Cosmopolitan Practices: Lives, Mercantilism and Nations in the Growth of Multi-Ethnic Trieste (18th - 20th Centuries)

The birth and growth of cosmopolitan Trieste is traditionally associated with the mercantilist policies of Emperor Charles VI of Hapsburg and his daughter Maria Teresa and the city is viewed as an artificial creation of Vienna’s policies not only effecting economic and urban change but also making it into a cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic city. This founding legend and the narration of this mythical golden age is still being revived and deployed to this day, partly in conjunction with the other myths used to support the city’s ‘imagined’ destinies and to shore up the legitimacy of these destinies: Trieste Roman city, free city, imperial city, artificial city, cosmopolitan city. However, the Eighteenth-century growth and cosmopolitanism can be narrated in a far less passive way that emphasizes the role played by women and men who, in coming from everywhere, making the city big and multi-ethnic and establishing a material cosmopolitanism. Examining the strategies and practices of merchants and sea forces, this chapter aimed proposing a different hypothesis for the growth of cosmopolitan Trieste and a new periodization of the events of the XIX and XX centuries.