Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the Italian traders of Lisbon through the study of their institutions in the port. This perspective will contribute to understanding their commercial strategies and the rivalries between the different components of the community, by stressing the pre-eminent role of the Genoese.

Paper long abstract:

The paper focuses on the Italian traders in eighteenth-century Lisbon. Their persisting role in connecting the Mediterranean and the Atlantic markets is supported by manifold evidence but has been largely overlooked by historians. The analysis of their institutions will help to shed light on the strategies they used to compete with the other trading nations and maritime powers. The Italians who settled in early-modern Lisbon were from different states, had different consuls, and competed among them, but shared the same religious institutions. The church of Nossa Senhora de Loreto and the city's Convent of Capuchins were entitled to the "Italian nation" as a whole. From the XVII century, the Genoese challenged the hegemony of the Florentines and became the most prominent group in the Italian community. This paper aims to show how, in the following century, they consolidated their position in the port at the detriment of the other Italians. The monopolistic control of the nation's church and convent was one of their main preoccupations. The documentation conserved in the state archives of Genoa and Venice allows us to understand the importance of both institutions for the management of legal and illegal trade. The Genoese also used their pre-eminent role to impose the other Italian merchants the payment of fees and contributions in their own favor. The Genoese ambitions were supported not only by some of the most important aristocratic families of the republic, but also by the Apostolic Nuncio to Lisbon.