The Latin conquest and the subsequent redistribution of property in
the Latins’ favour did not alter the nature of Romania’s economy. Land
remained the main source of income, wealth and taxation, the agrarian
infrastructure of the countryside was hardly affected, and the basic pattern
of agricultural exploitation persisted. This continuity, furthered by
the inclusion of Greek officials in the Latins’ administration, is illustrated
by the survival of Byzantine administrative, fiscal and legal institutions
and practices, by the structure of the large estates of Frankish Achaia –
documented by fourteenth-century surveys – and by various agricultural
contracts. The Latin conquest, however, put an end to the dominance of the
Byzantine archontes in the financing of economic activities and definitively
abolished the Byzantine state’s restrictive control over particular branches
of manufacture and trade.
Central and western Greece and the Aegean islands, which stayed under
Frankish rule longer than the territories recovered by Byzantium in the
thirteenth century, saw ever stronger economic interaction between the
rural sector, the cities and long-distance maritime trade. The free flow of
cash between these sectors of the economy was furthered by various factors:
the temporary or permanent presence of Latins, mainly in coastal cities,
whose population grew; the supply of goods and services to merchants
and ships in transit; the expanding western demand for agricultural and
industrial commodities; and, finally, the infusion of liquid capital from the
west. This last process was promoted from the 1270s at the latest by the
activity of mercantile and banking companies from Siena (the Piccolomini
and Tolomei), and these were later joined by some from Florence (the
Cerchi, Bardi and Peruzzi). The range of their large-scale business stretched
from the Latin east to the fairs of Champagne and to England. In Latin
Greece, Clarence constituted their main credit centre, but they also operated
in Corinth, Thebes and the city of Negroponte.
The Italian merchants and bankers introduced new forms of profitsharing
ventures, credit, business and estate management, as well as ways of
marketing, and invested capital in the exploitation of rural land and in manufacturing.
Thus in Thebes, Genoese merchants acted as entrepreneurs,
financing the production of silk textiles from before 1240. We may safely
assume that Venetian merchants acted in a similar capacity, both in Thebes
and elsewhere. On the whole, the presence and activity of Italian bankers,
merchants and administrators from the second half of the thirteenth century
stimulated a growth in agricultural, pastoral and industrial productivity,
output and profit, and boosted the economy of the former western
provinces of Byzantium occupied by the Latins. Manufacturing, however,
took a different course. To be sure, the silk textiles of Thebes and other
centres of Latin Romania were still shipped to the west in the second half
of the thirteenth century. Yet the expanding and diversified manufacture
of prized silks in Italy, several of whose types were of Byzantine origin, and
the improvements in the quality of glass vessels produced in Venice, partly
intended for export to Romania, eventually stifled these same industries in
western and central Greece and the Aegean islands. These regions increasingly
supplied industrial raw materials to the west, while absorbing an ever
larger volume of western finished products.
An important aspect of the economic evolution of western and central
Greece and the Aegean islands after 1204 was the partial reorientation
towards the west of long-distance exports, which had been largely geared
towards Constantinople before the Fourth Crusade. TheGreek inhabitants
of these regions continued to participate in short-range and regional trade
and in transportation, by land and by sea, as well as in seasonal fairs. Yet the
Latins’ overall share in these activities grew at their expense, and from the
1270s the Greeks appear to have relied increasingly on Latin shipping, even
in the Aegean. The seaborne commerce of western and central Greece was
increasingly subordinated to the requirements, routes and seasonal rhythm
of long-distance maritime trade, dominated by Venetian merchants and
carriers who took advantage of Venice’s naval and diplomatic protection
and the infrastructure which its colonies and commercial outposts in the
easternMediterranean offered. This led to the growing integration of these
territories into a triangular trade pattern linking Romania with Italy and the
Levant. The vigour of the pirates and corsairs preying along the main sea
lanes of this network in the second half of the thirteenth century illustrates
the overall growth of maritime trade in the eastern Mediterranean in that
period.16
The economy of Latin Constantinople deserves special attention. It contracted
after the Latin conquest of 1204 for want of massive local consumption
or investment in high-grade manufacture, but revived shortly
afterwards. Its operation became overwhelmingly based on commercial
exchanges and the transit and transshipment of goods, functions already
performed before the Fourth Crusade. Constantinople’s economy was
boosted by Venice’s treaties with the Seljuq sultans of Rum, the emperors
of Nicaea, and various other powers in the easternMediterranean along
the sea route linking the City to Egypt. The strong position of Venice in
Constantinople ensured its merchants – whether itinerant or settled – a
dominant share in the City’s trade; Pisan, Anconitan, Amalfitan and
Provenc¸al merchants also participated in this trade, as did the Genoese
from 1232 onwards.
One of the most important economic effects of the Latin conquest of
Constantinople was to open up the Black Sea to unrestricted western commerce.
At first, however, the Latins appear to have relied upon local traders
who had traditionally supplied Constantinople, mainly with wheat, salt,
fish, hides and furs. The Latin merchants and carriers gradually extended
their ventures in the Black Sea. Yet only after the Mongols consolidated
their rule north of the Black Sea from around 1240 did the Latins markedly
increase the geographical, commercial and financial range of their operations
beyond the coast and penetrate deep inland. Some of them settled in
Sougdaia on the southern shore of the Crimea, making it a base for penetration
inland to Kiev and beyond, as well as for the export of slaves from
Mongol territory to theMediterranean. Significantly, theVenetiansNiccol`o
and Matteo Polo – father and uncle respectively of the famous Marco –
passed through Constantinople and Sougdaia in 1260 before undertaking
their journey into inner Asia. Latin Constantinople thus served as an
important transit station with a pivotal role in the integration of the Black
Sea andMediterranean trade systems. A sound knowledge and much experience
of economic resources, markets and trade routes in the Black Sea
and its hinterland were accumulated during the Latin period. They paved
the way for the swift and substantial expansion of Genoese and Venetian
trade and shipping in that region in the decade following the Byzantine
reconquest of Constantinople in 1261.17
World History
