The Free Port of Livorno and the Transformation of the Mediterranean World, 1574-1790
The Free Port of Livorno and the Transformation of the Mediterranean World, 1574-1790

Author: Corey Tazzara

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 0198791585

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In the twilight of the Renaissance, the grand duke of Tuscany--a scion of the fabled Medici family of bankers--invited foreign merchants, artisans, and ship captains to settle in his port city of Livorno. The town quickly became one of the most bustling port cities in the Mediterranean, presenting a rich tableau of officials, merchants, mariners, and slaves. Nobody could have predicted in 1600 that their activities would contribute a chapter in the history of free trade. Yet by the late seventeenth century, the grand duke's invitation had evolved into a general program of hospitality towards foreign visitors, the liberal treatment of goods, and a model for the elimination of customs duties. Livorno was the earliest and most successful example of a free port in Europe. The story of Livorno shows the seeds of liberalism emerging, not from the studies of philosophers such as Adam Smith, but out of the nexus between commerce, politics, and identity in the early modern Mediterranean.

The Free Port of Livorno and the Transformation of the Mediterranean World
The Free Port of Livorno and the Transformation of the Mediterranean World

Author: Corey Tazzara

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-10-13

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 0192509233

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In the twilight of the Renaissance, the grand duke of Tuscany-a scion of the fabled Medici family of bankers-invited foreign merchants, artisans, and ship captains to settle in his port city of Livorno. The town quickly became one of the most bustling port cities in the Mediterranean, presenting a rich tableau of officials, merchants, mariners, and slaves. Nobody could have predicted in 1600 that their activities would contribute a chapter in the history of free trade. Yet by the late seventeenth century, the grand duke's invitation had evolved into a general program of hospitality towards foreign visitors, the liberal treatment of goods, and a model for the elimination of customs duties. Livorno was the earliest and most successful example of a free port in Europe. The story of Livorno shows the seeds of liberalism emerging, not from the studies of philosophers such as Adam Smith, but out of the nexus between commerce, politics, and identity in the early modern Mediterranean.

The Free Port of Livorno and the Transformation of the Mediterranean World
The Free Port of Livorno and the Transformation of the Mediterranean World

Author: Corey Tazzara

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 9780191833946

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In early modern Europe, free ports were places where merchants of any nation, religion, or ethnicity could trade on equal terms; and where there were no import and export taxes. This work shows how free trade emerged from the interstices of European commercial institutions by examining the history of the free port of Livorno

Free Trade and Free Ports in the Mediterranean
Free Trade and Free Ports in the Mediterranean

Author: Giulia Delogu

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-07-12

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 1040093493

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How did free trade emerge in early-modern times? How did the Mediterranean as a specific region – with its own historical characteristics – produce a culture in which the free port appeared? What was the relation between the type of free trade created in early-modern Italy and the development of global trade and commercial competition between states for hegemony in the eighteenth century? And how did the position of the free port, originally a Mediterranean ‘invention’, develop over the course of time? The contributions to this volume address these questions and explain the institutional genealogy of the free port. Free Trade and Free Ports in the Mediterranean analyses the atypical history and conditions of the Mediterranean region in contradistinction with other regions as an explanation for how and why free ports arose there. This volume engages with the diffusion of free ports from a Mediterranean to a global phenomenon, whilst staying focused on how this diffusion was experienced in the Mediterranean itself. The contributions to this volume bring together the traditional issues of religious openness and tolerance in physically separated areas and the role of consuls and governors, via fiscal techniques, architectural and administrative aspects, with questions about geopolitical balance and primacy. The book will be of interest to scholars in a wide range of historical sub-disciplines (early modern, Mediterranean, global economic, political, and institutional, just to mention a few) and to students wishing to perfect their knowledge of the Mediterranean and its global interconnections, and of the origins of free trade.

Florence in the Early Modern World
Florence in the Early Modern World

Author: Nicholas Scott Baker

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-06-20

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 042985546X

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Florence in the Early Modern World offers new perspectives on this important city by exploring the broader global context of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, within which the experience of Florence remains unique. By exploring the city’s relationship to its close and distant neighbours, this collection of interdisciplinary essays reveals the transnational history of Florence. The chapters orient the lenses of the most recent historiographical turns perfected in studies on Venice, Rome, Bologna, Naples, and elsewhere towards Florence. New techniques, such as digital mapping, alongside new comparisons of architectural theory and merchants in Eurasia, provide the latest perspectives about Florence’s cultural and political importance before, during, and after the Renaissance. From Florentine merchants in Egypt and India, through actual and idealized military ambitions in the sixteenth-century Mediterranean, to Tuscan humanists in late medieval England, the contributors to this interdisciplinary volume reveal the connections Florence held to early modern cities across the globe. This book steers away from the historical narrative of an insular Renaissance Europe and instead identifies the significance of other global influences. By using Florence as a case study to trace these connections, this volume of essays provides essential reading for students and scholars of early modern cities and the Renaissance.

