Although the book is written in Czech, it has a long English summary (17 pages). It is aimed at a synthetic perspective on the overseas policy of the Central European Habsburg Monarchy in the period between the end of the War of the Spanish Succession and the French Revolution. The authors depict Charles VI coming to the throne in Vienna, his experience from Spain and the alliance with Great Britain, the leading European naval, commercial and industrial power in those times. They describe Charles’s effort to modernize the Monarchy and build up a naval fleet and merchant marine. It is those not completely successful attempts to develop the trade with the Ottoman Empire following the peace treaty of Passarowitz (1718) that are analysed. Unfortunately, the support of free ports in the Austrian Littoral yielded only limited outcomes due to a consequence of an array of both objective and subjective obstacles, which failed to be overcome even with the help of the merchant monopoly held by the Oriental Company. On the other hand, those who enjoyed the considerable success were merchants from the Austrian Netherlands, the territory that would be incorporated as part of the Central European monarchy on the basis of the Peace of Utrecht (1713). They and their foreign partners exploited the weak and corrupt Austrian administration in the region and successfully penetrated into the trade with Asia. They had established business contacts with Arabia, India and China, and their trade produced considerable profits. However, as a result of the resistance of other European powers, the mutual competition and the absence of diplomatic support during the talks with indigenous rulers, the initial form of single missions to Asia organised by small consortia was abandoned to be replaced by the trade under the leadership of the multinational Ostend Company’s monopoly. The Company was extremely prosperous, especially as to the trade with China, but it was also fruitfully developing colonies on the Coromandel Coast of India and Bengal. However, the history of the Company was negatively affected by the development of European policy, which resulted in the Company suspension (1927), afterward its dissolution (1731) in exchange for the dynastic interests of the Habsburg house. First, the traders from the Austrian Netherlands faced that reality by conducting the trade under foreign flags, later on they went abroad and participated in varying degrees and different ways in establishing new East India companies in Denmark, Sweden and Prussia. The loss of the Ostend Company was believed to be grievous in the Habsburg Monarchy. Following the failure in the Netherlands, Vienna refocused attention to the Austrian Littoral, where a series of reforms in the sphere of navigation, trade, industry and education, as well as the Maria Theresa (later Levant) thaler introduction, or a bit delayed changes in customs policy of the Monarchy, led to creating favourable conditions for the foreign trade development on a small territories of ports of Trieste and Fiume. From the 1770s, Trieste served as a transit port with a lot of contacts starting with the Mediterranean, over western and northern Europe, to America. What had the considerable importance there was the trade with the Ottoman Empire, whose control was taken over by the merchants from that state, who would settle in Austrian ports and other centres of the Monarchy. Fiume remained a less important port in the Monarchy oriented mostly on export of agricultural products from Hungary. The history of the city was considerably influenced by the company of Arnoldt Urbain and his partners established after 1750. However, its importance did no lie in the trade exchange but industrial sugar production as it had gained monopoly in the sugar import and processing. The last attempt the Habsburg Monarchy made to penetrate into the Euro-Asian trade by the form of the privileged trading company was cooperation with English businessman William Bolts, his Asiatic Association, and later on the Imperial Asiatic Company of Trieste and Antwerp. Despite partial success, also this attempt ended up in failure in 1785. Yet the overseas trade of the Monarchy had been developing successfully. The penetration of Austrian ships on the Danube into the Black Sea in 1782, a new inflow of traders from the Balkans to the Monarchy, the development of the port in Trieste and measures employed to improve safety transformed the Monarchy into the largest business partner of the Ottoman Empire. Also the port in Ostend was prosperously growing, from where the trade with India, the USA and the Caribbean region would be still conducted. Shortly before the trade was disturbed by the French Revolution, the overseas trade of the Habsburg Monarchy heading towards the West and the South interconnected, and acquired the global dimension. |
