The long history of the Republic of Genoa can be seen as an immensely rich laboratory of unfinished experiments. Precocious among Italian city-states in acquiring a territorial state, Genoa struggled for centuries to provide its Riviere with a homogeneous governing structure. Militarily and commercially aggressive from its infancy, at the height of its power few if any would have seen its far-flung collection of enclaves, entrepôts and islands as an empire. Pioneers in projecting power at sea and bending naval strength to the ends of commercial gain, Genoa eventually withdrew from the activities that had created its success in order to pursue a sort of financial dominion over much of the early modern world. All the while the city, La Superba, was racked by social upheaval, civil wars and power struggles involving every level of society. A stunning variety of social, political and economic experiments were the result of this nearly incessant conflict.
Given the radical ebb and flow of political power structures and the extremely variegated nature of the entity known, for lack of a better term, as the Genoese Empire, the recent historiographical shift towards conceptualizing empires as both a network of individuals and polities, and as a negotiated enterprise allows for a much-needed new perspective on the Italian city-state’s historical experience. In this chapter, we will discuss the relative merits of several ways of conceptualizing the Genoese pre-modern empire prior to chronologically walking through the creation of a Genoese state, dominion and assortment of colonial outposts. This will provide an opportunity to examine the degree to which patterns of Genoese expansion coincided with pre-existing networks and patterns of trade. Following an overview of the phases of expansion, attention will be shifted to the topics of sovereignty and degrees of political control, and finally to the system’s ultimate fifteenth-century decline.
The term “Empire” is so commonly used that far too little ink is spilled in providing a usefully precise definition of the term. Most commonly used in reference to transnational, multi-ethnic states, “empire” implies sovereignty, which in turn implies some sort of state structure. This is clearly not always the case with the maritime empires discussed in this volume; the earliest iterations of the English or Dutch empires in the Indian Ocean region, or even the collection of territories administered by the Genoese companies, the maone, or the Casa di San Giorgio were certainly not states. In each case a private company drove the creation of such structures and was responsible for their maintenance. And while each of these companies exercised some form of sovereignty, it was of limited geographical scope and subject to interference on the part of the states – England, the United Provinces and the Republic of Genoa – where the companies were domiciled.
A common corrective is to apply the term “commercial empire,” which, however, suffers from terminal vagueness. Applying the term “empire” to a commercial network or system of networks implies either a monopoly or a state of dominance; the economic equivalent to state sovereignty. While this was usually a goal of both merchants and state actors, results were far from uniform. Throughout the centuries of Genoa’s greatest economic power the republic and its merchants never attained a singularly dominant position save in a handful of specific trades or circumscribed areas. Venice in particular was always in a position to rival the Genoese, but there were several other significant competitors: Pisa, Barcelona, Marseilles, and later the English and the Dutch. Naturally, “commercial empire” could also be interpreted as a system connotated by a large degree of coercive power stemming from economic influence, which is more fitting of the Genoese case.
Framing our historical enquiry in terms of networks rather than empire sidesteps some of the thornier questions of definitions, while raising a different set of analytical challenges. Networks exist on many different levels and in many different forms. Limiting examination to the economic sphere, there are long-distance trading networks specializing in the acquisition and redistribution of high-value finished products throughout the Mediterranean and beyond. Alongside and at times overlapping such networks there are others tasked with procuring foodstuffs for the dominant city, Genoa. These networks intersect others focused on the distribution of goods in the hinterland and the sale of locally produced items and materials. There are also more specialized financial networks formed around the desire to concentrate and deploy capital in the burgeoning ventures of well-connected financiers. These systems, then, are embedded in a social reality that also lends itself to network analysis. Political allegiances, religious and cultural affiliations, family/clan structures such as the Genoese alberghi and so forth can easily be seen as networks, each with its own specific end. That does not mean, however, that they are extraneous to commercial networks; commercial bonds often form along the lines of pre-existing social networks. Trust in the pre-modern world was paramount in economic relations, so it is only natural that commercial ties should be formed along the same lines as pre-existing social ties.
The Republic of Genoa, from its rise as a maritime commercial power in the twelfth century, establishing trading colonies throughout the Mediterranean, to the sixteenth-century “siglo de los Genoveses,” or “Century of the Genoese,” presented elements of each of the three categories discussed above: empire, commercial empire, hub of extensive networks. During most of this long period, elements of all three categories combined to form an entity that defies efforts to pin it down with a precise definition. The blending of forms was in no way uniform in the various areas of Genoese activities, nor was it chronologically stable. Rather than viewing the Genoese experience as emblematic of a given system or in any way a model in comparative histories, perhaps it is better to consider the Republic of Genoa as an open laboratory and its “empire” as a perpetually unfinished experiment.
Chickens and Eggs: State Formation, Patterns of Trade, Overseas Expansion, Diaspora, Networks, Empire (Imperium and Dominio)
Several constituent elements of the Genoese state, empire and commercial network emerged at roughly the same time, the closing years of the eleventh century, prompting inevitable attempts to sort metaphorical chickens from eggs. Of course, the site of Genoa has been inhabited since time immemorial; archaeologists have discovered a bronze age settlement located more or less at the site of the modern Piazza Brignole. In all likelihood, this first settlement lent its name to the great city. “Genova,” “Zena,” “Genoa” all seem to come from the Celto-Ligurian “Genaua” or “Gena,” meaning “mouth,” as in the mouth of a river,1 in this case the Bisagno River. The town briefly assumed some regional importance when the ancient Ligurii were confederated to the Roman Republic and the Via Postumia connected it to the interior, but that relative importance came to an end when the Via Aemilia Scauri was opened in the late second century bce and the route between the Po Valley and Gaul largely bypassed Liguria. Although there is little direct evidence, the city’s importance must have grown in the later Roman Empire, along with that of both Milan and Pavia; Genoa is the nearest outlet to the sea for both of those cities. Centuries later Genoese historians would point to the city’s role in defending Carolingian lands against Muslim raiders,2 although there is little evidence to support such a claim. Frankish naval power was based further south, along the coast of Tuscany, while the Via Francigena, the medieval thoroughfare linking Rome to the Frankish territories north of the Alps, lay in the interior, bypassing Genoa.
