The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste: Absolutist Politics and Enlightenment Culture

Winner of the 2000 Barbara Jelavich Prize in Habsburg, Russian or Ottoman history (American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies) and finalist in the 1999 National Jewish Book Awards, History category.


“Dubin’s brilliant study of the cosmopolitan entrepôt of goods and peoples that was Trieste breaks new ground in our understanding of Jewish life in the Old Regime Europe. It demonstrates with exacting detail the extensive privileges such ‘port Jews’ enjoyed and the effect enlightened absolutism and emancipation politics exercised upon them, while skillfully portraying the Jews’ political and cultural responses. It is a classic study in modern Jewish history.” — David Sorkin, University of Wisconsin, Madison


“Lois C. Dubin has produced a solid and original monograph that explores the economic, legal, political, and cultural changes experienced by Trieste’s Jewish community within the context of the reform policy of the Austrian enlightened absolutists and Enlightenment ideology... Dubin has written an outstanding work on Trieste’s Jews... a very valuable study that I recommend to any reader interested in Jewish and Habsburg history, as well as the Enlightenment.” — The American Historical Review


“A valuable and carefully researched book... Dubin’s book is an important contribution not only to the study of Habsburg Jewry but also to our understanding of eighteenth-century absolutism.” — The Journal of Modern History


“The book is replete with keen insights into the experiences of European Jews during the initial phases of the transition from the world of corporate orders to modern class society... Dubin's discussion of the dynamics of Haskalah in Trieste is a sophisticated and nuanced analysis of one of the crucial chapters in the modernization of European Jewry.” — Journal of Urban History


“With this superb book, Lois C. Dubin has successfully and elegantly slain the two-headed dragon of modern Jewish historiography: nationalism and Germanocentrism. She has also provided Habsburg historians with a much-needed treatment of the complex interaction between state-building, reforming absolutism and the Jews, one of several significant ‘national minorities’ within the heterogeneous empire... The essential economic role played by Triestine Jewry once Charles VI declared Trieste a free port in 1719 made them indispensable to the Habsburg state. This indispensability itself is a critical marker in the shift between medieval and early modern Jewish history. What had been a liability, Jewish predominance in middle-class professions, particularly in trade, became an asset with the rise of mercantilism and a state-centralized economy. Coupled with the distinctive culture of Italian Jews, toleration shaped the ways in which Triestine Jews responded to Josephinian reforms, the Jewish Enlightenment in Berlin, challenges to Jewish marriage and divorce law, educational changes, and the dissolution of the ghetto, all of which Dubin explores with nuance and clarity... The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste employs source material in all the essential languages, German, Hebrew and Italian, and Dubin is equally at home analyzing Viennese and Triestine archival material and rare Hebrew periodical literature published in Vienna and Berlin. Her assured use of such diverse materials is also welcome because it restores historical agency to the Jewish population which is at the center of her study... The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste will undoubtedly remain the classic treatment of this fascinating city and of Habsburg state-building in one of its most important ports.” — Nancy Sinkoff, H-Net


“Dubin has made here an important contribution that belongs in every library that addresses Judaism and the modern world.” — German Studies Review


“Un travail magistral.” — Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales