Download PDF | Ovidiu Cristea and Liviu Pilat eds., From Pax Mongolica to Pax Ottomanica: War, Religion and Trade in the Northwestern Black Sea Region (14th–16th Centuries). (East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages 450–1450 58.) Leiden: Brill, 2020.
334 Pages
Acknowledgements
The starting point of the volume may be considered the panel Crusading and the Byzantine Legacy in the Northwestern Black Sea Region, organised on the occasion of the 51st International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo with the support of Research Group on Manuscript Evidence and the Center for Medieval Studies from the University of Florida, Gainesville.
The participants involved (Bogdan-Petru Maleon, Laurentiu Radvan, Liviu Pilat and Ovidiu Cristea) intended to draw attention on the Black Sea as a neglected area of the Crusading focusing on some small political actors as the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. We were aware that the suggested topics mirrored only mere details of a broader and more complicate picture, an impression strengthened by the discussions which followed each paper. The present volume is the result of the aforementioned discussions and suggestions. We are immensely grateful to professor Florin Curta for his support in organising the panel as for his encouragement to submit a proposal for the collection East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages despite the fact that, eventually, the volume encompasses a wider chronological frame.
Each book has its own history and the present one makes no exception. From the group which started the project as from the scholars who accepted to contribute, Bogdan-Petru Maleon and professor Serban Papacostea passed away before the end of the project. This volume is dedicated to their memory.
Introduction
Ovidiu Cristea and Liviu Pilat
The history of the Black Sea may be considered as alternating between an “inner lake,” when a single empire establishes control over the sea and its surrounding areas, and that of an “open sea,” in which various continental or maritime powers compete for the region’s resources. From Antiquity to the present day, this “advanced gulf” of the Mediterranean into continental Europe has been a crossroads of important trade routes.
It has also been a stage for power struggles between empires, civilisations and religions, which means a close connection between war, religion and trade. That is primarily why most historians of the Black Sea, from Nikolai Murzakievici,! Mikhail Volkov,2 Wilhelm Heyd,? Nicolae Iorga,* to Gheorghe I. Bratianu,> Serban Papacostea,® Halil Inalcik,’ Sergei Karpov, Geo Pistarino,? Michel Balard,!© Charles King!! or Evgeny Khvalkov!? have typically focused on political, strategic and commercial aspects of Pontic history.
From a political point of view, the Black Sea’s importance grew up after 1204 when the armies of the Fourth Crusade conquered Constantinople and even more after 1354 when the Ottoman Turks established a bridgehead at Gallipoli and began their expansion in Europe. The first event marked the end of the history of Byzantine Black Sea, while the second opened the age of the Ottoman expansion in the region. The treaty of Nymphaion signed in March 1261, between emperor Michael viii Palaiologos and Genoa, several months before the fall of the Latin Empire, had a huge impact on the evolution of the Black Sea in the 13th—14th century.!°
For the first time a Byzantine emperor opened the Black Sea to the foreign traders thus starting the process for the transformation of the Black Sea in a sort of Genoese “inner lake”. Soon after 1261 Genoa replaced their Venetian arch-rivals in Constantinople and created a network of emporia along all the shores of the Black Sea. These settlements were not just trade centers, but also naval bases from which trade routes were controlled. At the end of the 13th century, Genoa already established a strong hegemony in the Pontic area.
The network enabled the Genoese to control trade in the entire region and, additionally, to compel merchants from other areas to accept their terms.!* Foreign merchants were forced to load their merchandises only onto Genoese ships, to trade only in Genoese establishments and to avoid rival ports. The rise of Mongols, which controlled the Northern shores of the Black Sea and a large adjacent area, had a huge impact on the reconfiguration of the international trade routes between Europe and Asia.
The term pax mongolica indicates the time between 1280 and 1360, when the Mongol domination guaranteed security on trade routes between Asia and Europe. The “symbiosis” between pax mongolica and the initiative of Genoese merchants opened the way for the transformation of the Black Sea into “a plaque tournante du commerce international”!5 Such a combination of factors was in turn made possible by dramatic political changes taking place in East Central Europe, as well as the Eastern Mediterranean in the mid-13th century.
