Page 96 - 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. 96
plex Gateways
During the 1810s–1820s, in the British arena, the debate on free ports
continued to be intertwined with the more general one about free trade,
remaining at a theoretical level, without practical applications. Following
the eighteenth-century interpretations by Decker and Adam Smith, free
ports were assigned a positive but transitory and intermediate role in in-
creasing the trade volume: ‘We know that wherever a port is declared free
in any part of the world, trade accumulates in it in a remarkable manner
(e.g. Leghorn, Genoa, Cadiz, Trieste, Singapore).’ Consequently, harmo-
ny and prosperity increased, and the opportunities for war decreased in
the same proportion: ‘Free Trade has a tendency to promote pacific and
friendly relations among the nations of the world’ and ‘to diffuse the light
of civilization and true religion over the whole earth’ (Baines 1830, 30–1).
Elsewhere (from Cadiz to Odessa, Venice, Marseille, Naples, and
Angostura), in places where the Napoleonic impact had been more inci-
sive, due to direct domination or cultural penetration through the dis-
semination of the Civil Code or through networks of contact with former
Napoleonic officials, the debate on free ports generated more heated dis-
cussions of a political nature and plans for institutional reform.6 In 1818,
in Veracruz (Mexico) a heated debated sparkled on free ports and free
trade. The debate intertwined economic reasoning with political agen-
das: in the crumbling Spanish Empire, talking about free ports was any-
thing but neutral. The loyalists strongly opposed the project of creating
a free port in Veracruz, advocated by the local commercial elites, claim-
ing that it could be like a ‘contagion’, affecting not only all Mexico and the
rest of the Empire, but also Europe (Arillaga 1818), and a prelude to in-
dipendentist claims.7 The Mexican case does not stand out as something
exceptional in the Latin American context. In fact, it is part of a wid-
er network. The very same request for a free port in Veracruz, addressed
to the Real Tribunal del Consulado de Mexico, had been printed in La
Habana and then had originated a debate on the two sides of the Atlantic,
reaching Cadiz and Seville. Meanwhile, in addition, in Cadiz petitions for
6 More diffusely on Napoleon: ‘Free Ports, Free Trade, Freedom: Napoleon’s Mani-
fold Legacy in Institutions and Images’, in T. Dodman, A. Lignereux eds., From the
Napoleonic Empire to the Age of Empire. Empire after the Emperor. Cham: Palgrave
[forthcoming].
7 A more in-depth analysis of the Latin American case will be provided in Giulia De-
logu, ‘“It is like a contagion”: the debate on free ports in Latin America between
(18th and 19th centuries)’, Global Intellectual History [forthcoming].
96
During the 1810s–1820s, in the British arena, the debate on free ports
continued to be intertwined with the more general one about free trade,
remaining at a theoretical level, without practical applications. Following
the eighteenth-century interpretations by Decker and Adam Smith, free
ports were assigned a positive but transitory and intermediate role in in-
creasing the trade volume: ‘We know that wherever a port is declared free
in any part of the world, trade accumulates in it in a remarkable manner
(e.g. Leghorn, Genoa, Cadiz, Trieste, Singapore).’ Consequently, harmo-
ny and prosperity increased, and the opportunities for war decreased in
the same proportion: ‘Free Trade has a tendency to promote pacific and
friendly relations among the nations of the world’ and ‘to diffuse the light
of civilization and true religion over the whole earth’ (Baines 1830, 30–1).
Elsewhere (from Cadiz to Odessa, Venice, Marseille, Naples, and
Angostura), in places where the Napoleonic impact had been more inci-
sive, due to direct domination or cultural penetration through the dis-
semination of the Civil Code or through networks of contact with former
Napoleonic officials, the debate on free ports generated more heated dis-
cussions of a political nature and plans for institutional reform.6 In 1818,
in Veracruz (Mexico) a heated debated sparkled on free ports and free
trade. The debate intertwined economic reasoning with political agen-
das: in the crumbling Spanish Empire, talking about free ports was any-
thing but neutral. The loyalists strongly opposed the project of creating
a free port in Veracruz, advocated by the local commercial elites, claim-
ing that it could be like a ‘contagion’, affecting not only all Mexico and the
rest of the Empire, but also Europe (Arillaga 1818), and a prelude to in-
dipendentist claims.7 The Mexican case does not stand out as something
exceptional in the Latin American context. In fact, it is part of a wid-
er network. The very same request for a free port in Veracruz, addressed
to the Real Tribunal del Consulado de Mexico, had been printed in La
Habana and then had originated a debate on the two sides of the Atlantic,
reaching Cadiz and Seville. Meanwhile, in addition, in Cadiz petitions for
6 More diffusely on Napoleon: ‘Free Ports, Free Trade, Freedom: Napoleon’s Mani-
fold Legacy in Institutions and Images’, in T. Dodman, A. Lignereux eds., From the
Napoleonic Empire to the Age of Empire. Empire after the Emperor. Cham: Palgrave
[forthcoming].
7 A more in-depth analysis of the Latin American case will be provided in Giulia De-
logu, ‘“It is like a contagion”: the debate on free ports in Latin America between
(18th and 19th centuries)’, Global Intellectual History [forthcoming].
96