Paradoxically, a very thorough sack of Genoa in 934 or 935 by Fatimid Aghlabite raiders from Ifriqiya (roughly modern Tunisia) seems to have provided the spark that would propel Genoa onto the world’s stage. The attack seems to have taken place within a conflict between the Fatimid Aghlabites and the Ommayad rulers of Al-Andalus. Launching from al-Mahdiyya in Ifriquiya, the Aghlabite fleet sailed first to Al-Andalus and then to attack Genoa.3 The very fact that the Aghlabites considered Genoa worth sacking would indicate that the Genoese already engaged in some trades. A later Muslim account describes some of the goods taken: raw silk as well as linen thread and cloth, which seems to indicate that Genoa was already in contact with Eastern markets. The attack was so devastating that the city may have been entirely abandoned for a number of years afterward. In the wake of this sack, however, the city’s activities took on a very different and militarily aggressive nature.
In 1016 Genoa combined forces with Pisa in order to contrast the efforts of Mujahid, Muslim ruler of Denia in Spain, who was attempting the conquest of Sardinia. The efforts of the Italian cities were successful and for the rest of the eleventh century Genoa alternated alliance with Pisa against Muslim foes with enmity against its fellow maritime republic. The 1060s witnessed a war between the two city-states, probably over control of Sardinia, but in 1087 they joined forces in an expedition against al-Mahdiyya, capital of the Fatimid Muslim state in Tunisia.4 Significantly, the attack on Mahdiyya was used to extract trade concessions in the form of tax exemptions from the city’s Muslim rulers.5 There is also evidence that while the Genoese were fighting in the western Mediterranean, vessels from Genoa were trading as far afield as Alexandria in Egypt and there seems to have been a Genoese presence in Cairo by the early eleventh century.6
In fact, a Genoese presence so far afield and in the ports of the Muslim world should not surprise us; the Italian merchants were simply acting within the dominant commercial network of the day. Following the spread of Islam across northern Africa during the seventh and eighth centuries the principal axis of trade linking the Levant to the Maghreb, the Straits of Gibraltar and the Iberian Peninsula passed through Sirte in what is now Libya, and Ifriqiya (Tunisia).7 Fully equipped ports were built, with basins, jetties, defensive towers and chains, at Alexandria, al-Mahdiyya, Tunis and Bougie to support a sort of two-tiered trading network. Large commercial vessels were developed to ply the longer segments of this axis: two-masted ships rigged with lateen sails, heirs to the trading vessels of the ancient world and precursors to the later roundships of the Genoese and Venetians. There was also a lively cabotage trade employing a variety of smaller imbarcations. This activity grew steadily from the eighth through the eleventh centuries.8 With the inclusion of the Iberian Peninsula in the Muslim world, the network grew more articulated; cities along the Spanish coast correspond almost exactly to cities along the Maghreb coast.
The combined Genoese and Pisan attack on al-Mahdiyya in 1087, therefore, fits perfectly into a strategy of penetrating the dominant trading network, with hopes of eventually appropriating it. There were certainly religious overtones to the assaults on Muslim shipping and trading centers,9 but the Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum, the sole account of the 1087 attack, claims that merchants from Pisa and Genoa were among the promoters of the expedition.10 Surely, many also saw the expedition as retribution for the sack of Genoa a century and a half earlier, but the fact that it was followed by demands for tax exemptions indicates that an economic rationale at least accompanied any religious motivations for the attack.
It is with the First Crusade, however, that the history of the Republic of Genoa really begins, and for a number of reasons. First of all, in a literal sense Genoa’s historical record begins with the Annals of Caffaro, who began the first of what would become a unique continuous series of annals with Genoa’s third expedition to the Holy Land. This coincides with the formation of the “Compagna,” a body of six consuls representing all three of the city’s areas, a unified governing body and the precursor of the medieval comune.11 The first two crusading expeditions had gained a colony in Antioch (thirty houses, a church, a city square, and a fondaco),12 and a great deal of prestige due to Genoese participation in the siege of Jerusalem. Through their ventures in support of the crusading movement in the early twelfth century further colonies were established at Jaffa, Arsuf, Caesarea, Acre and Tripoli. The remainder of the century witnessed numerous conflicts with Pisa, but also expeditions against Muslim shipping in the western Mediterranean, against Majorca and two unsuccessful attacks on Almeria.
The initial phases of overseas expansion actually predate efforts to create a territorial state on land in Liguria, the more or less contiguous possessions along the coast both to the east and to the west of Genoa – what would come to be known as the Dominio. Genoese forces captured Portovenere on the eastern riviera in 1109,13 while control of the Apennine passes of the Via Postumia was guaranteed by the conquest of Voltaggio in 1121. During these same years, many communities of the western riviera were absorbed into the Genoese state.14 Thus in little more than a century Genoa had made the leap from fairly insignificant coastal town to dominant city of a regional state on the Italian mainland, and expansionist player on the Mediterranean stage.
