Giulia Delogu is Assistant Professor of Early Modern History at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her main research interest is political communication and the reciprocal influences between information and institutional changes. A second research field is the construction of images of economic and political power starting from the case of Napoleon. Her latest monograph is L’emporio delle parole. Costruire l’informazione nei porti franchi d’età moderna (2017). She published several articles in Past & Present, History of European Ideas, Studi Storici, Rivista Storica Italiana, and Società e Storia.Koen Stapelbroek is Professor of Humanities and Dean of the College of Arts, Society and Education at James Cook University. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge (2004) and published widely in the field of European eighteenth-century political thought and intellectual history. His research focuses on the history of political thought, global aspects of political economy and trade, as well as their legal, cultural, and institutional dynamics.Antonio Trampus is Professor of Early Modern History at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. His scholarly interests cover European and International history from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, and the impact of Enlightenment’s legacy in the Mediterranean area, in Europe, and in the Americas. He is interested particularly in the free ports of the Adriatic and Mediterranean. His recent publications include the edited volume, with Koen Stapelbroek, The Legacy of Vattel’s Droit des gens (2019), and Emer de Vattel and the Politics of Good Government: Constitutionalism, Small States and the International System (2021).

• Chapter 1The history of Mediterranean free ports as the invention of free trade?Koen Stapelbroek and Antonio TrampusChapter 2Ports and free ports in the Old World: political economy in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean (1500–1750)Corey TazzaraChapter 3What is a free port? The shaping of the concept in dictionaries, edicts, and governanceGiulia DeloguChapter 4Free ports in a controlled market: Ancona, Livorno, Genoa, and Trieste in the eighteenth-century Italian grain tradeGiulio OngaroChapter 5Territorial control, economic provision, and republican order: the free port of Genoa from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuryPaolo CalcagnoChapter 6English perspectives on Genova and Livorno: rivalry and complementarity between two eighteenth-century free portsDanilo PedemonteChapter 7The free port of Nice-Villafranca and Savoy maritime politics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesLuca Lo Basso Chapter 8‘Dire straits’: the free ports of Tangier and Gibraltar in the English MediterraneanFrancesca SavoldiChapter 9The British debate on Mediterranean free ports: Livorno, Gibraltar, and Port Mahon (1712–1783)Antonella AlimentoChapter 10A ‘source of gold and prosperity’? The Neapolitan free-port debate from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuryAntonio IodiceChapter 11The free port of Messina in the ancien régime: spaces, institutions, and practicesIda Fazio and Rita FotiChapter 12Free trade and the ghost story of the Bourbon alliance: Spain, free ports, and the Mediterranean Sea (1648–1765)Edward Jones CorrederaChapter 13The evils of ‘beguiling Liberty’: a comparative perspective on free ports in a manuscript by Manuel María Gutiérrez (1830)Marcella AgliettiChapter 14The Habsburg portchain: a decentralised empire in the eighteenth centuryDavid Do PaçoChapter 15The evolution of the free port of Trieste from 1717 to the presentDaniele Andreozzi

Giulia Delogu is Assistant Professor of Early Modern History at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her main research interest is political communication and the reciprocal influences between information and institutional changes. A second research field is the construction of images of economic and political power starting from the case of Napoleon. Her latest monograph is L’emporio delle parole. Costruire l’informazione nei porti franchi d’età moderna (2017). She published several articles in Past & Present, History of European Ideas, Studi Storici, Rivista Storica Italiana, and Società e Storia.Koen Stapelbroek is Professor of Humanities and Dean of the College of Arts, Society and Education at James Cook University. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge (2004) and published widely in the field of European eighteenth-century political thought and intellectual history. His research focuses on the history of political thought, global aspects of political economy and trade, as well as their legal, cultural, and institutional dynamics.Antonio Trampus is Professor of Early Modern History at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. His scholarly interests cover European and International history from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, and the impact of Enlightenment’s legacy in the Mediterranean area, in Europe, and in the Americas. He is interested particularly in the free ports of the Adriatic and Mediterranean. His recent publications include the edited volume, with Koen Stapelbroek, The Legacy of Vattel’s Droit des gens (2019), and Emer de Vattel and the Politics of Good Government: Constitutionalism, Small States and the International System (2021).

• Chapter 1The history of Mediterranean free ports as the invention of free trade?Koen Stapelbroek and Antonio TrampusChapter 2Ports and free ports in the Old World: political economy in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean (1500–1750)Corey TazzaraChapter 3What is a free port? The shaping of the concept in dictionaries, edicts, and governanceGiulia DeloguChapter 4Free ports in a controlled market: Ancona, Livorno, Genoa, and Trieste in the eighteenth-century Italian grain tradeGiulio OngaroChapter 5Territorial control, economic provision, and republican order: the free port of Genoa from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuryPaolo CalcagnoChapter 6English perspectives on Genova and Livorno: rivalry and complementarity between two eighteenth-century free portsDanilo PedemonteChapter 7The free port of Nice-Villafranca and Savoy maritime politics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesLuca Lo Basso Chapter 8‘Dire straits’: the free ports of Tangier and Gibraltar in the English MediterraneanFrancesca SavoldiChapter 9The British debate on Mediterranean free ports: Livorno, Gibraltar, and Port Mahon (1712–1783)Antonella AlimentoChapter 10A ‘source of gold and prosperity’? The Neapolitan free-port debate from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuryAntonio IodiceChapter 11The free port of Messina in the ancien régime: spaces, institutions, and practicesIda Fazio and Rita FotiChapter 12Free trade and the ghost story of the Bourbon alliance: Spain, free ports, and the Mediterranean Sea (1648–1765)Edward Jones CorrederaChapter 13The evils of ‘beguiling Liberty’: a comparative perspective on free ports in a manuscript by Manuel María Gutiérrez (1830)Marcella AgliettiChapter 14The Habsburg portchain: a decentralised empire in the eighteenth centuryDavid Do PaçoChapter 15The evolution of the free port of Trieste from 1717 to the presentDaniele Andreozzi