Trade in the Mediterranean before Italian merchants

Chris Wickham is one of the most renowned medievalists, among other things to have transformed our approach to the High Middle Ages, this period following the end of the West Roman Empire. In FRAMT THE EARLY MIDDLE AGESit used archeology, and in particular ceramics, to enter into the complexity of the Mediterranean world not by the question of cultural continuities, but from the form of states, exchanges and the economy in the broad sense. For this Marxist historian, this medieval economy remains too often relegated to an anteroom of capitalism.

After two decades of publications, these methods are taken up in Donkey and the Boata work attentive also to material culture and regional specificities, but shifted in time since we focus on X^e–XII^e century, an era for which Wickham uses the term “ development “, That he did not use for the centuries following the end of Rome. Far from the image of an economically blocked world, Wickham underlines the complexity of certain regions and the diversity of factors that can lead to such development in the central Middle Ages. It is a major work, which combines a concern for precision with relatively synthetic conclusions, given the extent of the subject.

We therefore meet the Egyptian village of Busir, where from the XI^e century linen is a culture of annuity so marked that it may be necessary to import food to this rural area ; THE ergastery From Constantinople, shop shops where, among other things, glass for export purposes, even though the Byzantine capital is one of the first consumption centers ; And the first remains of Chinese ceramics found on European soil in the Middle Ages, in Al-Andalus, probably imported from Egypt. We will also see many Italians there, but who finally become late in these pre -existing networks. This is the major argument of the book: the myth of a “ commercial revolution Born in Italy in the central Middle Ages, must now give way to another story.

The Latin West commercial revolution in the face of previous exchanges

The idea of ​​a commercial revolution in the Latin West is actually quite dated, often associated with the 1971 publication of Roberto Lopez. However, as Wickham writes, as this book seems, this idea was already exceeded, since Goitein had then just published the first volume of Mediterranean Societya study by the Cairo genizah, this famous fund of thousands of documents which open a window on the life of the Jewish community. For several decades, our knowledge of the diversity of Mediterranean networks have been enriched, and Donkey and the Boat Come to confirm it by a comparative approach.

A nuanced chronology emerges. After the disappearance of the Roman trade cycle, the wealth of the elites only produces production up in certain areas: Egypt, “ Power-house (P. 262) of the Mediterranean economy, but which is first deprived of partners. Then more locally, for example around Cordoba, capital of the Umayyade emirate at VIII^e century, or in Rome, still the largest city in Latin Europe in IX^e century. A situation that would have equivalents outside the Mediterranean, in Northern Francia, where from the Vi^e century The richness of the elites allows the maintenance of certain trade routes.

Then in the Central Middle Ages, exchanges go to the upper scale. We already know the main counter-arguments at the idea of ​​a closed Mediterranean at VIII^e A century because of Islamic conquests: on the one hand the maintenance of luxury trade – better documented -, and on the other hand the continuous connectivity of small cabotage. East-west links also exist. One between the Byzantine provinces, reduced to the northeast of the Mediterranean, and the other, posterior but more massive, between Islamic states. To the north of the Mediterranean, geographically more cut and where most of the islands are concentrated, the regional trade systems that had maintained themselves allow you to travel from one network to another, from east to west. A painting which therefore makes north-south trips of minority roads.

The Wickham study focuses on the following period: that when new regions develop sufficient internal complexity to serve as partners. First Sicily and Ifriqiya, which trade with Egypt from 950, commercial links which are facilitated but not determined by the Fatimid domination. Then quickly, from the X^e century, al-Andalus, whose catch-up is extremely fast, and then, end XI^e century, the heart of the Byzantine Empire, which experienced an economic revival. In 1150, written Wickham, all players were in place, except northern Italy.

What the Italians did from the second quarter of the XII^e century was to unify the Mediterranean roads of mass trade. It was their real success. Because this had not been the case for any trade system since the end of the Roman Empire, but thereafter it became the standard.

Like Vikings at IX^e century in the North Sea, or the Portuguese in XVI^e A century in the Indian Ocean, the merchants of the Italian cities are added to these previous networks. Wickham stops his study in 1180, while the documentary mass increases – the level of meticulousness held until this date is already a feat. But he suggests that from 1250 to the plague of 1347, Egypt and Italy remain comparable in terms of wealth-at a period when only Flanders in Europe could be put on an equal footing, and that perhaps only the plague ended the prosperity of Egypt.

But where are the donkeys ? Five regions to make the history of the Mediterranean

We see it in this story: foreign trade is never considered the primary cause of economic takeoff, as it remains at this time in the minority compared to exchanges internal to a region. Likewise, the exaggerated attention sometimes paid to luxury goods masks mass exchanges that bring the economy to life. It is therefore necessary to examine the grain, the linen, the cotton, the leather, the metal or even the oil and the wine before being concerned with precious metals, spices or silk. Hence the title. There is no point in focusing on boats, as long as we know nothing about donkeys and other draft animals which allowing the existence of internal structured markets, complex economies, relative specializations, as well as – possibly -, of the redistribution of goods arrived at the bottom of the hold.

We actually come across few donkeys in the book, but the examination of ceramic remains indicate networks which also suggest the transfer of other goods now lost, such as textiles. In Egypt, the most stable and complex economy, several large cities structure the region, and specialized productions also concern rural areas, where we find more employee work than elsewhere. Some shopkeepers and peasants have access to silver and even gold dirhams, and the elites – which are not the richest in the Mediterranean – are therefore not the only engines of the economy. Ifriqiya and Sicily constitute the second regional ensemble examined, where growth, indicated by ceramic production perhaps from the end of IX^e century, allows the establishment of an economic triangle with Egypt. And even if the attacks by Banu Hilal limit the complexification of the economy in Ifriqiya, the area remains an important center at least until the end of XIII^e century.

In Byzantium, an agricultural and demographic first growth becomes visible in the X^e century, causing increased exchanges within the sub-regions which constitute the Empire, accentuated by the tax system which allows a redistribution of surplus. Even on the Anatolian plateau, cereals and pastures have been developing since the start of IX^edo we learn in a rare mention of Palynology (the study of pollens)-within a work which takes little into account climatic and environmental questions. The Aegean Sea and the Marmara Sea, on which Wickham is concentrated, would be the most taken in the Mediterranean at the XII^e century (p. 270). New consumptions affect categories of the population that remain excluded in the Latin West. But employee work is developing little and urban growth remains limited.

In the Islamic Iberian Peninsula, a bit like in Byzantium, internal vitality is more remarkable than links with the outside. Up to IX^e century, ceramics are local, then began to travel to the tax center in the caliph era, before circulating in a more decentralized way at the time of the Taifas at the beginning of XI^e century. Remarkable, there are non -local ceramics in all houses, including peasant women. At XII^e century, the complexity of the economy is perhaps comparable to that of Egypt, in this area where all growth factors are combined: tax centralization until X^e century, agrarian growth with irrigation that develops quickly, urban expansion and also purchasing power of peasants – until political and economic decline in XIII^e century. However, its role in the economic history of the Mediterranean might be less important than it is sometimes suggested, because of the absence of a very developed close neighbor.

Italy, finally, that Wickham revisits through close studies of Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Florence and Lucca, then Milan, begins to connect to XII^e only century with these more complex economies. Even at XIII^ehis merchants will favor a model of “ return-fast », Little in the regions of the regions with which they trade, of which they therefore remain dependent. But unlike the merchants of the Genizah who adopt a similar technique, the Latins travel heavily armed …

Why make the history of economy before capitalism

However, Wickham has little dwells on the properly Mediterranean features of his study, and by Eurasian openings rather uses his object as an entry to the medieval economy. A trait comes back in a recurring way: the place of the markets and the purchasing power of various social groups. Facts that are well known for England of the XIII^e century – and have sometimes been read as the premises of a transition leading to the great divergence. Recall that the English economy of XIII^e century remains far from the complexity and the richness of what we found in the Mediterranean two centuries before is therefore a way of questioning this economic account very centered on Europe and of deconstructing the linear history of the advent of capitalism which we sometimes plunge the roots to the central Middle Ages.

In this sense, Donkey and the Boat offers an effective decentering. With all the risks of such broad works, it nevertheless pushes to challenge the account of a Western invention of the tools of capitalism which will follow in the following centuries, to immerse ourselves in a history of the less linear economy, where the paths of development can be diverse.