The many fleet actions against Muslim ships and towns from the Maghreb to the Levant and territorial expansion along the riviere to the east and west of Genoa responded to the demands of a single goal: the creation of a maritime commercial network, a system of outposts spanning the Mediterranean world. At the same time rivals, Pisans, Catalans or Muslims, were to be intimidated or subdued. Control of the Ligurian coasts was necessary to provide safe havens for Genoese shipping and to protect the dominant city itself. Corsica was prized not only for access to the island’s resources, but also for the protection and havens it offered Genoese ships. The network thus assembled by the Genoese during the twelfth century, however, was not an entirely new one. Through the establishment of entrepôts in the Levant, a series of safe havens in the western Mediterranean and attacks on the trading networks centered around al-Mahdiyya, the Italians had disrupted the previous commercial network and appropriated segments of it piecemeal, rebuilding it over the course of the twelfth century, albeit with its center of gravity shifted to the northern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Prior to the eleventh century the Mediterranean could rightly be called an “Arab Sea,”15 but in the twelfth it certainly could not.
Whether or not such a network or the collection of nodal points comprising it should be called an “empire” is another question entirely. Genoa was certainly one of the principal hubs of the twelfth-century commercial network and Genoese merchants and seafarers were among the most important and influential, but their dominance was not complete; they did not control it. In the wake of the Genoese victory over Pisa at the Battle of Meloria in 1284 and the Tuscan city’s subsequent inability to regain its prior position, Genoese naval and commercial might were nearly hegemonic in the western Mediterranean, but never in the Levant where they had to contend with Venice and successful Venetian efforts to create a commercial colonial system, a network similar to the one built by the Genoese and substantially overlapping with it. The repeated wars between the two cities must be seen as a result of the continued efforts of each to exclude or subordinate the other in roughly the same trades.
Likewise, an examination of the degrees of political control exercised by Genoa over its colonies and outposts indicates an entity that stretches accepted notions of “empire.” Given the juridical novelty of both the nascent Crusader states and the Genoese colonial outposts embedded in them, there is a lack of uniformity among the charters establishing the Genoese commercial enclaves. Bohemond of Otranto’s concession of the thirty houses, a church and a well in Antioch was addressed to the Genoese present in Outremer. Other charters were made in favor of the Archdiocese of Genoa. In fact, in 1105 a canon from the church of San Lorenzo was charged with overseeing Genoese territories in the Levant.16 The logistics of controlling such far-flung territories from the very distant dominant city, the central hub of the network, proved such that within a few years representatives of the communal government were chosen from among the Genoese who had settled in the colonies themselves. The culmination of this tendency can be seen in the concession of control over all Genoese settlements in Syria-Palestine to the Embriaci family in 1154.17 The immediate focus of the communal governments in Genoa itself was the suppression of rivals in the western Mediterranean and an increase in control over trade flows there, leaving the Levant colonies in the hands of private or particular interest groups and kinship-based consortia. In fact, the communal government of Genoa concentrated its efforts on prosecuting wars against Pisa in 1119–1120, 1127–1133 and 1162,18 and organizing a major expedition against Montpellier in 1143. In the last case, the Genoese crushed efforts to create a free commune and in return were granted one thousand silver marks, a fondaco and exemption from duties, along with restrictions on the activities of merchants from Montpellier.19 They succeeded in two major goals: suppressing a potential rival, and forcing open access and a privileged position for Genoese merchants.
By the mid-twelfth century the Genoese had established the contours and characteristics of the Genoese empire and its commercial network as it would stand for roughly a century. Enclaves had been created and were maintained through force. In the wake of the Third Crusade (1189–1192) and a change in the form of government in Genoa itself, the city did attempt to establish more direct control over its colonies, sending officials (vicecomes, consuls and podestà) to represent the central government.20 However, just as no stable government was established in Genoa until the early modern period, no lasting uniform system for controlling the colonies prevailed either; in later moments of expansion we find colonies governed by private companies, powerful families and, later still, by the Casa di San Giorgio, a consortium of creditors to the state. With the partial exception of nearby Corsica, the Genoese were never interested in controlling territory. Their possessions were embedded in towns along the coasts of the Mediterranean, allowing merchants access both to the goods and markets of the hinterland and to the sea that linked the far-flung points to one another and to Genoa itself. Acquisition of these commercial, colonial outposts had been the result of private initiative as often as it had been the fruit of publically organized expeditions.
It is also clear that Genoa’s rulers were not interested in gaining territory at all costs. In 1287, for example, following the death of Bohemond vii of Tripoli, the city attempted to establish a free commune and appealed to Genoa for protection. Benedetto Zaccaria was sent from Genoa with two galleys and he negotiated an agreement with the Tripolitans that would have given Genoa sovereignty over the entire city in exchange for protection against eventual aggressors. The communal government of Genoa refused to back Zaccaria up, though, and did not reinforce or occupy the city.21 The logic of the trading network prevailed over that of acquiring territory. There was a considerable amount of commerce between Genoa and Egypt at the time and the city’s governing body chose not to risk that trade; occupying Tripoli would almost inevitably have brought the Genoese into conflict with Mamluk Egypt, jeopardizing trade.
