Free ports in a controlled market. Ancona, Livorno, Genoa, and Trieste in the eighteenth-century Italian grain trade

The chapter analyses the role played by the free ports of Ancona, Genoa, Livorno, and Trieste in the early-modern grain trade. Trade in grain was strictly controlled by the public authorities in the pre-unitary Italian states, to guarantee the provisioning of the citizenry and the earnings of landowners. However, this apparently ‘closed’ system could survive only thanks to the presence of ‘exceptional’ areas that were instruments for regulating the in-and outflow of essential goods. In times of food scarcity, it was imperative that the urban Annone be supplied through the free ports, whose privileges enabled them to attract huge amounts of grain. These dynamics between free ports and public subsistence provision inspired further debate on free grain trade in which supporters of ‘deregulation’ claimed that favourable excise policies and a degree of commercial freedom could guarantee continuous food provisioning from areas with surplus production, and at the same time preserve the earnings of merchants and landowners.