FOREIGN TRADE ZONES 3 
manufactures therefrom may be reloaded and shipped to foreign destinations, all 
without the imposition of the customs formalities and duties applicable to similar 
goods entering customs territory. 
To understand fully the functions of the free port it is necessary to 
distinguish between ports which are free in their entirety, at least in 
certain particulars, and ports in which the freedom of shipping and 
international trade is restricted to assigned zones. It is also necessary 
to bear in mind that there are great transshipment and consignment 
ports in countries having low or limited tariff schedules which do not 
interfere to any extent with the development of business of the nature 
which the free port is designed to foster. 
The free port, as the term is used in this report, has reference only 
to segregated zones, including the limited application of the principle 
found in the free warehouses maintained in some ports, this being a 
simplified form of the free port. Another application of the principle 
is found in the victualing warehouses which exist in certain European 
towns where vessels may put in to obtain provisions on which no 
duty has been paid. Where the customs authorities exercise control, 
however, as in the case of the bonded warehouses or bonded manu- 
facturing warehouses, the purpose is no longer accomplished, and the 
word “free” does not properly apply. 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE FREE PORT PRINCIPLE 
The free port is a development of comparatively recent times con- 
ined for the most part to territories other than those having free 
trade, either wholly or to a predominating extent. Until the last 
century the foreign commerce of the great nations of the world con- 
sisted in the main of the distribution of goods other than their own. 
The chief maritime nations were those which brought to their own 
shores the products of other countries or of their own provinces and 
redistributed these products, either in original or modified forms, to 
other nations. A nation was not great in commerce so much because 
of her own internal industry or the exports of products of her own 
production as because of her position in international trade. 
In the fourteenth century Bruges, which was located in the region 
which is now Belgium, was the greatest market of northern Europe. 
The Venetians brought to Bruges their manufactures of glass, fine tex- 
tiles, weapons, paper, etc., and the products of their oriental trade; 
the great league of merchants centering in the cities of the south- 
western corner of the Baltic which grew up in the fourteenth century, 
known as the Hanseatic League, made Bruges the terminus of many 
of their western voyages; and many other countries, both Christian 
and Mohammedan, fed the market with their commodities. In the 
fifteenth century the place of Bruges as the great market of northern 
Europe was taken bv Antwerp, a Spanish possession in what is now