In the second half of the thirteenth century a major shift in the Genoese commercial network/empire’s geographic extension and center of gravity took place, one that would definitively shape that system. All subsequent changes are better characterized as consolidation first, then retrenchment or retreat, and finally substantial abandonment. During the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, Western commercial interests in the Kingdom of Jerusalem had come to be concentrated in the coastal city of Acre, which housed fortified quarters of Pisan, Venetian and Genoese merchants. Tensions among the three groups of Italian merchants grew with time, occasionally erupting in episodes of violence. This tension culminated with an all-out attack by the Genoese on the Venetian quarter of the city in 1256. The Venetians in turn occupied the Orthodox monastery of San Sabas, effectively blocking access to the port from the Genoese quarter and, secondarily, providing a moniker for the conflict: the War of San Sabas. Alliances involving practically all the factions active in the Kingdom of Jerusalem formed around the two warring Italian colonies, fleets were armed and launched in the home cities and two naval clashes decided the outcome. Successive Genoese fleets were defeated by the Venetians, and in 1258 the Genoese were expelled from the city.22
In the wake of this defeat the recently installed government of Guglielmo Boccanegra negotiated the Treaty of Nymphaeum with the Byzantine ruler of Nicaea, Michael viii Paleologus, who hoped to regain control of Constantinople at the expense of the Venetians, who had dominated the city since the Fourth Crusade.23 The treaty allowed the Genoese free, tax-exempt access to all ports under Paleologus’ control, present and future, as well as the right to establish colonies in key ports. Both Genoa and Venice prepared fleets for the impending war, but the Venetians famously failed to intercept the Genoese, who in turn failed to arrive in time to aid Paleologus’ recapture of Constantinople in July of 1261. Paleologus, however, respected most of the treaty’s terms and the epicenter of Genoese activity in the eastern Mediterranean shifted to the Aegean and Black Seas.24
The Nature of the Beast: Places, Things, Patterns and Institutions
At its greatest extension in the latter part of the thirteenth century and throughout the fourteenth, the network of Genoese communities, fundamentally predicated on commerce, reached from the Sea of Azov and the Crimean Peninsula in the East, to Seville and Lisbon in the West, and from Egypt to England and Flanders. As stated before, this was in no way a homogeneous entity. The entire system should be seen as three distinct, semi-autonomous though interconnected areas of interest, each characterized by different degrees of state involvement, of institutional organization and of interaction with local institutions. Throughout most of this period the city of Genoa was the pivotal hub for the entire system, but the networks developed in the Black Sea region and the eastern Mediterranean had their own regional hubs in Caffa and Pera, Genoa being the link, fulcrum and entrepôt connecting the two sub-sets to the whole. Curiously, as the system began to falter in the fifteenth century, under attack simultaneously by Ottoman expansion in the East and political chaos in Genoa itself, discussed below, the network became even more polycentric, the extremities being linked directly, bypassing what had historically been the hub, the city of Genoa.25
The three principal constituent parts of the network were the core: Genoa and Liguria, the city and its regional state along the rivieras to the east and west of the city, combined with the island of Corsica; the merchant communities established in practically all the substantial ports of the western Mediterranean; the eastern Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Seas. Each area had its own function within the entire system, specializing in complementary trades, and each area was administered with very different institutional structures.
First of all, the Genoese showed little to no interest in controlling territory. Even in the core area, the logic behind expansion along the Ligurian coast had been to control the ports and safe havens along the seaward approaches to the dominant city. In fact, until the nineteenth century there was not even a system of roads connecting all of the coastal possessions to one another or to Genoa itself.26 Where there was penetration into the interior the goal of such minimal territorial possession was that of ensuring control of the mountain passes and roads leading to the city, rather than for the exploitation of the land. Across the Ligurian Sea in Corsica, the communal government concerned itself with the principal port cities, again in support of the maritime commercial network. The remainder of the island was administered by a private association, or maona, first and then ceded in fiefs to powerful citizens.27
Settlements of Genoese merchants ringed the western Mediterranean, along the Provençal coast and on the Balearic Islands (while the Genoese had had a treaty with the Muslim governor of Majorca as early as 1181, a Genoese quarter was established there in 1230 during the Aragonese conquest of the island). Privileges were obtained for trading in Castile in 1251 and a Genoese quarter was established that same year in Seville.28 Substantial communities were also present in Sicily, primarily in Messina and Trapani, those in this latter city possessing their own church and loggia. The Genoese also had their own loggia in Naples.29 Less studied and almost certainly less substantial were the merchant communities of the Maghreb, where traffic flourished nonetheless, especially in the century or so following Genoese expulsion from Acre. The first voyages to Flanders in 1277 marked an extension of the western system,30 as did the establishment of a Genoese quarter in Lisbon in 1317.31
Following Genoese expulsion from Acre in 1258 Genoese trade with the Levant shifted to Laiazzo on the Cilician coast of Asia Minor, where Genoese were active until the city’s fall to the Egptian Mamluks in 1347, and to Cyprus, where notarial records bear witness to increased activity at least from the 1290’s.32 Cyprus would long remain an important Genoese destination and eventually come under substantial Genoese control. A dispute between the Venetian and Genoese representatives at the coronation of Peter ii of Lusignan in 1372 led to a Genoese military expedition and the capture of Famagusta, which would remain in Genoese hands until 1464.33
The central focus of Genoese activity in the East, however, came to lie in the Black Sea. Michael viii Paleologus allowed the Genoese to settle in Pera, just across the Golden Horn from Constantinople proper, in 1267–68. Nearly a century later the Genoese obtained complete possession of the city after a brief war with the emperor John vi Cantacuzenus.34 The earliest recorded Genoese voyage to a Black Sea destination dates to 1274, to Soldaia, an active Venetian outpost on the Crimean Peninsula. Shortly thereafter the Genoese obtained the ancient city of Theodosia, perhaps granted to them by the Tatars, which was renamed Caffa and became the center of Genoese activity on the northern shores of the Black Sea. Defensive walls were built in 1281, the Genoese Officium Gazarie, created to oversee trade with the region, rebuilt the settlement as a planned city in 1316.35 The Mongols of the Golden Horde unsuccessfully besieged the city in 1307 and burned it in 1308.36 They made a concerted effort to expel Westerners from the entire region in the 1340’s. In 1343 the Golden Horde expelled Latins from Tana, primarily a Venetian enclave, although the Genoese had also had a consul there since 1304. The following year, 1344, the Venetians were granted trading privileges and a bailo, or consul, in Caffa, effectively concentrating Western commerce in the city.37 Famously besieged by the Golden Horde again from 1343 to 1349, Caffa was a victim of an early example of bacteriological warfare; bubonic plague had broken out among the ranks of the Mongol army and in an effort to level the playing field the Mongols catapulted the corpses of plague victims over the city walls, precipitating an epidemic within the settlement and leading, probably, to the spread of the plague to western Europe.38 Having survived both the siege and the plague, the Genoese occupied Soldaia in 1365 and in 1381 Khan Toqtamish recognized their control over the region from Caffa to Cembalo, a military port, with the surrounding areas tributary to the Genoese.39 Caffa eventually fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1475.
Further Genoese settlements and fortresses were established on the Danube Delta and in the Comnenus lands along the southern shore of the Black Sea, primarily Trebisond, although the local rulers did not grant these colonies political autonomy.40
Genoese activity in the Aegean also increased dramatically in the wake of the Treaty of Nymphaeum. Michael viii Paleologus ceded Phocaea and its precious alum mines on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor near Smyrna and the island of Chios to Benedetto and Manuele Zaccaria. Benedetto Zaccaria also occupied Chios in 1304 and was granted control of the island for ten years. The Byzantines reestablished their authority over the area in 1329, only to lose it to a Genoese military expedition in 1346.41 The Maona of Chios, the private company formed to administer the territories conquered by the expedition, including both Chios and Phocaea, auctioned the mining rights to the Gattilusio family, also Genoese, who had taken control of Mytilene and would soon extend their domains to include Thasos, Lemnos, Samothrace and Enos.42
Naturally, each of these areas supported substantially different trades, and in the Mediterranean region the overall balance of movement of goods, by value at least, was from East to West. The West of course is not generalized, but is rather represented by the dominant city of Genoa, which was both a center of consumption and a redistributive center for imported goods to be sent overland towards northern Italy and over the Alps to France, the Holy Roman Empire and beyond. In the opposite direction, European goods to be exported to the Levant arrived over the same mountain passes for re-export by sea.
In the area comprising the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean, Pera acted as hub, an entrepôt and staging center for western goods either destined for consumption in Constantinople or to be used as exchange goods in the eastern ports.43 Along a north-south axis, Genoese merchants acquired linen, cotton, spices, indigo and incense from Alexandria in Egypt, while furnishing the Egyptian market with woolen cloth from the West, mastic from Chios as well as amber, wax, wheat and slaves from the Black Sea ports. Goods from the steppe converged on Caffa (honey, wax, timber, wheat, furs and slaves), only some of which found their way to the West, the rest fueling trade within the eastern Mediterranean. Cyprus provided cotton, indigo, sugar, salt and wine. Chios, one of the few locations in the Mediterranean that produced mastic, was a market for the alum mined at Phocaea, as well as for goods produced in the Turkish lands of Anatolia – cotton and pitch – and Persian silks. Spices travelling overland from the Indian Ocean region could also be found in Smyrna and shipped out from Chios.44
The slave trade was always a lucrative segment of commercial activity within this part of the Genoese network. Slaves from the Russian steppe and slaves arriving in the ports of the Danube delta – Russians, Circassians, Tatars and Turks, as well as Bulgarians, Hungarians and Wallachians – were sold primarily to Mamluk Egypt, although there was also a market in the West: in Genoa itself, Italy, southern France and the Iberian Peninsula.45 In the fourteenth century the papacy tried in vain to stop the sale of Christian slaves and even to impose the liberation of slaves who converted to Christianity.46
Shifting our attention westward, Genoa was not only the principal hub of the entire network, but also the regional hub of its traffic in the western Mediterranean and a staging area for goods arriving overland from the Po Valley of northern Italy and from the Champagne fairs in northern France. Both textiles and agricultural products reached the city from the various centers of the Po Valley, alongside the woolen textiles of France and Flanders acquired at the Champagne fairs. Spices imported from the Levant were the principal element in the range of products balancing this trade.47 While there are no systematic records, volumes of trade with Champagne remained high throughout most of the thirteenth century,48 declining with the importance of the fairs and with the opening of a sea route to northern Europe in 1277.49 At that point raw wool from England, previously destined for the textile manufacturers of France and Flanders, was imported directly to Genoa where it increasingly replaced wool from Syria and the Maghreb. A portion of the English wool would be worked in Genoa, but much of it was re-exported to the textile centers of Lombardy and Tuscany.50
The axis running from Genoa to the coast of Tunisia lay along one of two paths: along the coast of the Italian Peninsula where Naples and Salerno marked access points to the wheat and agricultural products of southern Italy, and eastern Sicily and the port of Messina; or along the coasts of Corsica and Sardinia, and Trapani on the western coast of Sicily. The ports of North Africa, then, were important markets for European finished textiles and artisanal products, and sources of raw materials such as wool, leather, indigo, wax, coral and, to redress an unequal balance of trade, gold from sub-Saharan Africa.51
Further west, beginning in 1282 the Genoese obtained rights to exploit salt production on Ibiza.52 With time, Majorca would also become an important market for African goods that could be used to supplement the cargoes of vessels sailing from Chios to England and Flanders.53 The establishment of a Genoese community in Seville in 1251 accelerated penetration of the Iberian Peninsula, laying the groundwork for extensive exploitation of the Spanish economy in the future.54
Further west still, in 1317 Emanuele Pessagno, counsellor to King Denis of Portugal, obtained the land that would soon become the Genoese quarter in Lisbon.55 Genoese activities in Lisbon tended to be something of an anomaly, not fully inserted into the broader networks linking the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds. Not an essential port of call for the long-distance trades linking the Mediterranean to the North Atlantic, Lisbon was a base for regional trade with the cities of the Atlantic coast of France and the cabotage routes linking the coastal centers between Lisbon and Bruges. Of particular importance in Lisbon was the Genoese family of the Lomellini, who at the same time sought new markets and products in the Atlantic, Irish leather products for example, although the Lomellini tended to avail themselves of Portuguese and Florentine shipping and Florentine markets.56 Theirs was more of a private network unto itself, rather than a segment of the broader Genoese system.
