THE PORT CITY OF MARSEILE: CROSS-CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS AND MERCANTILE NETWORKS IN THE EARLY MODERN MEDITERRANEAN

Abstract

This study focuses on the city of Marseille and cross-cultural trade networks in the Mediterranean from 1660 to 1760, emphasizing Marseillais and Jewish mercantile associations during a crucial time of global maritime expansion, characterized by cross-cultural commercial interactions that were vital for both the Crown’s mercantilist strategies and the growth of Marseille as a free port. I argue that as a free port, Marseille relied upon trans-sea commercial engagements and collaboration between Marseillais and foreign merchants to expand its trade and retain the port's “free of duty” status. The privileges granted to the Marseillais and Jewish merchants, the creation of specific institutions to facilitate trade, and Franco-Ottoman commercial treaties resulted in an increasing level of cross-cultural exchanges between merchants of different faiths and ethnicities who relied on formal and informal networks to forge commercial and sometimes personal relations. These associations not only connected Marseille to various trade networks, but they also expanded the mercantile networks of Marseillais and Jewish merchants. Although by the end of the seventeenth-century France adopted discriminatory policies against non-Catholic foreign merchants, records suggest that despite periods of religious antagonism and commercial competition, merchants continued to engage in cross-cultural commercial activities well into the mid-eighteenth century. This dissertation will examine these mercantile relations in the context of the early modern Mediterranean commercial competition and the growing dependency on mercantile networks to increase France’s commercial dominance. The interfaith and cross-cultural trade engagements explored in this dissertation demonstrate that rather than religious identity, it was commercial competition that determined the relationship between Marseillais and Jewish merchants. This work contributes to the history of Marseille in the context of absolutism and mercantilism by offering a fresh and in-depth perspective on the previously under-recognized significance of personal and commercial interactions between the merchants of Marseille and the eastern Mediterranean.