The Habsburg Monarchy in early modern globalization – a periphery of the world economy?

The term ‘periphery’ is usually used in historical scholarship in two ways: first, as a postcolonial concept pointing to perceptual patterns that perpetuate an asymmetrical power relationship; and second, as a structural category of economic geography, mainly coined by world-systems analysis, designating economically underdeveloped territories that depend on the centers of the world economy. Ideally, peripheries deliver those raw materials that are turned into finished goods in the core regions and are eventually sold on the peripheries’ consumer markets. While this second meaning of ‘periphery’ has been critiqued substantially over the course of recent decades, it is still a highly coherent and useful tool for analyzing spatial disparities and uneven development. This involves a critical revision of both the conceptual tools and the historical narrative of world-systems analysis, as Andrea Komlosy and I have argued.

Immanuel Wallerstein classified the Habsburg Monarchy between the sixteenth and the early nineteenth centuries as a ‘semi-periphery’. In this, he followed the standard historical scholarship that framed the Central European Habsburg space as economically ‘backward’ compared to Western Europe, and at the same time as relatively marginalized from world markets. Numerous works since the 1970s and 1980s have challenged this traditional perception: on the one hand, studies pointed to developmental processes within the Habsburg Monarchy, without leaving aside the internal disparities or the differences from the centers of the world economy. On the other hand, research highlighted the Habsburg dominion’s international and even global connections in commerce and cultural exchange, mainly focusing on the early-modern Spanish Empire. While the metanarrative has not changed much, the current chapter builds on this research to revisit the relevance of Habsburg foreign trade in the eighteenth century, focusing on commercial exchange with Spain in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic as a paradigmatic example.

Habsburg maritime: Trieste as the Habsburg Monarchy’s foreign sea trade hub, 1717–1815

The Habsburg Monarchy is usually regarded as a landlocked empire. True as this characterization may be in comparison to the maritime colonial empires of Western Europe, the integration of Habsburg Central Europe into maritime trade should not be overlooked.