Practices, merchants and mercantilisms. Jews and the cereal trade in Trieste between Eastern Europe, the Po and the Mediterranean (18th century)

Abstract

The article aims to highlight the role of the Jewish merchants of Trieste in the cereal trade in the eighteenth century. In particular, it focuses on analysing how, in the discontinuity in the development mechanisms of the free port of Trieste that occurred in the mid-eighteenth century, they managed to be protagonists in the construction of wider, from a quantitative and qualitative point of view, trade routes and a new geography of the grain trade. Moreover, the cereal trade, and in particular that of Continental and Eastern Europe, was a fundamental element of the further development that at the end of the century made Trieste one of the main Mediterranean trading centres.

Keywords:

• Jews
• Trieste
• cereal trade
• mercantile practices
• free port
• Habsburg Empire

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Archive sources

Library Hortis, Trieste (LHT)

• Archivio Diplomatico (AD)

Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna (OeStA)

• Finanz- und Hofkammerarchiv. Neue Hofkammer und Finanzministerium, Akten Kommerz (K)

State Archives, Naples (SAN)

• Ministero affari esteri (M),

• Segreteria di Stato di casa Reale, 1734 – 1806, Materie diverse, Anagrafe, Dispacci in copia inviati da Giuseppe Henzel per la commessa dell’acquisto del grano

State Archives, Trieste (SAT)

• Intendenza Commerciale (IC)

• Cesareo Regio Governo (CRG)

State Archives, Venice (SAV)

• Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia (SM)

• Inquisitori di Stato (IS)

• Senato, Dispacci degli ambasciatori e residenti, Germania (SD)

Notes

1 On Trieste’s history see Finzi and Panjek (2001) and Finzi, Panariti and Panjek (2003). On the Adriatic trade in oil and agricultural goods, see Ciriacono (1975), Costantini (2005), Caracciolo (1965), Moroni (2009), Montaudo (2005), and Salvemini (2007).

2 On the ongoing debate over Jewish merchants’ role and practices, see Dubin (1999) and (2017), Sorkin (1999), Israel (2002), Cesarani (2002), Cesarani and Romain (2006), Abrevaya (2007), Karp (2008), Monaco (2009), Trivellato (2009), Curtin (1984), Greif (2000), Ogilvie (2007), Calafat (2011), Antunes (2012).

3 SAT, IC, 233, 28 August and 7 December 1755 and 8 January 1756.

4 OeStA, K 698, Specifica dei negozianti e mercanti di Trieste, 23 April 1761.

5 On the Trieste Jewish community, see Dubin (1999), (2016) and (2017), Braude (1991), Gatti (2008), and Catalan (2001).

6 Karl Marx (1857) was the first to highlight the role of the grain trade in the success of the Trieste emporium but he dated the emergence of this trade to the nineteenth century.

7 SAT, IC, 582, 18 June 1743.

8 SAV, SM, 186, 19 August 1752 and 843, 17 March 1754; SAT, IC, 583, 1757. Gatti (2008), p. 71.

9 SAV, SM, 843, 16 September 1753.

10 SAV, SD, 260, 17 March and 1 June 1753 and 267, 20 December1760 and 25 February 1761; SM, 843, undated: IS, 616, 17 October 1756.

11 SAT, IC 363, 15 December 1757, 1 and 26 January, 7 and 22 April and 10 May 1758 and 355, 11 and 28 November and 2 December 1758.

12 OeStA, K 697, Nota delle famiglie presentemente accasate a Trieste, 1760.

13 SAV, IS, 619, Paolo Moro, 8 agosto 1755; LHT, AD, 21 C 57, 17 February 1761; SAT, IC, 233, 14 December 1760; OeStA, K 698, Specifica dei negozianti e mercanti di Trieste, 23 April 1761. The Jewish firms were those of Grassin Vita Levi, Luzzati brothers, Ventura Morpurgo, Giuseppe and the Morpurgo brothers, and Menasse Morpurgo.

14 On events at the company, its key players and the disputes which took place within it, see Andreozzi (2020b). On the subject of the Commercial Intendancy, see Faber (2003), pp. 25–26.

15 LHT, AD, 11 B 1, 4 October 1757. The company had shareholders of different faiths, origins and backgrounds; in addition to those already mentioned, these included Catholics Geremia Francol, Francesco Bonomo di Stettner and Giuseppe Belusco and Protestant Marco Blanchenai.

