Livorno - The Greek Community and The Port of Livorno in The 19th Century

The Greek Community and The Port of Livorno in The 19th Century

The first Greeks who settled in Livorno early in the 16th century were former mercenaries in the fleet of Cosimo de' Medici and their descendants. This community grew and became significant in the 18th and 19th centuries, when Livorno became one of the principal hubs of the Mediterranean trade. Most of the new Greek immigrants came from western Greece, Chios, Epirus and Asia Minor.

Based on its status since the late sixteenth century as a free port (port franc) and the warehouses constructed for long-term storage of goods and grains from the Levant, until the late 19th century Livorno enjoyed a strong strategic position related to Greek mercantile interests in the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and the North Atlantic. The conflicts between Great Britain and France during the Napoleonic Wars of the early nineteenth century, with associated port embargoes, piracy, and confiscation of cargoes, played out to the advantage of those Greek merchants willing to accept risk. By the 1820s, Greek entrepreneurs gradually replaced the Protestant British, Dutch, French and other merchants who left the city.

The Greeks concentrated on the grain market, banking and ship-brokering. Cargoes of wheat from the Black Sea were received at Livorno, before being re-shipped to England. Returning ships carried textiles and other industrial goods, which Greek merchants shipped to Alexandria and other destinations in the Ottoman Empire. Men from the Greek city of Chio controlled much of the trade. In 1839 Livorno had ten major commercial houses, led primarily by ethnic Greeks and Jewish Italians.

The ethnic Greek community (nazione) had a distinctive cultural and social identity based on their common Greek Orthodox religion, language and history. In 1775 they had established the Confraternity of Holy Trinity (Confraternita della SS. Trinita) and the Chiesa della Santissima Trinita, the first non-Roman Catholic church in Tuscany. The community founded a Greek school, awarding scholarships for higher studies to young Greeks from the Peloponnesus, Epirus, Chio or Smyrna. The community raised funds to support the Greek Revolution of 1821, as well as various Greek communities in the Ottoman Empire and in Italy. It also assisted non-Greeks. The Rodocanachi family financed the "School of Mutual Education" established in Livorno by the pedagogist Enrico Mayer. The community contributed to founding a school for poor Roman Catholic children. The local governing authorities recognized the contributions of distinguished members of the Greek community (e.g. members of the Papoudoff, Maurogordatos, Rodocanachi, Tossizza and other families) and granted them titles of nobility.

After unification and the founding of the Kingdom of Italy in 1868, the Greek community in Livorno declined, as the privileges of the free port were rescinded