The Free Port of Livorno and the Transformation of the Mediterranean World

This book examines the theory and practice of free trade in early modern Europe by focusing on one its most spectacular examples: the free port of Livorno, the earliest and most influential free port in Europe. Free ports were places where merchants of any nation, religion, or ethnicity could trade on equal terms; and where there were no import and export taxes. Free ports, the ancestor of the modern special economic zone, show that free trade emerged in the interstices of European commercial institutions even during the age of mercantilism, which is often taken to be the antithesis of free trade.