Genoese Trade and Migration in the Spanish Atlantic, 1700–1830, by Catia Brilli

Abstract

It is a commonplace that trade within the transatlantic empire of the Spanish Habsburgs and Bourbons was penetrated by foreigners, making a mockery of the supposed Spanish monopoly. In this monograph, however, Catia Brilli explores a rather unusual aspect of that foreign penetration. Instead of considering the role of the Dutch, English and French, she discusses that of the Genoese. The Genoese republic (in the Middle Ages the doyen of the Italian commercial republics) had early on established a niche for itself within the nascent Spanish empire, and, in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Genoese finance oiled the wheels of Spanish imperialism. The Spanish bankruptcy of 1627 brought to a close what has often been thought of as a golden age of Genoese finance, although the republic’s loans continued to keep many a state afloat in Europe down to the French revolution. However, it is Genoese trade (or rather the commercial activity of Genoese, subjects of the republic, down to its disappearance in 1804, a rather different thing) and migration which is Brilli’s concern, rather than finance. After 1627, Genoese merchants continued to play an important role in trade between Genoa and Spain, that is Cadiz, and in that between Cadiz and Spanish America before and after the liberalisation of the latter by Charles III from the 1760s onward. (In 1771, first-generation Genoese merchants represented the second largest group of non-Spanish wholesalers in Cadiz after the French.) The Genoese participated in various ways, including exporting paper (one of Genoa’s chief exports to Spain, and beyond to Spanish America) and participating in abortive Spanish efforts in the eighteenth century to develop a Spanish paper industry to supply its own needs. The Genoese were able to establish themselves in Cadiz but—and this is a crucial element of Brilli’s argument—they did not do so with the help of a republic which was not a major power and which preferred neutrality to intervention. For their part, Genoese merchants in Cadiz were reluctant to fund the republic’s official agent there, the consul. Nor, although they were happy on occasion, and when necessary, to take advantage of Genoese links, did they see themselves as outriders or agents of the republic. (Some, however, built on their commercial success in Spain to enter the Genoese ruling oligarchy.) Instead, they sought to embed themselves in, and to integrate into, local society. This preferred route to success abroad contributed to the ‘invisibility’ of the Genoese which, says Brilli, explains why they have hitherto largely escaped the attention of historians. The movement of men and goods was facilitated by networks of informal and flexible co-operation which helped overcome the lack of support in and from Genoa.