Trade

In Mediterranean

Between the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic, on the Asian, African and European continents, trade and commerce have always transcended the borders of empires, and empires have never ceased to change hands, from antiquity to our present era. Despite the absence of precise figures, we know that the bulk of trading took place on a much smaller scale, in the exchanges within a village, between two communes, or between villages and neighbouring towns. But in terms of the Mediterranean, trade between regions—the steppes of Asia, the Silk Route, the Indian Ocean and the Sahara—as well as international and inter-continental trade, while proportionally smaller in volume, was nevertheless a major factor in shaping the history of the old continents and of humanity in general; indeed, with war and religion, trade has been fundamental in bringing peoples in contact with each other and in their evolution. The Middle Ages and modern times were pivotal in changing the face of economics, both technically and in terms of developments in commerce that altered the very face of European societies, and eventually the whole of humanity. Throughout these changes in the passage towards the capitalist era, the Mediterranean has taken centre stage.

Succeeding the great empires of antiquity of Rome and Persia, the major protagonists in commerce and trade throughout the Middle Ages (7th-11th centuries), stretching from the Mediterranean to China, North Africa and around the Indian Ocean, were the Roman Empire of the East (Byzantium) and Islam, along with China, India and the states of Southeast Asia, but also the black kingdoms of the Niger region. Up to the 10th century, the Mediterranean appeared to have passed into second place. It was only in the early 11th century that the Latins, and more precisely the Italians, began to play a major role in international trade, controlling the exchanges of the whole of the Mediterranean, when, in the early 13th century, the Crusades took hold of Constantinople, opening up the Black Sea to the aspirations of Venice and later Genoa. A fundamental step was taken when the expanding “New World”, in what would henceforth lead to trade on a planetary scale, reinforced the role of little Europe, gradually displacing, between the 16th and 18th centuries, the centre of gravity towards the Atlantic Ocean. But the Mediterranean has always remained a very significant area in terms of trade and commerce; in fact, during that time, the influence of the Islamic epoch had reached as far as Indonesia and into central Africa, and thus the Islamic states maintained their position as indispensable trading partners in international commerce—largely tributary to the Europeans, as was the rest of the world—but also because within the trading network they simply could not be avoided, even before the opening of the Suez Canal and the extraction of petrol. From the 15th century onwards, from the Balkans to Iran, the Ottoman Empire and what later became Safavid Persia became the new intermediaries, and that much more important when it came to trade between the East and West as they had well-structured, strong states that already possessed a vibrant trade within their own borders. Meanwhile, the rise of Northern India under the Muslim domination from the early 11th century and that of the Tang dynasty in China (618 – 907), followed by the Mongols all the way to the Ming dynasty (1268 – 1644), afforded considerable weight to the East, even if relations with Japan and later the Malay Archipelago passed directly, from the 16th century, by way of the Pacific Ocean, and to begin with in mediation with the Portuguese. 

In reality, leading up to the 13th century, innovations in trade whereby transactions such as accounts, deeds, bills of exchange and insurance policies were actually recorded increased significantly the amount and presence of written deeds and acts. While these give us a perfunctory idea of the nature of trade at the time, we do not have the exact statistics to be able to take full measure of its scope and circumstances. Hence, for many years, the works of Henri Pirenne, in particular his posthumous text Mohamet et Charlemagne (1936), along with all the amendments to the book that followed, have made for a rather limited view of trade from Late Antiquity to the dawning of the 10th century in the Mediterranean, and we have tended to view it as the sole theatre of the vying of powers between Christians and Muslims, along with acts of piracy. The most important trading routes, it would seem, sought to bypass this economic “black hole” by crossing the steppes of Russia where the Vikings and Turks predominated, or the Saharan Desert, controlled by the Berbers. The Arabs and Persians, meanwhile, took to the seas, travelling as far as China, beginning in the 8th century, before the Indians, the Malays and the Chinese began to move in the other direction towards the West, again by sea. The largest political and economic centre during this period was comprised of Iraq and western Iran, following the founding of Baghdad (762) by the Abbasid caliphate (750-1258) that essentially opened the way for the  great Silk Route with its flow of Chinese products and the vibrant cities through which the Silk Road passed of Khorasan and, in particular, Bukhara.

