ABSTRACT
The birth and growth of cosmopolitan Trieste is traditionally associated with the mercantilist policies of the Hapsburg Emperor Charles VI and his daughter Maria Teresa, and the city is viewed as an artificial creation of Vienna’s policies, considered to have effected economic and urban change as well as transforming it into a cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic city. This founding legend and the narration of this mythical golden age continues to be revived and deployed to this day, partly in conjunction with the other myths used to support the city’s ‘imagined’ destinies and to shore up the legitimacy of these destinies: Trieste as Roman city, free city, imperial city, artificial city, cosmopolitan city. However, Trieste’s 18th-century growth and cosmopolitanism can be narrated in a far less deterministic way that emphasizes the role played by women and men who, in migrating to Trieste from all over the world, increased the city’s size and ethnic diversity and established a material cosmopolitanism. Examining the strategies and practices of merchants and sea powers, this chapter proposes a different hypothesis for the growth of cosmopolitan Trieste and a new periodization of the events of the 19th and 20th centuries.
