The Bohemian towns had petitioned Ferdinand III to refine their own raw materials into more finished goods for export, and Johann Joachim Becher, the most original and influential of the Austrian cameralists, became the leading force in attempting this conversion.
He then subsequently helped create a Kunst- und Werkhaus in which foreign masters trained non-guild artisans in the production of finished goods.
An edict by Leopold I in 1689 had granted the government the right to monitor and control the number of masters and cut down on the monopoly effect of guild operations.
Yet, by leaning more seriously on trade and commerce, Austrian cameralism helped to transfer attention to the troubles of the monarchy’s urban economies.
Before his death, Ferdinand III had already taken some corrective steps by attempting to ease the debts of the Bohemian towns and to put limits on some of the land-holding nobility’s commercial rights.
One of the big obstacles for the implementation of these policies was the Venetian monopoly on the Adriatic which effectively prevented ships form other countries to fare freely on this closed sea at the time known also as the “Gulf of Venice”.
In addition to the Emperor himself, Chancellor Philipp Ludwig Wenzel von Sinzendorf was a driving force behind the founding of the trading company that had a capital stock of 1 million thalers.
The Ostend Company was eventually closed down in 1731 following British pressure as part of the Treaty of Vienna creating an alliance between the two states.
The new empress Maria Theresia did not give up and in a profoundly changed environment founded in Vienna a new Commercien Ober-Directorium in 1749, upon which all the commercial affairs of the empire is centred.
In 1749 Maria Theresa issued the „Haupt-Resolution" by which the civil and military Capitan of Trieste is put under the control of the Comercien Ober Directorium seated in Vienna.
[4] In 1759 the Compagnie privilégiée de Temesvár (called by the Kommerzial-Intendanz in Trieste also Jánosháza company) aimed at the export of Hungarian and Banat agricultural products (salted meat, tobacco, candles, tallow).
Its greatest success came during the Seven Years' War (reaching its peak in 1763 – 65) when it supplied France through Genoa of the goods she had previously imported from its American possessions.
The turn happened when Charles Proli from Antwerp together with the Triestine commercial house Urban Arnold & Cie company provided the plant with Dutch personnel and equipment.