxury, as foreshadowed by Fénelon in his well-known Les aven-
tures de Télémaque (1699).
92
