The Odero yards, for the construction of merchant and passenger
steamers, have been similarly extended, and the Foce yard is also
important. A number of foundries and metallurgical works supply
material for repairs and shipbuilding. The sugar-refining industry
has been introduced by two important companies, and most of the
capital employed in sugar-refining in other parts of Italy has been
subscribed at Genoa, where the administrative offices of the principal
companies and individual refiners are situated. The old industries
of macaroni and cognate products maintain their superiority.
Tanneries and cotton-spinning and weaving mills have considerably
extended throughout the province. Cement works have acquired
an extension previously unknown, more than thirty firms being now
engaged in that branch of industry. The manufactures of crystallized
fruits and of filigree silver-work may also be mentioned. The
trade of the port increased from well under 1,000,000 tons in 1876
to 6,164,873 metric tons in 1906 (the latter figure, however, includes
home trade in a proportion of about 12%). Of this large total
5,365,544 tons are imports and only 799,319 tons are exports, and,
comparing 1906 with 1905, we have a decrease of 34,355 tons on
the exports, and an increase of 436,123 tons on the imports. The
effect upon the railway problem is of course very great, inasmuch
as, while the supply of trucks required per day in 1906 was from
1000 to 1200, about 80% of these had to be sent down empty to the
harbour. Of the four main lines which centre on Genoa—(1) to
Novi, which is the junction for Alessandria, where lines diverge to
Turin and France via the Mont Cenis, and to Novara and Switzerland
and France via the Simplon, and for Milan; (2) to Acqui and Piedmont;
(3) to Savona, Ventimiglia and the French Riviera, along
the coast; (4) to Spezia and Pisa—the first line has to take no less
than 78% of the traffic. It has indeed two alternative double
lines for the passage over the Apennines, but one of them has a
maximum gradient of 1:18 and a tunnel over 2 m. long, and the
other has a maximum gradient of 1:62, and a tunnel over 5 m. long.
A marshalling station costing some £800,000, connected directly
with the harbour by tunnels, with 31 m. of rails, capable of taking
2000 trucks, was constructed at Campasso in 1906 north of San Pier
d’Arena (through which till then the traffic of the first three lines,
representing 95% of the total, had to pass). It is computed that
some 40% of the total commerce of Italy passes through Genoa;
it is indeed the most important harbour in the western Mediterranean,
with the exception of Marseilles, with which it carries on a keen
rivalry. Genoa has in the past been somewhat handicapped in
the race by the insufficiency of railway communication, which,
owing to the mountains which encircle it, is difficult to secure,
many tunnels being necessary. The general condition of the Italian
railways has also affected it, and the increased traffic has not always
found the necessary facilities in the way of a proper amount of trucks
to receive the goods discharged, leading to considerable encumbrance
of the port and consequent diversion of a certain amount of trade
elsewhere, and besides this to serious temporary deficiencies in the
coal supply of northern Italy.
The imports of Genoa are divided into four main classes: about 50% of the total weight is coal, grain about 12%, cotton about 6%, and miscellaneous about 34%. Of the coal imports the great bulk is from British ports: about half comes from Cardiff and Barry, one-tenth from other Welsh ports, one-fifth from the Tyne ports. The amount shows an almost continued increase from 617,798 tons in 1881 to 2,737,919 in 1906. The total of shipping entered in 1906 was 6586 vessels with a tonnage of 6,867,442, while that cleared was 6611 vessels with a tonnage of 6,682,104.
History.—Genoa, being a natural harbour of the first rank, must have been in use as a seaport as early as navigation began in the Tyrrhenian Sea. We hear nothing from ancient authorities of its having been visited or occupied by the Greeks, but the discovery of a Greek cemetery of the 4th century B.C.[1] proves it. The construction of the Via Venti Settembre gave occasion for the discovery of a number of tombs, 85 in all, the bulk of which dated from the end of the 5th and the 4th centuries B.C. The bodies had in all cases been cremated, and were buried in small shaft graves, the interment itself being covered by a slab of limestone. The vases were of the last red figure style, and were mostly imported from Greece or Magna Graecia, while the bronze objects came from Etruria, and the brooches (fibulae) from Gaul. This illustrates the early importance of Genoa as a trading port, and the penetration of Greek customs, inhumation being the usual practice of the Ligurians. Genoa is believed to derive its name from the fact that the shape of this portion of the coast resembles that of a knee (genu).