Endangered Neutrality
Endangered Neutrality

Author: Ubaldo Morozzi

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-05-14

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1040021573

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Analysing a struggle for neutrality amid a rapidly changing European scene, this book illustrates how the small state of Tuscany cunningly managed to preserve its sovereignty and independence during a dangerous diplomatic dispute with England. Endangered Neutrality follows the actions of William Plowman (1660-?), who sparked the dispute, and those of two of the main characters of the story, Iacopo Giraldi (1663-1738), Tuscan ambassador to England, and Lambert Blackwell (d.1727), English envoy to Tuscany. Through these privileged points of view, the reader is plunged into the highest levels of European politics and diplomacy of the period. This book offers a radically new approach to the study of Tuscan history, particularly in relation to the reign of Cosimo III de’ Medici. It underlines the weakness of the concept of the ‘small state’, showing how Tuscany managed openly to confront a much more powerful country such as England. Tuscany built a ‘system of neutrality’ which, leveraging the economic importance of the Mediterranean trade routes and of the port of Livorno, allowed the Grand Duchy to preserve its independence. Analysis of the case also offers a unique perspective on the functioning of the Tuscan and English diplomatic corps, assessing the impact of the Glorious Revolution on English diplomatic capabilities. Special attention is devoted to the importance of symbolism in diplomatic practice and to the role of trade and public opinion in resolving international disputes.

Counter-Reformation Sanctity in Global and Material Perspective
Counter-Reformation Sanctity in Global and Material Perspective

Author: Ruth Sargent Noyes

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-11-29

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1040224415

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This book explores the making of saints’ cults in the early modern world from an interdisciplinary perspective, considering the entangled roles of materiality and globalization processes. It brings together work across diverse media, objects, and materials as well as communities, cultures, and geographies to reframe a more synoptic, materials-centric, and comparative history of the making and remaking of saints’ cults, with a special focus on the long Counter-Reformation. The contributions engage with dynamics of local and universal and draw attention to the vital role of textual, visual, and material hagiographies in the creation and promotion of saints’ and would-be saints’ cults. The book fosters novel conceptualizations and cross-pollination of ideas across traditions, regions, and disciplines and expands hagiography’s horizons by reconsidering canonical saintly figures and reframing lesser-known cults of saints and would-be saints. The book will be of interest to scholars of religious and early modern history as well as art history and visual and material studies.

Global Commerce in the Age of Enlightenment
Global Commerce in the Age of Enlightenment

Author: J. Bohorquez

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-12-30

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 0429647948

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Combining contextual, institutional, and global perspectives, this book evaluates the impact of international trade on eighteenth-century economic thought. It meticulously delineates how economic ideas and institutions flowed between North and South Europe and across the Indian and Atlantic Oceans during the Age of Enlightenment. Global Commerce in the Age of Enlightenment carefully explores contemporary debates about economic institutions, which were a crucial element in the race for controlling international trade. Eighteenth-century thinkers devoted much attention to the relative merits of existing institutions, such as free ports, grasped the dangers of economic dependence, and appraised emerging conceptions of property rights. The author draws on an impressive range of sources, including pamphlets and travel accounts, and work from lesser-known figures such as Pierre Poivre and Ange Goudar. This volume will be valuable reading for advanced students and researchers of the history of economic thought, economic history, political economy, the history of ideas, and global history.

Simone Luzzatto’s Scepticism in the Context of Early Modern Thought
Simone Luzzatto’s Scepticism in the Context of Early Modern Thought

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-03-04

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9004694269

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Much of the most recent research on Jewish scepticism was inspired by the work of the early modern Venetian rabbi Simone Luzzatto, the first thinker in the history of Jewish thought to declare himself a sceptic and a follower of the New Academy. This collected volume shines new light on the intimate relationship between Luzzatto’s sceptical thinking and an era marked by paradoxes and contrasts between religious devotion and scientific rationalism, as well as between the rabbinic-biblical Jewish tradition and the open tendency towards engagement with non-Jewish philosophical, literary, scientific, and theological cultures. It plots out an original path along which to understand Luzzatto’s scepticism by pointing to the various facets of being a Jewish sceptic in seventeenth-century Italy.

Portals of Globalization
Portals of Globalization

Author: Megan Maruschke

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-06-04

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 3110612437

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While ports are traditionally considered national infrastructure sites that connect states to global markets, special economic zones and past free ports are portrayed as threats to national sovereignty. This book calls these narratives into question as it explores the history of planning Mumbai’s ports and free zones during periods of global and regional transition from the British Raj, to national independence, to economic liberalization. The book opens with a study of an unsuccessful plan hatched by merchants in 1833 to make Bombay a free port to deal with an emerging British India and the advent of free trade. The book ends with how India’s current special economic zones and emphasis on port expansion are part of broader goals to reposition India in transregional Asian trade, to connect Mumbai with northern India, and to enact local plans for a global city that threaten the very port that first connected Mumbai to the world. To understand the functionality of these port and zone projects beyond typical policy prescriptions, this book proposes portals of globalization as a spatial format that fosters processes of reterritorialization.