Grandi porti e scali minori del Mediterraneo in età moderna: fattori competitivi e reti commerciali

In Early Modern Age many port cities became nodal points of commercial networks that included both the sea and the land thanks to their vitality and the economic relations of their inhabitants. This phenomenon involved the big ports of the Mediterranean Sea, the ones of the Northern Europe and the small moorings, whose activity was strictly depending and linked to the formers. For this reason, both the main traffic routes and the local ones are important, as far as the connection between international and local trade. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the function of the ports as pole of attraction of goods, people and capital, in order to classify them according to their characters and their role in the merchant network through the analysis of some significant case studies