Draft:Stevan Riznich

Stevan Riznić and Stefano Riznich (1750-1819) was a wealthy Serbian-Italian shipowner and merchant who lived and worked in Trieste most of his life. His son is Jovan Riznich (Giovanni Riznich).

Biography

The ancestor mariner-merchant of Stevan Riznić hailed from Dubrovnik who settled in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina and as trade continued to expand his kin eventually opened an office in the Port of Trieste where new opportunities in the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century bean to flourish. Stevan was well-educated and spoke several languages. Early in his career, Stefan mastered at least twelve vessels for prominent Trieste merchants before he purchased his first vessel. From there on he began acquiring more vessels as trade and demand grew. He also served as a trade agent for the Austrian government, bartering for goods with small and big local merchants in both the Austrian and the Ottoman empires where his kith and kin lived and worked. He expanded his trade to include other European cities, including Odessa and Kiev.

Stevan Riznić was one of the Trieste's wealthiest merchants and the range of his business interests was very wide. Throughout his career spanning from the mid-eighteenth-century to the first two decades of the nineteenth-century, he traded fish, cloth, wine, grain to a wide variety of European, Turkish, Russian, West Indian ports. He owned fifty vessels throughout the height of his career, many of which were schooners and brigantines which he owned in partnership with local partners who were also involved in the fisheries, commerce, trade, banking and insurance.