Mongol Khans secured the safety of the trade routes across the region, while granting commercial privileges to Genoese merchants who, in turn, brought in a considerable flow of commodities in the Black Sea ports. The trade explosion that followed may explain the rise of such trade centres as Caffa, Pera, Trebizond, Tana, Kilia and Moncastro. The Genoese presence in the region and the prosperity of the Genoese trade centres in the Black Sea area soon attracted attention from other maritime powers of the time.
Pisa was in decline during the second half of the 13th century, but Venice remained a main maritime power of the Mediterranean. Between the late 13th and the late 14th century, Venetian interest in the Black Sea trade led to three major confrontations with Genoa for supremacy in the region. Although the wars ended without any conclusive victory on either side, the Genoese managed to maintain a dominant position and even to restrict for short periods the Venetian access to Tana.
In addition to a general reconfiguration of the trade networks in the Black Sea area, the Mongols had a great impact on the crusade projects of the Late Middle Ages. Even so, the Black Sea was never a major front of the war against the “infidels” by contrast with the Holy Land, the Baltic region or the Iberian Peninsula. Moreover, many military actions were initiated by powers from outside the area as the “insiders” seem to have been minor political actors, too weak to launch a major offensive against the enemies of the Cross (as the Latin Empire in the 13th century was).
Nevertheless, the study of the topic is important for the understanding of the crusading movement in the Later Middle Ages as long as many themes and ideas used by Western powers (the Papacy, Venice, the German emperor, France, England) are to be found in Central and Eastern Europe not only in the Catholic kingdoms of Hungary and Poland, but also in orthodox principalities such as Wallachia and Moldavia. It is important to know how such themes were employed, how they were shaped by the aims of the political actors or by conjectural changes and where ended the rhetorical claims and began the concrete action.
The answer to all these questions and many others could differ from one case to another, so we are aware that an overview of the crusade in the Black Sea region risks oversimplification of a much complex picture or ignorance of important details. Moreover, there are several methodological problems. For instance, the label “crusade” applied by the sources to many military expeditions directed against those considered as enemies of the faith.
For various reasons some contemporary documents pictured a certain military expedition as a crusade; it is the case of the chronicle of Henri de Valenciennes who considered the war of the Latin Empire against the Bulgarian kingdom as a fight against the enemies of the Cross or, around mid-14th century, of the example of Genoese and Venetian documents which described the clash with the Golden Horde as a fight against the infidels, for the benefit of Christendom.
Should we follow the sources’ perspective and consider them as “holy expeditions” or rather as particular wars in search of legitimacy? Even if the second answer is more probable it is important to analyse how the vocabulary of the holy war was used in a certain context, how convincingly such rhetorical strategy was and, no less important, what was hidden behind such strategy?
A discussion about the war in the Black Sea zone should take into account a wider area, as many developments strongly related to events that occurred in other regions of the Mediterranean and East Central Europe. Many “outsiders” of the Black Sea zone (Genoa, Venice, Hungary) developed a Pontic policy!® or at least manifest some interest to control a certain area or some strategic points. There were no less than three wars between the two Italian Republics for the control of the trade in the region, conflicts which involved Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim powers and which had long-term consequences on the evolution of the Black Sea in the Later Middle Ages.
Despite the difficulty to define the region according to medieval sources, it is a fact that from 1204 onwards the Black Sea as a geographical unity was a zone of expansion for the Latin Europe. The main agents of this expansion were the merchants and the Latin missionaries who for two centuries developed their activity in the area. Several contributions in the first part of the volume discuss this period. Serban Papacostea and Laurentiu Radvan insist on various political and commercial evolutions in the Black Sea area during the 13th and the 14th centuries, Roman Hautala focuses on the activity of Dominican and Franciscan friars in Golden Horde’s Empire, while Serban Marin adopts another perspective, focusing on how the Venetian historiography reflected a specific event—the fall of Tana in 1343.
The first chapter The Genoese in the Black Sea (1261-1453). Metamorphoses of a Hegemony is a tribute to the memory of professor Serban Papacostea, a scholar who dedicated many years analysing the Genoese presence in “Mar Maggiore”. The paper emphasizes how from the treaty of Nymphaion onward, the Ligurian merchants developed a network of fortified emporia which was the first step for their hegemony in the Pontic region.
