Stapelbroek, Koen, and Trampus, Antonio (2024) The history of Mediterranean free ports as the invention of free trade? In: Delogu, Giulia, Stapelbroek, Koen, and Trampus, Antonio, (eds.) Free Trade and Free Ports in the Mediterranean. Political Economies of Capitalism, 1600–1850 . Routledge, London, United Kingdom.

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Abstract

The Mediterranean Sea in the early-modern age arguably was what the world’s oceans became in later times, a laboratory for what would produce the reality of global commercial and political competition. By the eighteenth century, this comparison was already made by political writers who looked into the future and saw a further mixing of private and public interests and the greed and ambition of European nations giving rise to exploitation and the submission of other territories. Yet, if ‘free trade’ became the vehicle for the European colonisation of the world, its institutional and geographical ancestry remains uncertain. In this introductory article, we trace the development of political and economic functions performed by free ports in the Mediterranean from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. The chapter discusses the ‘primitive’ function of the free port to attract goods and create markets in barren and depopulated territories and brings together hitherto separate historiographies into a general perspective and genealogical narrative of the ‘invention’ of free trade.

Item ID:	82916
Item Type:	Book Chapter (Research - B1)
ISBN:	9781003204602
Copyright Information:	© 2025 selection and editorial matter, Giulia Delogu, Koen Stapelbroek, and Antonio Trampus; individual chapters, the contributors
Date Deposited:	11 Jun 2024 23:43
FoR Codes:	43 HISTORY, HERITAGE AND ARCHAEOLOGY > 4303 Historical studies > 430308 European history (excl. British, classical Greek and Roman) @ 100%
SEO Codes:	13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1307 Understanding past societies > 130704 Understanding Europe’s past @ 100%
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