Commerce in eighteenth-century Malta. The story of the prepaud family

Abstract

The Modem European entrepreneurial spirit resulted from economic changes experienced first by the Italian city-states and later exported to the whole continent in the sixteenth century through the strenuous efforts of many merchants. Ironically enough, Europe was at the time experiencing one of its biggest cultural crisis: the fragmentation of the continent into numerous religious denominations, leaving money as the sole possible interlocutor of unity among the separated Christian clusters. The religious cleavages were slowly overcome by outward-looking traders who sought, more than ever, new commercial ventures and trading unions outside their traditional boundaries. The constant increase In Europe's population contributed heavily to the development of new urban centres, causing movements of people into towns but more importantly creating new opportunities in the housing, clothing and feeding of thousands of new inhabitants. A silent revolution was engulfing the European trading structure: the slow replacement of medieval fairs by permanent establishments or shops to the extent that the latter became a sine qua non for urban vigour. In turn, the town's expectations created the need for specialisation and the setting-up of commercial hierarchies among the shop owners. Malta adopted, in part, this European economic model. The presence of foreign knights encouraged the opening of spedalised outlets catering to the sophisticated needs of the European aristocrats, which contrasted with the rather rustic and crude customs' of the indigenous population