It wasn’t until the 10th century that the Islamic capitals of the Mediterranean—Córdoba, Kairouan and especially Cairo, founded by the Fatamids in 969—held their own as important centres of trade and vibrant markets, competing with eternal Constantinople, which was rapidly expanding under the thrust of its Macedonian emperors (8667-1057). These capitals grew rich from their taxation of the peasants who paid the major share, the agricultural sector thus sustaining the cities as it continued to develop. The relatively dense main urban centres in the south of the Iberian Peninsula and near the shores of the Mediterranean of the Maghreb and in the large plains and valleys, from the Atlantic to Tripolitania, or again along the Nile Valley as far as Syria, formed an often dense fabric that helped to further trade in the Mediterranean regions of Islam. The Anatolia of Antalya in Trebizond with, along the way, Caesarea and Ankara were also very active in commerce and trade, making for a particularly favourable situation for the Turks when, from the early 11th century onwards, under the control of the Saljukids, they began to settle on the Anatolian plateau, becoming the new masters of Islamic Asia from the west of the Indus river. The Thrace region around Constantinople and Thessalonika, the central regions of Greece, toward Corinth and then Athens, as well as the Balkans and the Danube region comprised, all the way up to the Turkish conquest, a rich backcountry for the Greeks.

In the 11th century, the Latin regions took over. An increase in demographic growth, already true of the Pyrenean valleys, for instance, towards the end of the 9th century, due largely to the slow but sustained advancement in crafts and agricultural products, fostered the frontiers of the Mediterranean colonies—the coastal valleys of Septamania, the Italian coast, the conquered Spanish regions, despite al-Andalus, with the exceptional influx of people along the routes of Saint James of Compostela. By the end of the 11th century, regional urbanised areas from Italy to Catalonia and Navarre and, along the way, the Rhone valley and Languedoc Roussillon, with Northern Italy at the forefront, offered coastal cities the means of pushing back the Muslims and of assuring control of the Mediterranean routes.

The Latin extension, as much militarily—the “Reconquista” on the Iberian Peninsula, the Norman conquest of Sicily and the formation of the Latin states, which lasted two hundred years—as  economically, with more long-lasting effects on the eastern and Maghreb shores of the Mediterranean, was not at odds with the rising ambitions of the Byzantine and Muslim regions: for example, the populations on the Maghreb coast continued to grow as its coastal towns developed, especially towards the late 10th century—as much on the Mediterranean side as the Atlantic. With the advent of the 12th century, the ports of Ceuta, Bougie and Tunis grew in importance, attracting ships from Marseille, Pisa and Genoa. Bougie, founded in 1076, and Tunis became the capitals of major states and eventually took over from the inland cities, those between the steppes and the desert such as Kairouan, which were by then in steep decline. The accords between Muslim states and the large Italian ports, joined by Barcelona and later the Balearic Islands and Valencia from the 13th to the 14th centuries, also contributed to the wealth of the Muslim urban populations in the port cities. During this period, the bulk of trade and commerce took place here and the port cities thus controlled trading between the backcountries of the Maghreb and the Latin merchants. Nevertheless, when trade seized up—in the 14th century especially—piracy again became rampant, in Bougie, for instance, until the expansion of Algiers began to take over in the 15th century.

The Ottoman conquest brought with it a new set of conditions for trade in the Mediterranean and Asia. Istanbul was rapidly becoming, once again, an essential economic power, both as the capital of one of the richest states, particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries, and as one of the most populated cities, with up to 700,000 inhabitants by the end of the 16th century. The combined power of the sultan and the state resulted in substantial tax revenues which were redistributed to the great benefit of trade and commerce, especially in the sector of luxury goods. Just as the empire was large so too was the scale of its control over a vast part of the Mediterranean, reaching all the way to Algeria and across the Balkans, and making the court of the Sublime Porte the ultimate intermediary between Europe—more than ever the initiator and principal beneficiary of Mediterranean trade—and Asia, despite the often troubled border between the Sultanate and Safavid Persia. The Ottomans welcomed trade with the Europeans, despite some conflict and mistrust when it came to “progress”, but all the while taking back control, during the course of the 15th to 16th centuries, of the great eastern islands—Rhodes, Cyprus and Crete—as well as of Christian trading posts under military orders, those of the Genoese and the Venetians. The Dutch, followed by the French, especially from Marseille, were also very active in trade from the early 17th century; in the 18th and 19th it was the English who affirmed superior naval and economic power. Yet the intermediary role of their Mediterranean partners continued to be essential, that of Malta, for instance which, after the Turkish defeat of 1565, came to establish itself firmly during the next century as having the main hand in the trade of prisoners, in cohorts with an organised piracy based in Algiers and other places such as Crete; and as a result, the island of the Knights of Malta became the hub of trade between Europe and the great Eastern ports, such as Alexandria, along with Messina and Sicily. Leading up to the First World War, the military and economic clout of Western Europe finally succeeded in undermining the Ottoman hegemony. The War issued in a new era, bringing with it the great upheavals of the twentieth century.

C. P.