ABSTRACT
A free port was established in Lisbon on 13 May 1796. 1 It is very likely that its creation followed some suggestions conveyed from Turin a decade earlier, which, as we have already seen, endorsed a set of regulations enacted in Genoa decades earlier. This was far from being the first occasion in which a diplomat recommended the implementation of a free port in Portugal. Similar proposals had been made since at least the seventeenth century. At least twice, suggestions had been advanced on the benefits of the Mediterranean institution. It could therefore be said that in regard to Lisbon’s free port, the idea had deep roots and had already circulated among Portuguese diplomatic circles from the former years of the century. 2
