Connectors of a Poly-centric Empire: Merchants and Financiers as Integrative Force of the Habsburg Possessions in the 18th Century

The Spanish War of Succession turned the Central European Habsburg Monarchy into a polycentric Empire including former Spanish possessions such as Lombardy and the Netherlands, and linking others such as Tuscany that enjoyed access to international maritime trade. The polycentric character of this imperial constellation in difference to the previous framework consisted in the only partial incorporation of the newly acquired territories into the political-administrative structure that characterized the Bohemian and Austrian provinces on the one hand, and the Hungarian territories on the other. While the local and regional networks of Lombard, Flemish and Tuscan elites had a great impact on the formulation of new political commitments that would take different directions from the 1790s, trade was a great integrating medium between this broad Habsburg Empire in the eighteenth century. On the one hand, it was the bilateral ties between these territories that linked the Habsburg Empire economically, but on the other hand these new possessions allowed the imperial court of Vienna to carry out a mercantilist policy on an international level. The article starts from this approach and analyzes the role of merchants of the broad Habsburg Empire - Lombards, Triesteans, Tuscans and Flemings - in the construction of an imperial and international mercantile space during the second half of the 18th century. Special attention is paid to trade in the western Mediterranean and the Hispanic Atlantic with the ports of Barcelona and Cádiz as two essential points.