Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

DANIEL JÜTTE
ple, Dalmatia after this time, they were, crucially, less consuls of the
Jews. In the late 1650s and 1660s we have reports of a certain Salvator
Lima who operated as a consul of the Jews in Spalato but, interestingly,
his efforts to have his title officially recognized by Venice came
to nought in 1670. 123
Erosion of the economic–political consulship among the Jews can,
in my opinion, be dated to the mid-seventeenth century, although
perhaps future research will be able to differentiate more clearly
between the various factors than it is possible to do here. At present,
there is much in favour of linking the decline of the Jewish economic–political
consulship with resistance and mistrust that were never
completely surmounted, and the pronounced individualism of Jew -
ish merchants. But these are not likely to be the only reasons for the
erosion. Possibly, and this is only a working hypothesis, we must
also take into account factors arising from transformations in the
Levantine trade and international diplomacy on the Christian side.
In this context, we need to bear in mind the creeping national
identification of the consular office in the Mediterranean and in the
Christian economic sphere. 124 I refer here to the transition in the
Christian world from the type of consul who was selected from
among the ranks of merchants on the strength of his respectability
and economic power, and then, as the situation dictated, recognized
by the home government and local authorities of the host country, 125
to the figure of the consul who was recognized by the state from the
outset. It must be stressed that this process by no means took place
without exceptions and deadlocks. 126 Nevertheless, these could do
nothing to change the inexorable trend towards an ever stronger
123 Ibid. 141. On Lima see also Švob, Židovi u Hrvatskoj, i. 65.
124 This development and interesting exceptions to it are described by
Ludwig Beutin, ‘Zur Entstehung des deutschen Konsulatswesens im 16. und
17. Jahrhundert’, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 21
(1928), 438–48.
125 Ruspio, La nazione portoghese, 189.
126 e.g. the English consul in the Levant in the seventeenth century was ap -
point ed not by the Crown or the government, but by the Levant Company.
In France, on the other hand, where the Crown had already seized the power
to appoint consuls in the sixteenth century, we can discern a crisis concerning
the consular system in the seventeenth century. On this see esp.
Steensgaard, ‘Consuls and Nations in the Levant’.
184