Ostend, the Austrian Netherlands and the Baltic Trade (1715-1789)

Description

Around 1700, the harbours of Ghent, Bruges, Nieuwpoort and Ostend were badly connected, and thus isolated from the rapidly industrialising Austrian Netherlands' urban production/consumption centres. In the 1750s, the central government in Brussels launched the transit policy, an active road building campaign, doubled with enticing customs duties to promote international/domestic trade relations. This enabled foreign products to enter the Austrian Netherlands by sea, while these new roads made inland products available to be shipped abroad. In this paper, we will analyze how infrastructural developments and the transit policy affected international trade in the Austrian Netherlands. On the basis of a comparison of shipping data extracted from serial sources like the Amsterdam Paalgeld Registers (1771-1787) and the Danish Sound toll registers (1497-1857), an attempt will be made to assess the effectiveness of the central government's transit policy on international shipping from the harbours of the Austrian Netherlands. The goal of this paper is to present a comprehensive case-study on how maritime trade affected, interacted and reacted with inland trade.

Period	Jul 2012
Event title	6th International Maritime History Conference
Event type	Conference
Location	Ghent, BelgiumShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International