Free Ports in the Atlantic World

Free ports played an important role in fostering inter-imperial and international connections and commercial interactions in the Atlantic world during the early modern and modern periods. While “free port” is an expansive term, sometimes used to delineate areas where illegal smuggling occurred, places that were free of ice, or locales that welcomed foreign migration, the studies cited in this article pertain to the imperial legal and commercial definition of free ports. That is, ports established by the state that exhibited lower customs duties than did the rest of the polity or existed outside of normal customs laws while welcoming foreign merchants to exchange at least some proscribed set of goods. Traditionally, it has been understood that free ports have existed in some form since Antiquity, but that the free port of Livorno, established by the Medici in the late 16th century, constitutes the earliest and most-successful example of a free port in the early modern era. Free ports spread across the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the globe in the ensuing centuries. Beginning substantively in the 15th century, European powers extended their commercial and imperial networks across the Atlantic Ocean, often violently encountering and interacting with peoples in North and South America, the West Indies, and the west coast of Africa. While military, commercial, intellectual, and migratory movements fostered the so-called “Atlantic World” by connecting these far-flung geographical locales, many European metropoles initially attempted to limit their subjects’ commercial interactions to within their Atlantic imperial realms. However, early modern Atlantic empires employed free ports beginning in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in the Caribbean, as a means of providing exceptions to their generally closed commercial systems and strategically allowing foreign merchants to trade in certain places. Some metropolitan European ports also became “free.” The heyday of colonial Atlantic, especially Caribbean, free ports occurred in the mid- to late 18th century as Atlantic empires promulgated various reforms in response to the Seven Years’ War and other European imperial conflicts. The number of Atlantic free ports declined in the 19th century as doctrines of more universal free trade took root and as Latin American countries gained independence, meaning that European powers could trade directly to these locations without having to skirt Spanish imperial commercial restrictions. Atlantic free ports experienced a revival in the late 19th and 20th centuries, evolving into various “special economic zones” such as export-processing zones, tax havens, and foreign-trade zones. The studies cited here imply that some Atlantic free ports encompassed entire islands, especially smaller ones like Sint Eustatius. Much of the literature on free ports focuses on Italian and Mediterranean ones, but interest in Atlantic free ports is growing. Extant texts pertaining to Atlantic free ports usually consider specific ports or empires, with little substantive comparative work (the major exceptions being scholarship on Dutch, Danish, and Swedish free ports). Some studies provide useful analysis of free-port proposals that were never realized but were debated intensely.

Income of the Russian Treasury on Materials of the Lower Corps of the Derbent Garrison

Introduction. The paper deals with one of the aspects of the economic policy of the Russian Empire in its Peri-Caspian provinces, annexed as a result of the Persian campaign of Peter the Great. The aim of the study is to analyze the main income items of the imperial treasury based on the materials of the Derbent garrison of the Lower Corps, to establish the share of income received in Derbent in the structure of all income of the Lower Corps. Tasks: to characterize all income sources of the Derbent garrison, to show the activities of commandants and other military leaders in streamlining the income structure, in replenishing the imperial treasury, to consider the interaction of the Russian authorities of Derbent with foreign merchants and domestic salesmen, to describe the daily life of the garrison in Derbent. Methods and materials. The study is based on the archival documents from the Central State Archive of the Republic of Dagestan, mainly from fond 18 “Derbent commandant”, most of which are introduced for the first time. Additionally, the modern achievements of historical science on the subject have also been considered. The methods of the study are the following: the principles of historicism and objectivity, an integrated approach, a systematic method, methods of criticizing historical sources. Based on the analysis of the documentary material, it was possible to restore the picture characterizing the everyday life of the military personnel in the Derbent garrison of the imperial army. Analysis. The fiscal activity inside the Derbend garrison was controlled by the commandant, whose duties, in addition to military-political ones, included collecting taxes and fees, reporting on them to the central imperial authorities and administration. The amount of incomes for the reporting periods are described in detail, the role of Derbent customs in replenishing the Russian treasury and the trade of the Derbent administration with foreign merchants are shown. Considerable emphasis is put to the activities of the military leadership of the Lower Corps and the Derbent Garrison, directly aimed at increasing financial revenues of the imperial treasury. Results. As a result of the study, valuable archival documents were introduced into the scientific circulation, reconstructing the daily life of the Derbent garrison, the main sources of income in this garrison were identified. It was established that the revenues of the imperial treasury in the Derbent garrison were clearly differentiated and structured. Customs duties accounted for more than half of the revenue in Derbent, while the other part was collected from the sale of wine, vegetables, oil, and court fines. The “Persian” incomes were spent on salaries and remuneration to the Caucasian political elite loyal to the Russians, to keep the amanates (hostages) from Caucasian rulers, to pay wages to masters for the repair and reconstruction of fortresses, to maintain postal communications, etc. Despite the emperor’s ambitious plans for the economic development of the “newly conquered” former Persian provinces, many of the projects he started were not completed and scraped after his death. A pressing example of it would be the abandonment of the construction of the Derbent port enclosed from sea storms.

