I Napoletani e il corallo del Maghreb: pesca e sfruttamento di una risorsa mediterranea contesa (1780-1827)

The aim of this PhD thesis is to analyse the phenomena related to coral fishing of the Maghreb, placing at the center of the analysis the development and the penetration in North Africa of the Neapolitan fishery. From the middle of the XVIII century, after the fall of Genoese Tabarka in 1741, the French Compagnie Royale d’Afrique obtains the privilege of coral fishing on the coasts of the Regencies of Algiers and Tunis. However, during the last thirty years of the XVIII century, Italian states’ navies started complaining strongly about those preferential concessions to France. In light of what has been introduced thus far, it follows that the historical period that goes from the second half of the XVIII century to the 1830s represents an interesting and remarkable field of research. Actually, the gradual increase of participants on the Barbary Coast scenery, the various obstacles and issues on the subject of maritime navigation and the convoluted political and diplomatic events that accompanied the activity of coral fishing, raise many queries. As an example, this dissertation project studies the organization of fishing campaigns by the different coastal communities and it also focuses on the strong interests that European and Maghrebians governments and merchants showed towards this influential “red gold”. The attention focuses mainly on the several phenomena related to the fishing process on the Barbary Coast. Nevertheless, this work will also refer constantly to commercial and manufacturing aspects connected to each country, which are essential in order to have an overview of coral relevance as a “Mediterranean resource”.