Port of Trade or Commodity Market? Livorno and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Mediterranean

This article critiques the application of Karl Polanyi's port of trade model to the development of Livorno, which has often been ascribed to commercial brokerage across cultural, political, and ecological frontiers. Livorno's neutrality during times of war and its position in the corsair and privateering economies would appear to support just such an interpretation of Livorno's growth. Nevertheless, while such interstitial roles were real, by the 1640s they were subordinate to the larger currents of regional and long-distance trade. Livorno's development is better explained with reference to the rise of commodity markets as entrepôts for managing far-flung distribution networks. The Tuscan port's rapid rise should be understood as an integral phenomenon of early modern capitalism, more akin to places such as London or Amsterdam than to the ports of trade studied by Polanyi.