Cities, Merchants and Networks in the Medieval Mediterranean World
The Mediterranean world has always been a contact zone between different societies, cultures and economies. It should therefore come as no surprise that trade regained its importance in the central Middle Ages, after exchange in this area had almost come to a still stand by 700 in the wake of the Roman trade network’s demise. This seminar focuses on the nature and organisation of this renewed economic activities that flourished from the central Middle Ages onwards, thereby addressing the formation of networks at two levels: on the one hand, that of trade networks that connected cities and ports across the Mediterranean Sea; on the other, that of personal networks as trust-building strategies for commercial exchange. To this end, we will consult a wide-array of printed sources to tease out the significance of networks in the organisation and conduct of trade in the period between 1000 and 1500. Apart from becoming acquainted with aspects of the economic history of the medieval Mediterranean world, you will also be able to explore the political, social, cultural or religious underpinnings of commercial exchange in this period.
Recommended reading
- Apellániz, Francisco. “Florentine Networks in the Middle East in the Early Renaissance.” Mediterranean Historical Review 30, no. 2 (July 3, 2015): 125–45.
- Christ, Georg. “Beyond the Network? Connectors of Networks: Venetian Agents in Cairo and Venetian News Management.” In Everything Is on the Move, edited by Stephan Conermann, 27–60. Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2014.
- Constable, Olivia Remie. Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging, Trade, and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
- Epstein, Stephan R. Freedom and Growth: The Rise of States and Markets in Europe, 1300-1750. London; New York: Routledge, 2000.
- Fleet, Kate. “Turks, Mamluks, and Latin Merchants.” In Byzantines, Latins, and Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean World after 1150, edited by Jonathan Harris, Catherine Holmes, and Eugenia Russell, 327–44. Oxford University Press, 2012.
- Goldberg, Jessica. Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Geniza Merchants and their Business World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
- Hohenberg, Paul M., and Lynn Hollen Lees. The Making of Urban Europe, 1000-1994 Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995.
- Lemercier, Claire. “Formal Network Methods in History: Why and How?” In Social Networks, Political Institutions, and Rural Societies, edited by Georg Fertig, 281–310. Brepols Publishers, 2015.
- Orlandi, Angela. “Networks and Commercial Penetration Models in the Late Medieval Mediterranean: Revisiting the Datini.” In Commercial Networks and European Cities 1400-1800, edited by Andrea Caracausi and Christof Jeggle, 81–106. London; Brookfield, Vermont: Pickering & Chatto, 2014.
- Pryor, John H. “The Maritime Republics.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History, edited by David S. H. Abulafia, Volume 5: 419–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
- Wickham, Chris. “The Mediterranean around 800: On the Brink of the Second Trade Cycle.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 58 (2004): 161–74.
- Valérian, Dominique. “The Medieval Mediterranean.” In A Companion to Mediterranean History, edited by Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita, 77–90. John Wiley & Sons, 2014.