After the Islamic conquest to Spain, passing through the Maghreb in the VIIand and VIIIand centuries, commercial exchanges developed considerably in the Mediterranean. To theand century, this crossroads of three civilizations, Latin, Byzantine and Muslim, is traversed by multiple maritime routes that link West and East. From the XIIand century, the Mediterranean and the northern seas (North and Baltic seas) were to become the two great commercial crossroads of medieval Europe.
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From the end of the VIIIand century, the city of Baghdad (founded in 762) represents the hub of world trade towards which the main routes converge.
Trade in the Middle Ages in the East
Muslim merchants use land and sea routes to travel across their vast empire. They manage to venture into the Far East to the limits of the known world (China), from where they bring back ceramics and silks. The caliphs encourage the development of trade and the merchants enjoy great prestige in Islamic society: they have legal protection and a special banking system.
To theand century, Baghdad loses its dominant position in favor of Cairo, when the Fatimid caliphs establish their domination over Egypt and Syria. Part of the eastern traffic (which passed through the Persian Gulf) was diverted to the ports of the Red Sea, transported by caravans to the Nile and then to Cairo. The city ofAlexandria becomes an essential port for exchanges with the Christian or Muslim West.
Trade in the Middle Ages in the Mediterranean
The Mediterranean is the place of a major event of the Middle Ages: the crusades, the first of which was preached in 1095, led to the constitution of Latin States in the Holy Land. The Mediterranean area remains the privileged area for commercial exchanges, transmission of cultural and scientific knowledge. The development of great commerce in the Middle Ages owes little to the Crusades, which were above all military enterprises initiated by Christianity. Despite almost permanent clashes, commercial links between East and West are not interrupted: borrowings from the East (spices, fruits, paper, astrolabe, nautical charts, etc.) are very numerous.
The Reconquered (wars of the Christian kingdoms of Spain to reconquer the Moslem territories) supports the arrival of the Catalan merchants and the rise of the port of Barcelona. Most of the traffic fromAl Andalus and Maghreb to Syria and Egypt, however, was carried out by ships from four Italian maritime republics, Amalfi, Pisa, Venice and Genoa, which developed their commercial influence throughout the Mediterranean area. They import raw materials (cotton, silk, spices) and export textiles, weapons, glass, in demand throughout the Mediterranean.
Major international fairs
Oriental fabrics are in competition with those produced in the major cloth towns of Flanders and sold to Italian merchants at the fairs of Champagnehubs of international trade from the 12thand century. The two poles of medieval trade being located on the North Sea-Mediterranean axis, the great fairs held a decisive place and the traders became real businessmen there. The fairs take place all over Europe: London, Reims, Châlons-en-Champagne, Troyes, Cologne, Leipzig, Geneva…
They last six or seven weeks according to a fixed schedule so that they can take place one after the other. The business concluded during these international fairs encourages artisanal production and stimulates technical progress. The West imposes its economic hegemony: its growth is reflected in the trade in agricultural surpluses and handicrafts produced in large quantities: woolen cloths and weapons, drink and iron… In exchange, the spices, thealum and raw silk supplied the new markets in northern Italy and Flanders.
The commercial power of Venice
From the Xand century, Venetian merchants settled in Constantinople where they have docks and a restricted area; they have the right to trade freely throughout the Byzantine Empire. The inhabitants of Venice are building a veritable colonial empire in the Mediterranean by multiplying commercial establishments. The Venetians came up against competition from Pisa and Genoa, whose trading posts on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean (and as far as the Black Sea) were frequented by caravans coming in particular from Baghdad.
At XIIand century, in order to limit Venice’s hold on Byzantine trade, the Ottoman emperors favored Pisa and Genoa by exploiting the rivalry between the Italian cities. Relations with Italian merchants deteriorated and the population of Constantinople massacred all the Latins present in the city in 1182. To restore its commercial position, the Republic of Venice finances the fourth crusade and obtains in return that the crusaders make a detour via Constantinople. Taken in 1204, the city was sacked and the Ottoman Empire brought to heel. The economic supremacy of Venice will henceforth be uncontested: it perfects its financial techniques (loans, bills of exchange, insurance, etc.); we are witnessing the birth of large banking companies with numerous subsidiaries. The Venetians will impose their currency (the Venetian ducat created in 1284) for all trade in the eastern Mediterranean.
The commercial boom in Northern Europe
From the XIIand century, at the other end of the Western world, in the North Sea and at sea Baltic, some regions are experiencing very significant commercial development. This is the case of the Flanders (Bruges, Ghent, Arras) and the Baltic countries (Hamburg, Lübeck, Riga, Stockholm) to which must be added London, which became a major economic center, by joining the network of Hanse towns in the 13th century.and century.
The Hansa or Hanseatic League (originally, in Germany, the hanses are simple associations of merchants of the same city) becomes a kind of commercial confederation made up of the richest merchant cities of North Germany. With seventy cities dominated by Hamburg and Lübeck, the trade of the Hanse will benefit from the privileges of extraterritoriality granted by European sovereigns. Hanseatic merchants prosper in the ports of England and the Netherlands, especially London and Bruges. On the coasts of the Baltic, they go to look for iron, wood, Pisces and sell German salt and manufactured goods. The Hansa is active from the XIIand in the XVIIand century, its decline was total with the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648.
Bruges, the Venice of the North
The cloth industry of Flanders is certainly at the origin of the commercial development of the town of Brugge, in the North Sea. It represents a strategic meeting point between Mediterranean and northern traffic, which allows it to develop a trade in transit. In the port of Bruges, Italian ships docked bringing oriental goods, in particular spices redistributed in England and on the European continent. From the 1280s, the first regular voyages were organized through the Strait of Gibraltar between the Mediterranean and the North Sea. The maritime traffic of Bruges will benefit from the decline of the fairs of Champagne from the beginning of the XIVand century.
French Atlantic trade in the Middle Ages
The French maritime facade has a specific commercial activity which is not linked to Italian merchant traffic, as Bruges may be. It is a local trade which links the main Atlantic ports of the kingdom (Bayonne, Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Nantes, Brest, Saint-Malo, Saint-Omer, Dunkirk) and some in particular Bordeaux, La Rochelle and Nantes, to the Castilian, English and Hanseatic ports. However, we can consider that in the Middle Ages, the French Atlantic ports were still outside the major maritime traffic, under Italian domination in the south and German in the north.
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