ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the trade undertaken by foreign merchants to and through central Europe, especially those who established themselves in that area in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The choice of Greek can be explained by its dominant role in the spheres of trade and education throughout south-eastern Europe at this time. Since the Greek merchant colonies were chiefly established in urban areas, they, along with the other foreign merchant colonies as a whole, generally contributed to their urban transformation and re-signification as centres of central European industrial production and commerce. The Greek commercial networks around the port of Trieste extended into the Mediterranean, into central Europe and, from the end of the eighteenth century, the Black Sea as well. According to the 'central places theory', Pest could be considered the space in which the central merchant colony developed in relation to the numerous 'colonies' founded by Greek Orthodox merchants throughout Hungary.
