Come si costruisce uno spazio mercantile: il Tirreno nel Settecento

In the XVIIIth century, commerce in the Tyrrhenian sea grows vigorously. Along the traffic lines that cross this sea – those originating from, or ending up in, one of the few market-places located on its shores – other traffics connect a multitude of medium and small Tyrrhenian ports, producing a commercial space visible both for the actors and for the historians. This essay is focused on the process of construction and on the characters of this space, from the point of view of its geographical dimensions, the commercial practices, the formal and informal norms and the complex and multinational institutional framework that ‘territorialises’ the XVIIIth century Tyrrhenian sea.