Free Ports in the Atlantic World

Abstract

Free ports played an important role in fostering inter-imperial and international connections and commercial interactions in the Atlantic world during the early modern and modern periods. While “free port” is an expansive term, sometimes used to delineate areas where illegal smuggling occurred, places that were free of ice, or locales that welcomed foreign migration, the studies cited in this article pertain to the imperial legal and commercial definition of free ports. That is, ports established by the state that exhibited lower customs duties than did the rest of the polity or existed outside of normal customs laws while welcoming foreign merchants to exchange at least some proscribed set of goods. Traditionally, it has been understood that free ports have existed in some form since Antiquity, but that the free port of Livorno, established by the Medici in the late 16th century, constitutes the earliest and most-successful example of a free port in the early modern era. Free ports spread across the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the globe in the ensuing centuries. Beginning substantively in the 15th century, European powers extended their commercial and imperial networks across the Atlantic Ocean, often violently encountering and interacting with peoples in North and South America, the West Indies, and the west coast of Africa. While military, commercial, intellectual, and migratory movements fostered the so-called “Atlantic World” by connecting these far-flung geographical locales, many European metropoles initially attempted to limit their subjects’ commercial interactions to within their Atlantic imperial realms. However, early modern Atlantic empires employed free ports beginning in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in the Caribbean, as a means of providing exceptions to their generally closed commercial systems and strategically allowing foreign merchants to trade in certain places. Some metropolitan European ports also became “free.” The heyday of colonial Atlantic, especially Caribbean, free ports occurred in the mid- to late 18th century as Atlantic empires promulgated various reforms in response to the Seven Years’ War and other European imperial conflicts. The number of Atlantic free ports declined in the 19th century as doctrines of more universal free trade took root and as Latin American countries gained independence, meaning that European powers could trade directly to these locations without having to skirt Spanish imperial commercial restrictions. Atlantic free ports experienced a revival in the late 19th and 20th centuries, evolving into various “special economic zones” such as export-processing zones, tax havens, and foreign-trade zones. The studies cited here imply that some Atlantic free ports encompassed entire islands, especially smaller ones like Sint Eustatius. Much of the literature on free ports focuses on Italian and Mediterranean ones, but interest in Atlantic free ports is growing. Extant texts pertaining to Atlantic free ports usually consider specific ports or empires, with little substantive comparative work (the major exceptions being scholarship on Dutch, Danish, and Swedish free ports). Some studies provide useful analysis of free-port proposals that were never realized but were debated intensely.