FOREIGN TRADE ZONES 
5 
of Germany had their own tariff laws, but by 1828 the Customs Union 
was organized with a common tariff on the frontier. Lubeck, Ham- 
burg, and Bremen, however, long continued to be free and inde- 
pendent cities, and it was not until 1888 that Hamburg and Bremen 
finally agreed to enter the German Customs Union. 
FREE TRADE PORTS 
To facilitate international trade many ‘free trade ports” were 
established in Europe, some as early as the sixteenth century. These 
are often confused with the free ports as they are known to-day, and 
naturally so, as some of them through appropriate changes have 
become free ports in the sense in which this term is now applied. 
Leghorn was made a free trade port in 1547 and flourished during the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but the free port as now in 
existence was not established until 1883. The free trade port of 
Trieste, which was established in 1719, was suppressed by the Vienna 
Government, and the free port or free zone was organized and began 
to operate in 1891. Marseille was made a free trade port in 1669, 
Naples in 1633, Venice in 1661, Fiume in 1719, and Ancona and 
Messina in 1732. Genoa is referred to as a free port as far back as 
1623, but the free port law of 1876 is the basis for the regulations and 
decrees providing for the government and operation of the free zone. 
The free trade ports which were established in Europe between 
the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries were later abandoned or modi- 
fied so as to make them consistent with modern requirements. Cus- 
toms tariffs for the different countries as a whole were formulated, 
superseding the individual tariffs of the states and cities. The free 
cities, or “Iree trade cities” as we use the term, offered opportunities 
for smuggling and impeded the administration of the customs laws. 
Under these conditions it was logical that they should be abandoned 
in favor of segregated, fenced, and guarded areas, in which the re- 
quirements of transshipment trade could be met without these dis- 
advantages or dangers. To-day no free trade ports or wholly free 
ports of the type common to the period prior to the nineteenth century 
remain in continental Europe. In their place has come the free port 
or foreign trade zone, comprising a segregated area wherein the 
customs requirements applicable to the surrounding territory do not 
apply. 
The true free trade ports are now to be found principally in the 
colonial possessions of Great Britain. They are located not in the 
highly industrialized countries, but at the junctions of trade routes 
connecting the sources of important raw materials with the industrial 
nations utilizing these products, and in turn affording means for 
transshipping manufactured products from the great ocean liners to 
the small coasting and inland vessels reaching local distributing points.