Maritime trade routes

Get the Flash player

In Mediterranean

Late Antiquity was marked by profound changes in the Mediterranean which had considerable impact on marine traffic. The era of the High Roman Empire until the sixth century was dominated by traffic on the major maritime routes linking the bread baskets of the Mediterranean to major Roman capitals: the principle of the annona system used large boats to deliver grain and consumer products like wine to Rome and then towards Constantinople, founded in 330. This seems to have made up an essential part of maritime trade. Convoys of ships going to the major cities left Carthage to where Tunisian wheat was delivered, and then went to Syracuse where the wheat from Sicily was loaded, before setting sail to the port of Alexandria, where the products of the Nile Valley were loaded. These key waterways were also used by a number of vessels that provided food to the largest cities of the Empire. They mirrored the routes used by a busy regional trade, with passengers being transported to the islands, ports and anchorages along the coast, but it is impossible to calculate the volume for their activities. Only the discovery of wrecked ships, amphorae, ceramics, coins, stamps etc. makes it possible to guess the origins and destinations of cargoes carried by all those boats, from smaller coastal vessels to the great ships of the annona.

With the crisis in the sixth century and the changes caused by the Arab conquest, these large convoys disappeared, as did the tangible records which could have provided us with information on the traffic. However, other changes took place during the late seventh century and eighth century and appear in other sources. First, the compilation of maritime laws known as the Maritime Laws of Rhodes, then new, more economical, ship-building techniques were the visible signs of new forms of navigation, better suited to the situation created by the fact that the sea was no longer controlled by the Roman Empire and by economic changes. Navigation changed and short or medium distance routes were preferred to major routes. Smaller vessels with curved bows enabled them to wash up to moorages or places to take in fresh water, with routes that took no longer than a day to navigate. The Book of the Prefect of the Byzantine emperors gives us some indications about the straits zone, for example details of the livestock shipped from the capital to Bithynia and Paphlagonia. From Thessaly and Bulgaria, boats carrying fabrics and other essentials converged. This meant that boats became permanent habitats for their sailors, entailing, for example, the construction of galleys. However, even though the boats were no longer the size of the annona, direct crossings never disappeared. Thus, some eighth century Arab sources and Egyptian papyri indicate that long after the Arab conquest, ships came from all over the Mediterranean to Alexandria and that sometimes, always between April and late September, they crossed the Mediterranean, going straight from Seville to Syrian ports. The Byzantine dromons connected their capital directly to Sicily. However, conditions in the High Middle Ages finally led to a halt in the major trade routes of the Roman Empire. These were replaced by a new system.

The Arab geographers, Ibn Hawqal (circa 970), al-Bakri (d. 1096) and al-Idrisi (circa 1054) left us many testimonies of sea routes learned from sailors at least since the tenth century, when the great expansion of sailing in the Mediterranean Sea began. Almost all along the shores of the inland sea, moorages allowed boats to stop every evening after a day of navigation (or what was known as a day of navigation, approximately 50 km or 30 miles). This density of harbours is a good illustration of the density of navigation at the time. This type of travel, rather than an economic collapse, explains the decline of purpose-built ports. However, some routes stand out: from the second half of the ninth century, sailors from Islamic countries regularly travelled the distance between the ports of south-east Spain and those in the middle of the coast of North Africa. These same sailors, pirates, attacked the Christian coasts from Catalonia to the Adriatic. Andalusian traders were familiar with the winds and currents that drove them from the Balearic Islands to Sicily, then onto Tunisia and finally along the coasts of North Africa. Sometimes they went even farther, to Egypt. Letters from Jewish merchants of the eleventh century found in the Cairo Genizah gave similar routes, but they preferred direct routes to major ports of the Islamic countries: From Alexandria, outpost of the Egyptian capital and from the Indian ocean via the Red Sea, up to Mahdia, Palermo and Almeria, the largest port in the Muslim West Mediterranean until it was sacked by the Genovese in 1147.

The Byzantines, after recovering Crete in 961 and Cyprus four years later, secured the Aegean Sea and at the same time made the Black Sea one of their major sea routes. At the time the Danube region supplied wheat to Constantinople. Anatolia and the Balkans, following the Via Egnatia, also shipped products along routes to major ports such as Thessaloniki. Large monasteries such as the Athos monastery had their own fleet that they used for regional trade.

The rise of the Latin countries trade, especially that of major Italian ports – particularly from the twelfth century - increased long-distance trips. The larger size of the boats, which reached a high capacity thanks to their round hulls and their aft superstructure, together with technical improvements to the rigging and the use of stern rudder, gave the Latin peoples a definite edge. At the end of the eleventh century the cost of transporting passengers and goods had come down. In the second half of the twelfth century, the Venetians, the Genoese, the Pisans, and to a lesser extent the Provencal sailors sailed most of the many crossings between the West and the East Roman States and to Byzantine and Muslims ports, often in convoys (Venetian muda). However, what could be termed the "capitalist" organisation of these major ports, then the organisation of the Catalans that gave Latin trade its clear advantage: the improvement of associations, such as commenda, followed by the growth of insurance, incited Venetians, Genoese and Pisans to take more risks. Securing routes, for example the Adriatic route for Venice, was a factor, but more importantly, the financial capacity of these city-states allowed for the sustained funding of shipbuilding. It was a private activity in Tyrrhenian ports and the preserve of the state in Venice, Byzantium and Muslim countries. The collective capacity of Latin ports to maintain and renew their fleets is certainly one of the main reasons why they had complete control of the Mediterranean, although Muslim regions were still able to use their boats, especially along the coasts of Africa and the Near East.

Thus, the major Italian ports controlled the main trade routes. Thanks to the success of its 1204 assault against Constantinople, Venice also secured the maritime stopovers (Cordoba, Crete, Negrepont), but it was quickly challenged by Genoa. The Byzantines could not prevent the Genoese from reaching the Sea of Azov, thereby opening a new and more direct route towards the steppes of Central Asia. The Mongol attacks in the fourteenth century and the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans, and Anatolia right to Egypt, followed by their taking control of the eastern and central regions of North Africa up to Algiers, did not reverse the trend established in the Middle Ages. The Turks nevertheless controlled all the eastern islands, although they failed to take Malta.

The major trade routes in the Mediterranean remained under the control of European ports and states, including Holland in the seventeenth century and England in the eighteenth century. Europeans were also welcome in the major eastern ports, Istanbul for example. Since the tenth century, Latin/Roman* merchants were regularly present in the ports of Muslim states, Alexandria for instance. With decade-long truces and trade treaties, as well as with the establishment of funduk in major capital cities and major ports of Islam, they gained access to the Muslim lands to the east, extending the sea routes. Thus, in the thirteenth century the Venetian Marco Polo arrived in Laodicea in Syria, where his countrymen benefited from profitable treaties signed with the Mamluks, before following the Silk Road to the Mongol capital of Kublai Khan in China.

The wars between Christians and Muslims, as well as pirates, who were particularly active during periods of crisis, did not really disturb trade (and when they did, only sporadically) and were certainly less of a threat than the persistent dangers of the sea. Since insurances covered ship owners if their boats sank, or if they needed money to buy back prisoners, especially in Algiers and Malta, there was a commercial aspect to acts of piracy. Throughout the Middle Ages and modern times, trade and shipping routes of the Mediterranean were an uninterrupted, vital link between the opposite shores of the Mediterranean.

C. P.