Thus far, it has been easy to discuss “the Genoese,” their presence, their network, the trades, outposts and colonies in their hands. It is, however, much more difficult to define “the Genoese” or to assess degrees of belonging or embeddedness in a system. The institutional structures governing the far-flung settlements of the Genoese range from non-existent, to the direct sovereignty of an individual who is also a citizen of Genoa, to private associations of Genoese citizens more or less recognized by Genoa’s government, to consuls or other official direct representatives of the communal government of the dominant city. The potential for confusion is compounded by the chaotic nature of Genoa’s political and institutional history and a remarkable degree of fluidity in the allegiances of self-identifying Genoese living in the colonial outposts. If the policies and priorities of the faction in power did not align with those of merchants in a particular overseas settlement, that settlement was likely to disregard directives from Genoa. In moments of relative stability, the communal government often tried to exert a greater degree of control over the settlements of its citizens, but such efforts were usually quite short-lived. On the other hand, the lack of a stable government in Genoa seems to have allowed for an elevated degree of flexibility and resilience of the network as a whole. In fact, it was during the fifteenth century, when the city came under the control of the stronger, more centralized states of France and Milan, that the network entered a long phase of decline. We must now turn our attention to these issues: the administrative structure of the colonies, and relations between the center on the one hand, and the regional nodal points and systemic whole on the other.
It is very difficult to describe the institutional structure of Genoa itself, because its turbulent political environment spawned a variety of forms of government. In extremely broad terms, various forms of commune governed by a council of elders gave way to a diarchy from the noble houses of Doria and Spinola in the late thirteenth century. This system in turn gave way to a “captaincy of the people,” transformed into a government led by the doge perpetuo, created by Simone Boccanegra in 1339. In theory doges were chosen for life, although it was extremely rare for doges to actually die in office. This model prevailed, albeit with interruptions and periods of foreign domination until 1528 when a comprehensive set of reforms created the much more stable aristocratic republic.
This outline, however, gives the impression of a greater degree of stability than was actually enjoyed. Quite apart from the successive forms of government, it is always more useful to think of Genoese institutions as merely vehicles for competition among factions, powerful families and consortia of wealthy individuals. The array of fault lines is astounding: Guelfs and Ghibellines, nobles and commoners,57 allies of one or another of the four principal noble houses, or those opposed to all four of them, hangers-on of one or another of the families who dominated the position of doge, merchants or artisans, etc. Alliances and conflict could form along and across any of these lines. No single individual, family or even faction was ever able to sufficiently gain the upper hand to establish a stable regime.
Turning then to the colonies, it is no surprise that no coherent system was ever created for governing the colonies or for managing overall trade.
In the simplest of cases, such as the small merchant communities of North Africa, there was no consul or podestà as in the more important outposts of the East, but a “scriba,” or scribe. This figure’s role was primarily that of representing Genoa’s fiscal interests, collecting customs duties imposed by the commune.58
In the core area of the Ligurian coast and Corsica, a podestà or captain was named by the communal government to ensure an acceptable degree of control over the towns and ports. Little direct control was exercised over the countryside as much of the territory was in the hands of the feudal nobility, many of whom also participated in the commercial life of the dominant city and competed for political sway there.59 At first glance this could appear a sort of division of labor, with the communal government responsible for more urban settlements and the nobility for rural areas. Bearing in mind, though, that the feudal nobility was also active in Genoese politics, occupying the highest offices in the city and vying with rival factions for political dominance, such a division is less clear cut. Since the nobles were among those choosing magistrates to represent the commune’s interests in the subject territories, they exercised considerable influence in urban areas as well, albeit in a less direct manner and in competition with other groups.
Further afield, the degree of real control enjoyed by the central government varied greatly both over time and from place to place. A nominal representative of the Genoese commune was nearly always present, although such figures were often chosen locally by the Genoese merchants active in a particular colony. The example of Pera demonstrates how this could lead to a divergence of policies between the dominant city and the colony. During an episode of the interminable wars between Guelfs and Ghibellines, in 1317 the Guelfs succeeded in driving the Ghibellines from power and in July, 1318 ceded signoria over Genoa to Robert of Anjou, then head of the larger Guelf faction. The Genoese of Pera, however, were wary of the house of Anjou’s continued designs on Constantinople and in the interests of the continued stability of their trade they opposed the ascendency of Robert. Acting not only independently of Genoa, but in a hostile manner to the new alliance, the inhabitants of Pera took up piratical activity against Guelf shipping. In 1324 Robert of Anjou sent a small fleet under the command of Carlo Grimaldi, a Genoese Guelf, to bring the colony back in line, but he was unable to do so.60
We have also seen that in some cases territories or settlements were obtained through the initiative of private citizens: Chios and Phocaea during the initial phase of Genoese occupation; and the Aegean islands controlled by the Gattilusio family. In these cases, the central government had little sway over the actions of its citizens.