We hear of the Romans touching here in 216 B.C., and of its destruction by the Carthaginians in 209 B.C. and immediate restoration by the Romans, who made it and Placentia their headquarters against the Ligurians. It was reached from Rome by the Via Aurelia, which ran along the north-west coast, and its prolongation, which later acquired the name of the Via Aemilia (Scauri); for the latter was only constructed in 109 B.C., and there must have been a coast-road long before, at least as early as 148 B.C., when the Via Postumia was built from Genua through Libarna (mod. Serravalle, where remains of an amphitheatre and inscriptions have been found), Dertona, Iria, Placentia, Cremona, and thence eastwards. We also have an inscription of 117 B.C. (now preserved in the Palazzo Municipale at Genoa) giving the text of the decision given by the patroni, Q. and M. Minucius, of Genua, in accordance with a decree of the Roman senate, in a controversy between the people of Genua and the Langenses or Langates (also known as the Viturii), the inhabitants of a neighbouring hill-town, which was included in the territory of Genua. But none of the other inscriptions found in Genoa or existing there at the present day, which are practically all sepulchral, can be demonstrated to have belonged to the ancient city; it is equally easy to suppose that they were brought from elsewhere by sea (Mommsen in Corp. Inscr. Lat. v. p. 884). It is only from inscriptions of other places that we know that it had municipal rights, and we do not know at what period it obtained them. Classical authors tell us but little of it. Strabo (iv. 6. 2, p. 202) states that it exported wood, skins and honey, and imported olive oil and wine, though Pliny speaks of the wine of the district as the best of Liguria (H.N. xiv. 67.)
The history of Genoa during the dark ages, throughout the Lombard and Carolingian periods, is but the repetition of the general history of the Italian communes, which succeeded in snatching from contending princes and barons the first charters of their freedom. The patriotic spirit and naval prowess of the Genoese, developed in their defensive wars against the Saracens, led to the foundation of a popular constitution, and to the rapid growth of a powerful marine. From the necessity of leaguing together against the common Saracen foe, Genoa united with Pisa early in the 11th century in expelling the Moslems from the island of Sardinia, but the Sardinian territory thus acquired soon furnished occasions of jealousy to the conquering allies, and there commenced between the two republics the long naval wars destined to terminate so fatally for Pisa. With not less adroitness than Venice, Genoa saw and secured all the advantages of the great carrying trade which the crusades created between Western Europe and the East. The seaports wrested at the same period from the Saracens along the Spanish and Barbary coasts became important Genoese colonies, whilst in the Levant, on the shores of the Black Sea, and along the banks of the Euphrates were erected Genoese fortresses of great strength. No wonder if these conquests generated in the minds of the Venetians and the Pisans fresh jealousy against Genoa, and provoked fresh wars; but the struggle between Genoa and Pisa was brought to a disastrous conclusion for the latter state by the battle of Meloria in 1284.
The commercial and naval successes of the Genoese during the middle ages were the more remarkable because, unlike their rivals, the Venetians, they were the unceasing prey to intestine discord—the Genoese commons and nobles fighting against each other, rival factions amongst the nobles themselves striving to grasp the supreme power in the state, nobles and commons alike invoking the arbitration and rule of some foreign captain as the sole means of obtaining a temporary truce. From these contests of rival nobles, in which the names of Spinola and Doria stand forth with greatest prominence, Genoa was soon drawn into the great vortex of the Guelph and Ghibelline factions; but its recognition of foreign authority—successively German, Neapolitan and Milanese—gave way to a state of greater independence in 1339, when the government assumed a more permanent form with the appointment of the first doge, an office held at Genoa for life, in the person of Simone Boccanera. Alternate victories and defeats of the Venetians and Genoese—the most terrible being the defeat sustained by the Venetians at Chioggia in 1380—ended by establishing the great relative inferiority of the Genoese rulers, who fell under the power now of France, now of the Visconti of Milan. The Banca di S. Giorgio, with its large possessions,
- ↑ See Notizie degli scavi (1898), 395 (A. d’Andrade), 464 (G. Ghirardini).
