[45-46] From the late 18th century, one of the most important changes in the foreign commerce of European nations was the growth of a massive importation of wheat. This wheat, needed to feed the ever more populous and more urbanized Western lands, was sought in ever more distant areas. Among its principal suppliers was the fertile steppe region of southern Russia. From the period of the Napoleonic wars, wheat from the South-Russian steppes flowed in large quantities to Western consumers, primarily through the new port city of Odessa, founded on the shores of the Black Sea by the Russian empress Catherine II, in 1794. The organization of this cereal trade has considerable interest, and profoundly affected the history of many European ports. Until the development of rapid communications (primarily through the telegraph) and of big, fast ships (primarily through the use of steam), a large element of speculation was inevitably present in this export trade. Even as they bore grain away from the port of Odessa, the shippers often remained ignorant of the latest prices and strongest markets in the West, and did not know the ultimate destination of the cereals they carried. The tariff policies of the Western states heightened this uncertainty. Between 1828 and the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846, one principal Western consumer, England, applied a sliding scale of tarrifs upon imported wheat, which made the volume of imports inversely dependent upon the abundance of the annual harvests. Most other Western states followed a similar policy. But the abundance of the annual local harvest was often difficult to predict, and so also were the level of tarrifs and the strength of the demand for imported cereals. These conditions favoured the use, in the sea transport of cereals, of intermediary or deposit ports. These were ports. close to the large population centres of Western Europe, where wheat imported from distant areas could be deposit or stored, while its owners determined where it could most profitably be sold. In the transport of Russian wheat, the chief of these deposit ports were found in the Western Mediterranean - Malta, Trieste, Genoa, Marseilles, and others. One of these ports we shall single out of for particular study here, as its role in the deposit trade was especially important, if not always typical: Livorno.