little more than 5000 inhabitants. The company brought new life to the Fiuman economy and started many spin-offs (candle and rope factories, etc.). Industrial production in the city rose rapidly: in 1771 it was valued at 802,582 florins, in 1780 ƒ2,278,000. The value of imports in 1771 was ƒ1,187,000, in 1780 ƒ2,781,000. Exports in 1771 were valued at ƒ496,000, in 1780 ƒ1,340,000; but that valuation was probably even higher, according to the Ragusan diplomat Luka Sorkočević, who in 1782 stayed in Fiume. In his private diary he estimated the added value of the Fiuman economy (based on the value of its exported goods) at ƒ2.5 million. Corpus separatum During the 1740s, most of the trade of the Pannonian plain was starting to pass through Fiume and not Dubrovnik (Ragusa), which after the retreat of the Ottoman Empire never regained its lost ground. After a series of formal acts of protest by the Hungarian and Croat landed estates, Joseph II – during his 1775–1776 journey through Croatia, the littoral, and Venice – decided on the abolition of the Litorale Austriaco. In the same year the Provincia Mercantile was suspended. By Maria Theresa's handschrift of 2 October 1776, the city of Fiume and the Croatian seaboard, which had previously been under the same administration as the rest of the Austrian littoral, was annexed to the kingdoms of Croatia and Hungary. The empress donated these lands as compensation for those lands that were put under the direct imperial administration as the osterreichische Militargrenze (military frontier) against the Turks. Fiume was originally meant to be given to the Hungarian kingdom, with a view to fostering its trade; but since Hungary proper was some distant, under the act the city was annexed to Croatia whose territory began right beyond the city walls. Count , acting as Hungarian royal commissioner, took over the town from Baron Pasquale Ricci, the representative of the Intendancy from Trieste. Although the kingdom of Croatia was united with that of Hungary, and together they formed the "Lands of the Holy Crown of St Stephen", the Fiumani protested; and with the support of the Hungarian Vice-Regency Council, two-and-a-half years later Maria Theresa (as Queen of Hungary) issued a royal rescript of 23 April 1779 by which Fiume was directly annexed to Hungary as a corpus separatum adnexum sacra hungaricae coronae (separate land attached to the Hungarian crown; i.e., not as a part