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Habsburg
ARTICLE ALERT: Small but powerful: networking strategies
and the trade business of Habsburg-Italian merchants in
Cadiz in the second half of the eighteenth century
Discussion published by Jim Brown on Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Kapsa, Klemens. "Small but powerful: networking strategies and the trade business of HabsburgItalian merchants in Cadiz in the second half of the eighteenth century." European Review of History:
Revue européenne d'histoire 23 (2016): 427-455.
Abstract:
Lombardian merchants played an important role in long-distance trade between the Italian and the
Iberian Peninsulas since the Middle Ages, in contrast to widely held beliefs and historiographical
neglect. The eighteenth century witnessed the intensification of this role. Instead of being worse off
after Lombardy passed from Spanish sovereignty to being ruled from Vienna, the Lombardian
mercantile community in Cadiz made use of the institutional framework offered by the imperial
maritime policy of the Habsburgs, which compensated for a lack of their own commercial institutional
framework. Making use of different social strategies, which combined kinship, cultural and
transnational co-operation, Lombardian merchants skilfully connected Spanish America with
Habsburg Central Europe through the Mediterranean, despite the fact that their degree of formal
integration into the Spanish trading system was limited. This occurred in the episode of growth that
followed the Bourbon reforms in Spain after the 1760s. Although their business networks reached a
wide geographical area, Lombardian merchants also acted as intermediaries for the incorporation of
the Triestinian traders into long-distance maritime trade networks, and therefore contributed to
linking both ends of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.
Citation: Jim Brown. ARTICLE ALERT: Small but powerful: networking strategies and the trade business of Habsburg-Italian merchants
in Cadiz in the second half of the eighteenth century. Habsburg. 05-18-2016. https://networks.hnet.org/node/19384/discussions/125585/article-alert-small-powerful-networking-strategies-and-trade
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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