Introduction
Tuscany of the mid-seventeenth century was renowned for its luxury crafts and had one of the most vibrant scientific communities in Europe. The Medici family presided over a state whose political stability astonished contemporaries, in which wise rule and good fortune had spared their subjects the worst ravages associated with the Thirty Years' War. The city of Livorno was the Medici state’s greatest prize and the most innovative port in Italy. The introduction examines the development of Livorno and other free ports in three registers: as part of the Italian response to the rise of the Atlantic world; as implicated in the creation of a new kind of commodity market; and as a neglected problem in the history of economic thought. It suggests that free ports should be central to our interpretation of economic change in early modern Europe and the Mediterranean.