Around AD 1000 the Mediterranean was criss-crossed by a huge number of diverse vessels shifting people and merchandise back and forth. Although an open system, it was dominated by merchants operating out of Alexandria, Mahdia and Palermo. Hundred years later Italian cities came to dominate. Article by Romney David Smith explores this shift.
Calamity and Transition: Re-Imagining Italian Trade in the Eleventh-Century Mediterranean
By Romney David Smith
In: Past & Present Vol. 228, Issue 1: pp. 15 – 56
ABSTRACT:
In the year 1000, the Mediterranean thrummed with a commerce as vital as any that has graced its waters. With its heart in Egypt, a trading network spanned the sea from east to west. Its merchants were chiefly Muslims and Jews, and their ships hailed from ports in the House of Islam: Alexandria, Mahdia and Palermo; as witnessed by the evidence from the Geniza archives from Cairo.
At this time “merchants of various nationalities were able to traverse the Mediterranean, restricted only by risk and opportunity, on ships of disparate origins. Thee ships were open to paying passengers, who might exert influence over their routes, and were not necessarily bound by political divisions. Goods regularly changed hands, and travelled on the ships under the eyes of the merchants or their agents. There was no distinction between trading vessels, state-owned ships, passenger ships, or pirate ships. Nor were merchants clearly defined” (p. 35). These characteristics suggest an open network, writes Smith, characterized by opportunities followed by all an sundry: Christians, Jews, Muslims, merchants, peddlers and pilgrims. As such it was quite different to monopolistic corporate bodies like the late medieval Northern European Hansa or the late medieval system of commerce operated by Venetian investors who worked to import goods to Venice shipped on Venetian ships.
According to Romney David Smith this system did not change radically during the 11th century. What changed was the ownership and origin of the ships. This process was fostered by “The Great Calamity”: the contraction and even dissolution of the former mighty political power-spheres of the Fatimid Caliphate, The Umayyad Caliphate, The Byzantine Empire and the Italian Kingdom. Whether caused by climate change and environmental disasters (famines caused by cash-cropping and plagues) or civil wars is not necessarily important to decide for Smith. His interest is to note the de facto dissolution of these former mighty powers into what in a Muslim context came to be known as Taifas and in a Christian context turned into the city-states.
This void created a series of opportunities for the merchants and tradesmen operating out of the Italian regions, while Southern dominance of the network waned. A significant witness to this shift is the number of Italian cities, which were mentioned as partners in the Mediterranean trade-network. In 970 -1040 Muslims registered five ports on the Italian peninsula. In 1150 the number had increased to 33. (p. 53)
“A century later, the situation had thus been transformed: Italian merchants traversed the sea, and their ships emerged from the quays of Pisa, Genoa or Amalfi. By the late twelfth century, once prosperous North African entrepôts were begging for Italian patronage”, writes Smith
He continues: “Abrupt shifts in maritime hegemony are not rare, but the economic transition of the eleventh-century Mediterranean has attracted little attention, perhaps because of the sense of manifest destiny that has usually accompanied it in accounts of European predominance. Crusade narratives, for instance, often take for granted the seaborne supremacy that made them possible. And from a long-term perspective, the outlines of this economic transition are well known: first, the direction of trade was reversed from south to north; second, the trade techniques of the south were adopted in the north. What we do not know is how this reversal took place.
It is the purpose of this very interesting paper by Romney David Smith to propose a mechanism whereby the open Mediterranean trading-network of the 10th century fostered remarkable opportunities at a time when the power-centres on the southern coast of the Mediterranean lost their former steam. In the end this led to the reversal of the political power-play in the region where Muslim expansion was eventually replaced by Crusading.
FEATURED PHOTO:
The Madrid Skylitzes is a richly illustrated illuminated manuscript of the Synopsis of Histories (Σύνοψις Ἱστοριῶν), by John Skylitzes, which covers the reigns of the Byzantine emperors from the death of Nicephorus I in 811 to the deposition of Michael IV in 1057. The manuscript was produced in Sicily in the 12th century, and is now at the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid, with the shelfmark MS Graecus Vitr. 26-2. The drawing shows a fierce fight with Greek Fire.