Prosopography of the Viennese Merchants (1725-1758)

In the first half of the 18th century Vienna was the major city of Central Europe. The supply of goods for the imperial court as well as for the population of Vienna has been organized by local merchants. Furthermore, its representatives served as key financiers of the military expansion of the Habsburg Monarchy. Considering the important role held by the Viennese merchant community of the period, there is a striking lack of data on the actual persons it comprised. This led to glaring misinterpretations in existing research and impeded deeper analysis of the history of trade in Vienna. Especially the assumption that Vienna did not have a significant merchant class in the first half of the 18th century needs to be revised. This project located at the Institute of Austrian Historical Research (University of Vienna) and at the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage (Austrian Academy of Sciences) investigates the merchant community in Vienna during the first half of the eighteenth century. In contrast to earlier research we focus on the entire community of Viennese merchants and not just on specific privileged and/or religious/ethnic groups. The primary source of the project is the first Viennese Merkantilprotokoll (Mercantile Protocol) kept at the Vienna City and Provincial Archive, which provides a complete list of all merchants with sustained activity in the city between 1725 and 1758 as well as their respective companies. The aim of the project is to establish a broad database on the proprietors of trading companies and their associates and managerial staff in Vienna. This database will serve as the starting point for a long overdue group biography of the Viennese merchants with a broader perspective and special consideration for family and business relations.

In the first half of the 18th Century, Vienna was the largest city in Central Europe and the seat of the imperial court. The supply of long-distance goods to this metropolis was organised by the Viennese merchants. Apart from trading in goods, the merchants also served as lenders to the emperor. In contrast to their economic importance in goods transport and financial services, little has been known about this group of merchants. The project 'Prosopography of the Viennese Merchantry in the Age of Mercantilism (1725-1758)' was carried out in cooperation between the Institute for Austrian Historical Research (University of Vienna) and the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage (Austrian Academy of Sciences). In contrast to earlier research on Viennese trade and its supporters, which focussed primarily on individual ethnic or religious groups, the entire Viennese wholesale trade was examined for the first time. The main source used was the first Viennese mercantile record, the forerunner of the trade register, which provides the earliest complete list of merchants and their trading companies based in Vienna for the period from 1725 to 1758 and is preserved in the Vienna City and Provincial Archives. As part of the project, the mercantile record was transcribed, enriched with metadata and published digitally. In addition, a database was created that contains all the Viennese. As neither personal testimonies nor account books have survived for the Viennese merchant class, or only in individual cases, church records, wills and probate proceedings as well as ennoblements form the central sources for reconstructing individual lives.