The cases of Chios and Cyprus both offer examples of yet another, typically Genoese expedient: the colony governed by private association. Benedetto Zaccaria occupied Chios in 1304, obtaining imperial recognition for ten years.61 The Zaccaria’s position was renewed, but in 1329 the Byzantines reestablished their dominion over the island. Two decades later, the island would once again become Genoese, a side effect of the ongoing struggle between Guelfs and Ghibellines in Italy. In 1346 the Genoese doge, Giovanni Murta, hired a fleet of privately owned vessels to attack the forces of the Genoese Guelf faction led by the Grimaldi family who, from their base in Monaco were in a position to threaten Genoa. The size of the fleet assembled caused the Guelfs to withdraw, leaving the Genoese fleet unemployed. Murta encouraged them to sail to the East to protect Genoese interests in the region. The commander of the Genoese fleet informed Anna of Savoy, regent of the Byzantine throne, of Venetian plans to attack Chios, hoping that she would place the island under his protection. When that did not happen, Simone Vignoso, the Genoese commander, decided to attack and occupy the island himself. On their return to Genoa, the communal government was unable to pay the expenses of the expedition, so a company was formed by the participants in the expedition, the Maona di Chio. As a guarantee against future payment the maona was granted to right to rule the island and exploit its resources.62 The maona was reorganized in 1362 and eventually the participants banded together in a consortium, or albergo, and adopted the name Giustiniani. The maona/albergo retained control over the island until its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1566.
In similar manner, the expedition launched against Cyprus in 1372 by doge Domenico Campofregoso was assembled using private resources. The Maona di Cipro was formed from its participants and dominated the island, ruling Famagusta directly until 1464.63
Overall, it is clear that the institutional framework of the Genoese “Empire” was not a top-down structure; authority was constituted on an ad hoc basis and any control from the dominant city was tenuous at best. This seems to have been the system’s strength; little direction from the center allowed for extreme network-wide flexibility and therefore an agility in adapting to changing circumstances that allowed Genoese merchants to thrive through two turbulent centuries and to remain powerful players long after that. In fact, the decline of the system coincides as much with the loss of Genoese political autonomy at home as it does with Ottoman expansion and the progressive loss of Genoese bases in Anatolia, the Aegean and the Black Sea.
During several multi-year periods over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Genoa was ruled by foreign overlords. These periods of foreign domination were a direct result of the factional struggles within the city; in each case the foreign power was invited into the city either in an attempt to find an impartial outsider to quell civil strife, or as a way for a doge to save his skin as his grip on power loosened. The first example of the Genoese taking recourse to ceding authority to a foreign sovereign dates to 1311. Against the backdrop of general discontent with the cost of war with Pisa and Venice, and especially of the management of the war effort against Venice, factional tension between Guelfs and Ghibellines erupted in 1296. This was followed only a decade later with the resistance of the principal noble houses to Opizzino Spinola, who attempted to create personal rule with the support of the popolari (commoner merchants and artisans). In an effort to bring peace through the offices of an external power, on November 3, 1311 the city was ceded to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry vii for a twenty-year period.64 Henry’s priorities were not those of Genoa though; his goals were political in nature, not commercial, therefore his actions were detrimental to both the Genoese state and the mercantile empire. Not only did Henry confirm imperial privileges to Savona, undermining Genoese authority there, but he also exacted 40,000 florins for maintaining the imperial army and banished the Florentine Guelfs who had established themselves in the city. These measures were disruptive to trade and led to dissent even among the Genoese Ghibellines. When Henry died in 1313 the experiment came to an end, but chaos also returned to the city.
Open fighting between the two most prominent Ghibelline families, the Doria and the Spinola, made possible a return of the Guelfs to power, who promptly consigned the city to the champion of the Guelf cause at the time, Robert of Anjou, King of Naples. In July 1318 Robert was given control of the city for ten years.65 Robert of Anjou’s priorities were not those of Genoa. Robert’s goals were those of extending the dominions of his house, in particular wresting Sicily from the house of Aragon. This, and Ghibelline resistance to his signoria, led to war between Genoa and both Milan and Aragon. Much of the fighting took place at sea and disrupted traffic in the Ligurian Sea, more generally in the western Mediterranean and even in the Aegean, as discussed above. Both the war and Angevin dominion over Genoa came to an end in 1334.
