Page 105 - Mocarelli, Luca, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2020. Maize to the People! Cultivation, Consumption and Trade in the North-Eastern Mediterranean (Sixteenth-Nineteenth Century). Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 105
innovations in agr icultur e and population growth in fr iuli ...
Our task here is to outline a chronological and a geographic pattern of
maize trade imports to Slovenian lands, and not of the maize sea trade in
the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. That makes it perhaps a bit easier for
us to trace a couple preliminary conclusions that comprise the above-men-
tioned Sava hypothesis. The proveniences of maize imported via the
Adriatic seaway through Trieste and Rijeka in the eighteenth century may
be simplified as follows: The Republic of Venice and the Papal States from
the southwest, and the Balkan regions (including Dalmatia) and Turkish
lands from the southeast. In addition, there was the Sava River waterway
quite likely bringing in maize from Hungary (comprising Croatia) and the
Banat (inland Balkans, Serbia). Consequently, the second preliminary con-
clusion may be that a maize trade route of Pannonian provenience transit-
ed through Slovenian and Croatian lands towards the Adriatic ports. This
may well have influenced the availability of maize for the local population.
Much the same may be said about Trieste becoming a seemingly relevant
Adriatic “hub” not only for cereals in general (Andreozzi 2019, 60, 69) but
also for maize in particular. Such development of Trieste as an important
regional centre in the cereal trade is parallel with that of Ljubljana in the
inland. During the eighteenth century, Ljubljana strongly increased its role
as a grain market place for a wider regional area, while trade passed from
the hands of peasants into those of merchants. The grain imported from
Hungary and Croatia was not meant to supply the needs of the city alone,
but was directed further towards the Port of Trieste and exported. This
was a period of a great development of grain trade in Ljubljana, which last-
ed until the railway construction (mid-nineteenth c.) that allowed a direct
flow of Hungarian grain to the seaport of Trieste (Valenčič 1977, 4–5, 9, 27).
This means that in the eighteenth century the Slovenian lands could count
on two growing cereal-trade centres, Ljubljana and Trieste, with a capaci-
ty that exceeded the local needs and could supply maize provisions by land
and sea.
The first impression we obtain from the rather short price series in
Table 2 is that, at the end of the eighteenth century, maize in Ljubljana was
unsurprisingly cheaper than wheat, yet not that much so if compared to
other cereals, for example rye and buckwheat, which were common in the
unwealthy and rural people’s diet in Slovenian regions. Since the series
is not only very short but also coinciding with the price instability of the
‘French years’, I would not interpret them further before more research is
conducted on this aspect.
103
Our task here is to outline a chronological and a geographic pattern of
maize trade imports to Slovenian lands, and not of the maize sea trade in
the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. That makes it perhaps a bit easier for
us to trace a couple preliminary conclusions that comprise the above-men-
tioned Sava hypothesis. The proveniences of maize imported via the
Adriatic seaway through Trieste and Rijeka in the eighteenth century may
be simplified as follows: The Republic of Venice and the Papal States from
the southwest, and the Balkan regions (including Dalmatia) and Turkish
lands from the southeast. In addition, there was the Sava River waterway
quite likely bringing in maize from Hungary (comprising Croatia) and the
Banat (inland Balkans, Serbia). Consequently, the second preliminary con-
clusion may be that a maize trade route of Pannonian provenience transit-
ed through Slovenian and Croatian lands towards the Adriatic ports. This
may well have influenced the availability of maize for the local population.
Much the same may be said about Trieste becoming a seemingly relevant
Adriatic “hub” not only for cereals in general (Andreozzi 2019, 60, 69) but
also for maize in particular. Such development of Trieste as an important
regional centre in the cereal trade is parallel with that of Ljubljana in the
inland. During the eighteenth century, Ljubljana strongly increased its role
as a grain market place for a wider regional area, while trade passed from
the hands of peasants into those of merchants. The grain imported from
Hungary and Croatia was not meant to supply the needs of the city alone,
but was directed further towards the Port of Trieste and exported. This
was a period of a great development of grain trade in Ljubljana, which last-
ed until the railway construction (mid-nineteenth c.) that allowed a direct
flow of Hungarian grain to the seaport of Trieste (Valenčič 1977, 4–5, 9, 27).
This means that in the eighteenth century the Slovenian lands could count
on two growing cereal-trade centres, Ljubljana and Trieste, with a capaci-
ty that exceeded the local needs and could supply maize provisions by land
and sea.
The first impression we obtain from the rather short price series in
Table 2 is that, at the end of the eighteenth century, maize in Ljubljana was
unsurprisingly cheaper than wheat, yet not that much so if compared to
other cereals, for example rye and buckwheat, which were common in the
unwealthy and rural people’s diet in Slovenian regions. Since the series
is not only very short but also coinciding with the price instability of the
‘French years’, I would not interpret them further before more research is
conducted on this aspect.
103
