The Consular Jurisdiction in the Eighteenth Century A Trade Commodity for Free Ports?

In the busiest Mediterranean ports of the eighteenth century, consuls were used to manage the resident or floating foreign population. The aim of the chapter is to reveal, in a comparative overview, the extent of consular jurisdiction across hidden spaces, highlighting how, why, and when violations of local law were tolerated (even if unauthorised) in the name of broader interests. When the priority was to foster the trade of mercantile nations, especially in the presence of free ports, the reaction of local authorities to certain freedoms and jurisdictional claims asserted by consuls varied, in its greater or lesser rigidity. In the multitude of European free ports, the chapter will focus on a few cases observed especially in Livorno. Here, the art of intermediation and dissimulation was developed to ensure that the consuls’ functions formally respected local sovereignty, guaranteeing public order and preventing known jurisdictional exceptions from becoming too visible or provoking diplomatic incidents.