The First Oil Monopoly, Signed by the Emperor
Printed privilege for Bartholomew Coreis, signed.
Folio (193 x 295 mm). 11, (1) pp. With large papered seal. Contemp. marbled wrappers.
€ 4,500.00
An Imperial privilege establishing a five-year trade monopoly for olive oil within the Austrian hereditary principalities, to be exercised by an oil company (Bartholomew Coreis & Co.) against payment of half a florin for every hundredweight of oil, as well as tolls and fees, to the treasury. With autograph signature of the short-lived Emperor Joseph and two counter-signatures, one by the court chancellor Johann Friedrich Baron Seilern (1646-1715, previously the architect of the ill-fated marriage of Princess Palatine Elisabeth Charlotte and the Duke of Orléans, later author of the Pragmatic Sanction). The owner of this early oil company could not be traced; he may be related to the Greek scholar Adamantios Korais, born in 1748 (his father Ioannes was a native of Chios).
Evenly browned due to paper; small paper flaw in center of gutter; contemporary binding professionally repaired in the fold.
Codex Austriacus III, p. 540-542. Beitraege zur Geschichte der boehmischen Laender 23 (1878), p. 422f.
