There were three distinct areas of Latin trade in the Aegean and the Balkans:
the Peloponnese, the Venetian islands and the Genoese possessions. The
Peloponnese had long been considered the preserve of Venice, which had
gained total freedom of trade upon the creation of a Frankish principality
there. Records from the earliest known Venetian assemblies refer to
Venetians trading between Clarence and Apulia. This port was in effect
the most convenient on the routes between Italy and the principality of
Achaia, particularly once the latter passed into the Angevin domain. A
Venetian consul saw to it that things ran smoothly, though with some local
disruptions. The Venetians brought in metals and cloth, loading their vessels
with salt, cereals, cotton, oil, raw silk and raisins from the Morea; the
mudae were authorised to make a stop at Clarence, and unarmed ships were
allowed to collect merchandise left in transit by the galleys. The Genoese
also did business at the port, investing almost 4,620 livres in sixteen contracts
between 1274 and 1345. On a smaller scale, the people of Dubrovnik
were also interested in the principality’s ports, buying wheat, hides, silk and
linen and selling woven cloth, wine and cheeses.
The second half of the fourteenth century was less favourable from
the Latin point of view: Clarence followed the decline of the principality
of Achaia and its port suffered stagnation, which Pero Tafur noted
on his travels there around 1435. Patras appears to have taken over as the
main trading port in the area; the Venetian senate estimated that in 1400
merchandise worth 80,000 ducats had been imported from Patras, with
a further 60–70,000 ducats’-worth in 1401. It is understandable that in
these circumstances Venice accepted from Patras’ archbishop responsibility
for protecting the city in 1408, seeking a replacement for the decline
of Clarence. The Venetians also played a significant role in the Byzantine
despotate until the early fifteenth century, bringing raw materials and manufactured
goods and buying wheat, cotton, honey and raw silk. However,
Despot Constantine Palaiologos’ conquest of Clarence and Patras in 1428
put paid to this cordial relationship. In the absence of conclusive documents,
it is hard to evaluate the economic role of the Catalan duchies in
this intra-Mediterranean exchange.13
To the south of Messenia, the two ports of Coron and Modon were of
major interest to Venice. They were, to use an expression of the senate, the
‘principal eyes’ of the Dominante, and of prime strategic importance. They
surveilled the movements of enemy fleets and served as a base for the reconquest
of rebellious Crete in 1363–4. As staging-posts and warehouses, they
received the convoys of merchant galleys which had to call atModon every
year: bills of lading preserved in the Datini archives in Prato list the various
commodities – most often of eastern origin such as cotton, sugar and spices
– which the galleys would pick up.With their rich agricultural hinterlands,
Coron andModon exported agricultural goods and, most importantly, the
products of local stock-raising. Understandably, when faced with Greek
and Turkish incursions, Venice tried to protect its two isolated enclaves,
and from 1390 to 1430 sought to reunite them territorially through a series
of annexations.14
It is in the Venetian-dominated islands of the Aegean that we can see
the Dominante’s mercantile dirigisme most clearly; Venice hoped to satisfy
its own needs by developing agricultural production there, and aimed to
create transit centres for merchandise bound for or coming fromthe Levant.
Crete enjoyed an exceptional position in this respect. It was the point of
departure for regional exchanges with the Turkish territories of AsiaMinor,
which supplied it with slaves, wheat, horses and alum, and to which Crete
sent textiles, wine and soap; likewise for exchanges with the Cyclades –
which suffered from a chronic shortage of cereals – and with Negroponte,
Coron and Modon. But above all the Cretan ports, first and foremost
Candia, played a vital part in Mediterranean trade. In effect, they saw two
convoys of galleys pass every year: those of Cyprus, then those of Syria and
Alexandria. Before the Genoese capture of Famagusta in 1373, trade with
Cyprus was of prime importance: Crete imported Cypriot salt and sugar
and exported cereals there, and this trade was dominated by the Corner
family, who had possessions in Crete and around Piskopi. The galleys
of Syria and Alexandria brought spices, silk and cotton, with the result
that Crete became the repository for Mediterranean trade’s most valuable
products. Finally, the Dominante regarded the island as its wheat granary,
since Crete provided more than a third of its supplies; wheat was a state
monopoly and the great landowners could not export it elsewhere without
the senate’s authorisation.Other products fostered trade betweenCrete and
Venice, including wine from Malvasia (‘malmsey’), dessert grapes, cotton,
wood, cheeses and hides, and this trade came to dominate the entire Cretan
economy, provoking frequent revolts, even from the ranks of Venetian fiefholders.
15
The island of Negroponte, divided between Venice and the terciers, was
a compulsory stop for the muda to Romania, which put in there either
on the outward journey at the end of August, or on its return from Constantinople
in November. It was thus pivotal to Venetian trade in lower
Romania, importing and distributing western products such as woollen
and linen cloth, which piled up in the island’s warehouses, as well as taking
in products from Greece, such as wood, hides, acorns from kermes oaks
(yielding crimson dye), wax, cotton, cereals and raisins, for transport to the
west. Moreover, Negroponte’s principal port of Chalkis was a stop for the
trade in wood, cereals, hides and cloth between Crete andMacedonia. But
there was no longer a question of state-organised trade confined to spring
and autumn passages along the coast of Thessaly; most were left to private
enterprise. Thessaloniki was now the hub of these multi-part voyages. The
Venetians had a consul there and their small merchant colony amassed
wheat from Macedonia and the Bulgarian plains and sold woollen and
linen cloth from the west. Their trade continued, even after the Ottomans
occupied the town.Merchants from Dubrovnik had been active in Thessaloniki
since 1234, when its lord, Manuel Angelos (1230–7), granted them a
privilege. The Genoese, too, tried to establish themselves in Thessaloniki;
they had a consul there in 1305 and invested in the town around that time.
However, they did not act in liaison with those making for the Aegean’s
east coast, the heart of the Genoese domain from the end of the thirteenth
century on.16
Chios witnessed the development of trade in mastic and alum under the
rule of the Zaccaria (1304–29). Alum became very important after 1346,
when the mahonesi secured control of it. It was indispensable for fixing dye
in cloth, and came from the mines of theOld andNew Phokaia on the coast
of Asia Minor. However, the Giustiniani also tried to control production
of alum from other sources in Ottoman territory : Koloneia, K¨utahya,
Ulubad and Kyzikos. Chios was thus the great repository for alum, which
ships and cogs ferried to Flanders for the textile industry. The transport of
such a heavy product undoubtedly lay at the root of the medieval ‘nautical
revolution’, which saw square-rigged cogs replacing the Latin ships in use
in the thirteenth century, putting Genoa ahead of other maritime towns in
the race for heavy tonnage (see fig. 60). Until the loss of Phokaia in 1455,
Genoese alum occupied a key place in the exchanges between east and
west; it stimulated shipbuilding and an increase in the size of ships, and
dictated a regular shipping circuit, directly linking Chios with Flanders
and England.17
same time amassing the products of Anatolia in its warehouses. Finally, the
island lay on the axis of two shipping routes, one via the Straits north to
Constantinople and the Black Sea, the other leading to Syria and Alexandria
by way of Rhodes and Famagusta. It was the hub of Genoese international
trade in the east.18
From 1355, the Genoese had another base in the same region, the island
of Lesbos, which had passed into the hands of the Gattilusio family. Apart
from the alum from Kallones on the shore of the island’s gulf, the port of
Mytilene received Genoese trade on its way from Egypt to Constantinople,
via Rhodes and Chios. This trade was primarily in Pontic slaves being
exported to Egypt to swell the ranks of the Mamluk army. The seizure of
the northern Aegean islands and of the port of Ainos at the mouth of the
Maritsa by the Gattilusio at the beginning of the fifteenth century gave the
Genoese access to the cornfields of Thrace and the Bulgarian plains.19
This picture of western trade in the Aegean would not be complete
without some reference to the fluctuations and hindrances characterising
fourteenth-century commerce in general. Papal embargoes on trade with
the Saracens were heeded to varying degrees until 1345–50, and during the
first half of the century this gave great significance to the sea routes to
Rhodes, Cyprus and Lesser Armenia, where the harbour of Ayas was the
outlet for a famous ‘Mongol route’ leading to India and China. Crete
then had a decisive role as port of call and warehouse for all Venetian
shipping, while Negroponte was an essential staging-post for the galleys
to Constantinople. In the second half of the century, the issuing of papal
licences allowing Latins to traffic in Syria and Egypt led to a proliferation in
trading links. Cyprus, partially dominated by the Genoese, was to a large
extent abandoned by the Venetian merchant galleys, while Chios added
the profits derived from its intermediary role in north–south trade and
trafficking with Turkish Anatolia to its large-scale dealings with the west.
Despite everything, western commerce in the Aegean suffered the setbacks
which engulfed the fourteenth century as a whole. Both the figures
from the incanti of Venetian galleys gathered by Thiriet and St¨ockly, and
those collected from the Karati Peyre register by the author, show very
high levels of trade with Romania in the first half of the fourteenth century,
followed by a fall-off in trade from 1350 and a recession lasting until
at least 1410–20. Lower production in the west after the Black Death in
1348, an increase in Ottoman incursions in the Aegean, depopulation in
Genoese and Venetian territories of which their authorities complained and
the development of piracy – which finds an echo in all sources, beginning
with the business letters of the Datini archive – all combine to explain
this drop. But war never hindered the expansion of business for long; the
Venetians and Genoese were able to come to terms with the Turks and the
despots of the Morea. As for piracy, it would be a mistake to overestimate
its effects; the goods seized by the pirates re-entered the economic system
sooner or later, burdened only by an additional tax. After several decades of
crisis, western trade resumed its expansion in the Aegean after 1420, more
diversified in its agents, its objectives and its results.
World History