The fifteenth century was to witness more foreign domination, as well as the erosion of Genoa’s colonial system in the East. The continued factional struggles within Genoa made it the target of the expansionistic appetites of its neighbors, primarily Charles vi of France, his brother Louis, Duke of Orléans and Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan. Through his marriage with Valentina Visconti, daughter of Gian Galeazzo, Louis had become Duke of Asti and nurtured ambitions of creating a personal state in Italy. Thus, when Savona rebelled against Genoa in 1394, it placed itself under the lordship of Louis of Orléans. The doge of Genoa, Antoniotto Adorno, chose to place the city directly under the protection of Charles vi on condition that Savona be returned to Genoa, in order to prevent the combined forces of Louis and Gian Galeazzo from dismembering Genoese territory and threatening to dominate all of Italy.66 After an uneasy start to the period of French domination, Charles sent Jean Le Meingre, known as Boucicault, to govern Genoa in 1401. Best remembered for his severity in establishing an uneasy peace among the factions, Boucicault also launched a lackluster expedition to Cyprus, accentuated tension with Florence and drew Genoa into wars against Venice and Milan. When in 1409 he left Genoa in hopes of occupying Milan, the gates of the city were closed behind him, exiles returned and the city was consigned to Marquis Theodore ii of Monferrato, whose own dominion would last only until 1413.67
With large payments to the doge and the explicit threat of a large army, Filippo Maria Visconti become the city’s overlord in 1421.68 Like previous rulers Visconti saw Genoa as a tool for advancing his own ambitions, drawing Genoa and its fleet into wars against Aragon, Florence and Venice first, and then alongside the Aragonese against the Kingdom of Naples. A Rebellion put an end to Visconti rule in 1435. By this time inviting foreign overlords had come to be a bargaining chip and an opportunity for the families who had gained a monopoly on the position of doge. Technically, the doge could be any commoner, but from the start only a handful of families were able to place one of their own in the position. Over the course of the fifteenth century the two families of the Campofregoso (or Fregoso) and Adorno became the only two capable of attaining the dogato. Thus, yet another factional division arose separating partisans of the Campofregoso from those of the Adorno. On repeated occasions, exponents of both families negotiated the overlordship of a foreign ruler over the city, often receiving territory and fiefs in return.
The city would come under foreign rule three more times during the fifteenth century: 1459–1461 under Charles vii of France, 1464–78 and again 1487–99 under the Sforza dukes of Milan. By this time, though, Ottoman forces had taken Constantinople and Pera in 1453, Phocaea in 1455, the islands of the Gattilusio in 1456. The colonies on the southern shore of the Black Sea, Sinope and Trebisond, followed in 1461 and 1462.69 The Genoese were expelled from Famagusta in 1464 and Cyprus became a protectorate of Venice ten years later. Caffa fell to the Ottomans in 1475.70 Trade reached historic lows in the years between the 1420’s and the 1490’s.71 The Genoese commercial empire, the trading network spanning the Mediterranean had come to an end.
Endless infighting had exposed Genoa to foreign domination. Foreign dominators had drawn the city into costly and inconclusive, expensive wars, weakening an already fragile state. Genoa, of course, had been involved in countless wars before and had even risen to prominence in large part through force of arms, but the wars of the fifteenth century were different. The naval actions and incursions of the twelfth, thirteenth and even fourteenth centuries had been aimed at opening markets, gaining access to goods, establishing trading centers, protecting preferred routes or cutting into those of others. There was an economic motivation and an economic payoff. Wars were expensive and disruptive, but they also tended to be limited, so that all parties could return to trading. The wars of the French and the Milanese, on the other hand, were driven by dynastic ambition: wars for territory to be exploited by others. They drained the state coffers without promise of refilling them. As the Genoese colonial empire of the Black Sea and the Aegean fell piece by piece to the Ottomans, the government of Genoa itself devolved control of much of its remaining territories to the Casa di San Giorgio, the consortium of creditors to the state: Corsica and what remained of the Black Sea colonies in 1453, and even the mainland possessions of Lerici (1479) and Sarzana (1484).
Genoese merchants still had a very strong presence in the western Mediterranean and a growing presence in northern Europe. Weathering the Habsburg-Valois Wars, Genoa would retain a fair degree of autonomy within the orbit of the Habsburg monarchy. A constitutional reform in 1528 would even give it more political stability than it had ever known. A massive concentration of capital and a robust banking system had grown alongside Genoa’s commercial network/empire, and with the loss of much of that network, an increase in banking and financial services replaced it.72 The period known as “El siglo de los genoveses” spanning the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries bears witness to the resurgence of Genoese power in a new and different kind of empire, a financial one.73 Genoa came to be Europe’s preeminent financial center, controlling the purse strings of the Spanish Empire and the flows of capital throughout most of Europe. The early modern world that emerged in the sixteenth century was very different from the world in which the Genoese had created their maritime commercial empire. The capital and expertise gained in those earlier centuries, however, allowed Genoa to survive and even thrive at the center of a vast financial network, but that is a substantially different beast lying outside the limited scope of this chapter. Patriotic literature of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would often hark back to the glorious days of the maritime empire,74 but by then those days were a thing of the past.
Bompani 2010.
The expedition is also noteworthy because the Christian forces, which included vessels from Amalfi, Salerno and Gaeta, in addition to those from Pisa and Genoa, wore pilgrim insignia. Epstein 1996, 23.
A fondaco is an enclave under the jurisdiction of the merchants who live or operate there. This could be a simple warehouse and living quarters, or even a fortified neighborhood.
Ibid., 1.112–113.
Ibid., 103.
Ibid., 106.
Chaunu 1983, 93. On the opening of the Atlantic route, Lopez 1966, 324–325. Paolo Malanima places the beginning of the decline of the Champagne fairs around 1320: Malanima 2015, 462.
The distinction between nobles and commoners is not as clear as it appears. The term “noble” was used to refer to the descendants of members of the council of elders. Thus, they were not necessarily feudal nobility. By the same token, families of popolari, commoners, could obtain fiefs and enter the ranks of what is commonly referred to as “the nobility.” Heers 1983, 335–347; Kirk 2005, 22–24.
Ibid., 104.
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