Trade between Spain and the Habsburg Monarchy (1725-1815)

The research project investigates the integration of continental European regions into global exchanges processes taking the Habsburg Monarchy`s trade with Spain in the 18th century as example. Therewith, this project contributes to a recent research trend which focuses on the so entanglement of "landlocked" territories into Atlantic and transatlantic trade, having been blinded out so far. This has a specific relevance with regard to the Habsburg Monarchy. In the context of two different developmental paths both economies took in the course of the transformations in the 18th century, the impact of bilateral trade on economic development highlighted. In order to approach this issue, the project centres on trans-national and trans-imperial merchants` networks which connected different spaces and economic systems with each other by transcending state borders. Here, entanglement between different merchants` groups, the impact of family relations and the access to state institutions, i.e. lobbying, are conceived as explanatory factors of business performance and trans-regional entanglement. Research focuses on those merchants who mediated Spanish-Habsburg trade at four port cities - beside Trieste, Tuscany`s intermediary trade centre Livorno and Barcelona also Cdiz will be taken into account as Spain`s main hub between Spanish- Habsburg and Latin American colonial trade. The time span of the projects sets in with the conclusion of the Treaty of Vienna in 1725 and ends after the termination of the Napoleonic Wars. Nevertheless, emphasis is put on the second half of the century, when trade relations intensified after the conclusion of the Aranjuez trade treaty in 1752. Methodologically, biographic, business and fiscal data will be collected in a database and processed by the Ucinet network analysis programme. The data derive from various sources, but mainly from the notary files stored at the provincial archives in Cdiz and Barcelona as well in the State Archives of Trieste and Florence. These documents are completed by tax lists stored at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville and court files of the Catalan Commercial Court stored at the Archivo de la Corona de Aragn in Barcelona. Additionally, state documents and diplomatic sources from the Archivo General de la Administracin in Alcal de Henares and the Austrian State Archive in Vienna will be explored. The project is scheduled to last for three years, whereas the first two years will be spent at Departamento de Geografa, Filosofa y Historia at Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville, working with Prof. Manuel Herrero Snchez. The reintegration phase of one year, will take place at the Department of History at Vienna University, working with Prof. Friedrich Edelmayer. In the course of the project, two papers should be published in journals, while the results of the project will be published in book form, the manuscript of which is going to be drafted in the course of the three years.