Naples in the 18th Century: Court, Port, and Merchant City
With a population exceeding 400,000 by the late 1700s, Naples was both a royal capital and one of the Mediterranean's bu...
Places
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FEATURED • PlacesThe Kingdom of Naples: A Mediterranean Power in the Age of Commerce
By the late 18th century the Kingdom of Naples was one of the largest and most populous states in Italy, ruled by the Bourbon dynasty and increasingly drawn into wider Mediterranean and European commercial currents.
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Corsica: From Genoese Possession to French Province and Emigrant Homeland
Corsica's sale by Genoa to France in 1768 and its subsequent conquest reshaped the island's politics — and set the stage...
France's Mediterranean Trade in the Late 18th Century
In the decades before 1789, France's Mediterranean trade — anchored by Marseille — connected the kingdom to Italy, the L...
Southern Italy in the 18th Century: Agrarian Economy, Feudal Structure, and Mediterranean Trade
Southern Italy in the 1700s combined a feudal, land-based economy dominated by a small aristocracy with an increasingly ...
Venezuela in the 19th Century: Independence, Caudillos, and a New Economy
Between its independence wars and the early 20th century, Venezuela cycled through repeated civil conflicts and caudillo...
From Merchant Credit to Chartered Banks: Latin America's 19th-Century Financial Transformation
Across newly independent Latin American republics, the 19th century saw a gradual but decisive shift from personal merch...
The Mediterranean as a Commercial System in the Late 18th Century
Before telegraphs, steamships or international courts of arbitration, Mediterranean commerce in the 18th century ran on ...