16 SAT, IC, 347, 12 February 1758.

17 SAT, IC, 357, 20 August 1759. In Trieste, the measures and currencies usually used in the cereal trade were those in force in Venice. One staio was 83.317 liters. One lira was divided up into 20 soldi and 12 denari. An imperial florin, in turn, was split into 60 carantani, worth 5 lire. On Pirona, see Andreozzi (2020b).

18 BHT, AD, 13 C 15, 28 June 1760 and OeStA, K, 705, 11 September 1760.

19 OeStA, K, 1104, 6 April 1761.

20 OeStA, K, 1105, 30 December 1762.

21 OeStA, K, 866, 1762.

22 On Leon, son of Dattilo Levi, a Livorno-based merchant, see, Sanacore (2009), p. 146; on Daniel Bonfili, a prominent merchant in eighteenth-century Venice, see Levi (1997), pp. 223–243.

23 Racconto storico della penuria de’ grani accaduta in Italia ed in più province del Dominio negli anni MDCCLXIII e MDCCLXIV, Rome, Stamperia Salomoni, MDLXXXIII, part one, 35. On Felice Coen, see Angelini (1973).

24 Sanson Marpurgo was “one of the greatest Jewish merchants” in Ancona (Andreoni 2019, 23).

25 BHT, AD, 21 C 55, 6 and 29 August and 6 September 1760. Isach Iacob Alpron, son of Isach, was born in Padua and had lived in Trieste since 1755. He was married and the father of a child and listed himself as a grain merchant. Isach Vita Levi was the son of the by then deceased David. Born in Modena, he was a married 44-year-old and a merchant (BCH, AD, 21 C 57, 17 February 1761). The contracts entered into with Pirona in BHC, AD, 21 C 55, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13 and 29 August 1760.

26 On the Naples famine, the attempts to supply the city and the conflicts these caused, see Carrino (2020), Clemente (2020) and Andreozzi (2020a).

27 For the “geography” of the Ventapane group, see Clemente (2016), pp. 533–537, on that of the Zois group, see Andreozzi (2020a), pp. 295–297.

28 BCT, AD, D 5 23, anonymous memoires on the grain trade; SAT, IC, 235, 13 and 20 December 1763, 29 February, 7, 13 and 17 March 1764; SAN, S, 1262, January–March 1764, Tanucci-Henzell missives.

29 SAN, M, 488b 2, 3, 4 and 15 February 1764 and S, 1262, 8, 16, 17, 19 and 29 February and 6 March 1764.

30 SAT, IC, 235, 21 February 1764 and SAN, S, 1262, 27 February 1764.

31 SAT, IC, 235, 28 February 1764.

32 SAN, S, 1262, 7, 12, 14, 27 and 28 March and 1 April 1764. The Brentano Cimaroli was an international commercial finance company with offices in Genoa, where it was the main management, Vienna and Trieste and branches in Milan, Livorno and other European markets, which, engaged in lending to the States and cereal trade, had been one of the main financiers of the wars by Maria Teresa (Felloni, 1971, 380–426).

33 SAN, S, 1262, 49-65 and M, 15 and 24 January 1766.

34 OeStA, K, 866, February – 15 December 1764 and 1 and 5 June 1765.

35 SAV, SD, 271, 14 December 1765 and SM, 753, 22 December 1767.

36 OeStA, K, 867, Umilissima supplica di Grassin Vita Levi. On the Austrian Adriatic Littoral, see Faber (2003), pp. 23–25.

37 OeStA, K, 866, ‘Der handlsleute in Litorali’.

38 SAV, SD, 13 and 14 December 1765.

39 OeStA, K, 866, 14 November 1766.

40 SAN, S, 1262, 49–65. For a first overview of the cereal trade mechanisms, see Galiani (1770), Gráda (2009), Alfani and Grada (2017), Palermo (1997), Corritore (1993) and (2012), Mocarelli (2013), Ferrari and Vaquero Piñeiro (2015), Fogel (2004), Strangio (1998), Clemente and Russo (2019).

41 OeStA, K, 868, 3 August 1782 and 11 and April and 9 May 1789 and 869, 8 March and 29 April 1793; SAT, CRG, 759, 31 October 1787 and 17 January 1788. On the cereal trade in Trieste, see Andreozzi (2019). Karl Marx (1857) also highlighted the role of the grain trade in the success of the Trieste emporium in the 19th century.

42 OeStA, K, 869, 9 January, 19 February and 8 March 1793; SAT, CRG, 19 July 1789.