Genoa: Colonizing and Colonized City? The Port City as a Pole of Attraction for Foreign Merchants (16th-18th Centuries)

Port cities were by nature a pole of attraction for merchants and businessmen looking for opportunities to make money. At the same time, the origin and number of foreign merchants settling permanently in a port city tended to vary over time, as well as their positioning in the market and the density of ties with local traders. To investigate this topic it is necessary to take due account of the economic, political, and social motivations, which might have either positively or negatively affected these processes. As Michel Balard pointed out with reference to the late Middle Ages and to the relations between Genoa and overseas cities, “Genoa, a colonizer in the East, is colonized by the Orientals”. The aim of this work is to verify whether and to what extent this concept is applicable also to the modern age and whether it involved a wider geographic area than the one examined by this French historian. In particular we outline the features of the presence of foreign merchants in Genoa between the 16th and 18th centuries as a phenomenon complementary to the better known “diaspora” of Genoese businessmen.