Judicial Resistance to Merchant Demands: Factors and Paternalism in the King’s Bench

This chapter turns to judicial resistance to merchant demands. In the 1820s, what counted as an agent's ordinary course of business became a major Parliamentary issue. The dispute was rooted in a profound disagreement between the government, merchants, and the Court of King's Bench — the most important common law court in the Regency period — as to what should properly be considered the course of business of a factor: a commercial agent given possession of his principal's goods to sell in his own name. The controversy arose over whether a factor had authority to pledge his principal's property. On the one hand, merchants contended that factors would typically appear as owners of the property, and so pledges made by a factor should bind principal's business assets under the doctrine of ostensible authority. The government took the same view — hoping to encourage foreign merchants to store and sell their wares in Britain through agents. However, the King's Bench rejected the argument, fearing that allowing factors to validly pledge their principal's property in respect of their own debts would facilitate widespread fraud and breach of fiduciary duty by factors. In turn, this would encourage the type of immoral trading which caused financial instability.

Tastemakers, ‘Foreign Merchants’ and the Making of the V&A’s Islamic Art Collection.

The relationship of the V&A with three dealers, Krikor Minassian, Hagop Kevorkian and Dikran Kelekian, proffering goods from the Ottoman Empire they had recently fled, provides an interesting case study for viewing asymmetries of power in the 20th-century art world. Referred to by museum staff as ‘foreign merchants’, these dealers went out of their way to prove themselves as collectors. Museum staff continued to view them with suspicion and condescension into the 1930s and even 1950s. Keepers and Directors voiced the opposition of institutional values to the trade, but, after the death of Kelekian in 1951, they showed themselves to be motivated by financial gain. These relations draw attention to the ways in which the museum attempted to demonstrate its hegemony over ‘others’, beyond better-studied colonial relationships. The difference in dealings of these Armenians with American and British institutions indicates at the unusual role of the V&A and its preoccupation with social control.

Genoa: Colonizing and Colonized City? The Port City as a Pole of Attraction for Foreign Merchants (16th-18th centuries)

As Michel Balard pointed out with reference to the late Middle Ages and to the relations between Genoa and overseas cities, “Genoa, a colonizer in the East, is colonized by the Orientals”. The aim of this work is to verify whether and to what extent this concept is applicable also to the modern age and whether it involved a wider geographic area than the one examined by this French historian. In particular we outline the features of the presence of foreign merchants in Genoa between the 16th and 18th centuries as a phenomenon complementary to the better known “diaspora” of Genoese businessmen.

Contrabandists or Cargo?

Chapter 7 analyzes Afro-Caribbeans as participants in illicit commerce, but it also discusses smuggling’s impact on slavery in the coastal circum-Caribbean. People of color were involved in smuggling not only as contraband cargo to Venezuela but also often as active workers in the illegal marketplace. This chapter asks how smugglers amalgamated the slavery apparatus of Venezuela and its surrounding foreign colonies into the black market. Furthermore, how did Africans being trafficked illegally and smuggling conducted by the enslaved alter notions of property, criminality, and subjecthood? Venezuelan planters frequently sent their slaves to trade with unlicensed foreign merchants. These traders, in turn, sometimes employed enslaved people as sailors or porters on smuggling ventures. For enslaved and free people of color alike, contraband trade carried the prospects of wage earning and greater autonomy in labor, but also the risks of captivity and enslavement in Spanish dominions. The embargo of foreign contraband vessels produced thorny questions regarding the freedom or bondage of the slaves aboard. Competing legal jurisdictions, temporary manumissions, and opportunities for marronage only compounded these uncertainties.