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.