Mixing diplomacy and war, the Genoese ensured, in time, the renewal and enlargement of privileges granted by regional powers (Byzantium, the Golden Horde, the Empire of Trebizond, the Despotate of Dobroudja), the control of key points (Pera, Caffa, Trebizond, Kilia) and the limitations of the presence of their Venetian archrivals. Obviously, the Genoese system did not lack in moments of malfunction or crisis; the conflict between the metropolis and its colonies, the clash with local powers or the wars for supremacy with Venice were serious challenges to the Genoese domination in the Black Sea. However, until the Ottoman conquest, the system maintained its key features, which mirrored the flexibility of Genoese policy and their ability to adapt to difficult circumstances.
Among the Genoese emporia in the Black Sea, Kilia/Licostomo and Akkerman/Moncastro played an important role not only in the international trade, but also in the emergence of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, as well as in the commercial rivalry between Hungary and Poland in the 14th and 15th centuries.
In the chapter Between Byzantium, the Mongol Empire, Genoa and Moldavia: Trade Centers in the North-Western Black Sea Area, Laurentiu Radvan approaches the economic policies linked to two important port-cities pointing out how these centers emerged and developed, in a region opened to Byzantine, Mongol, but also Italian influences. The Byzantine impact still remains an overlooked topic, on account of the fact that these commercial centers reached their peak in a period during which Byzantium’s role in the north-western Black Sea area diminished. Conversely, a prominent political position in the region was taken after 1241 by the Mongols.
Lacking the experience necessary for administering a profitable trade environment, they allowed the Genoese to settle these shores after the treaty of Nymphaion. The first mention of the Genoese at the mouth of the Dniester is in 1290, but they were probably present from earlier times, persuaded by the fact that the “Mongol road” ended here. The Italian merchants actively focused on trading grain, wax, honey, skins, and slaves from the region, an activity that allowed them to exert an increasing influence on the economy, but also in terms of community organization, administration, etc.
The decline of the Golden Horde towards the mid-14th century did not affect the trade in the area, but the Genoese were forced to deal with the emergence of new political actors such as Wallachia and Moldavia. As a result, due to the insecurity provoked by the internal struggle for power in the Golden Horde, the so-called “Tatar road” which connected the Black Sea shores with Southern Poland was abandoned in favour of the “Moldavian road” which linked Moncastro and Licostomo with Lviv. This connection ensured the further economic growth of Moncastro and Licostomo but, in time, the Moldavian Princes progressively restricted the privileges of the Genoese merchants in their realm.
In parallel with the commercial expansion, from the mid thirteenth century onwards the area acknowledged an increasing Latin missionary activity analysed by Roman Hautala in the chapter concerning Catholic Missions in the Golden Horde Territory. The apostolate among the Mongol and Turkic nomads of Eastern Europe was an important aspect of the Western Christianity’s offensive in the Black Sea area whose aim was to convert the Mongol elite to the Christian faith as a response to the increasing influence of Islam among the Mongols. The chapter insists, especially, on the Franciscan and Dominican missionary activity during the reign of Khan Uzbek. Due to the powers granted to them by the Holy See, the friars deployed strenuous efforts to contain the increasing Muslim proselytism in the territories subjected to the Golden Horde. From this perspective, the Latin sources concerning the Tatars’ conversion to Islam and the Muslim proselytism among the Khan’s subjects are very important as they cast new insights on the topic. Moreover, the Latin documents point to details usually ignored by Russian or Muslim sources and thus enable a more subtle debate on the Khan Uzbek’s reasons to accept Islam as official religion. However, Uzbek’s conversion did not put a stop to the Catholic missionary activity. His intention to preserve the Northern Black Sea shores as an attractive zone for the Western merchants explained why he extended his protection also over the Catholic missionaries. Thus, it may be understood, why Uzbek’s reign, which corresponds with the official adoption of Islam, was also the period with the greatest successes for the missionaries. Their actions targeted not only the nomads but also the Orthodox or Armenian subjects from the Golden Horde’s territories, an activity, which ended only with the conquest of Caffa and Crimea by the Ottomans in 1475.
The Khan's benevolence towards the Western “agents” was not lacking tense episodes. The assault on Tana in 1343 and the subsequent siege of Caffa by Uzbek successor, Djanibeg, threatened to undermine the Western trade supremacy in the Black Sea, and especially on the Northern shores. The episode was spectacular and its details are well known." This is why Serban Marin’s contribution “La rotta della Tana” (1343). The Viewpoint of the Venetian Chronicles, analyses less the event and more its remembrance in the Venetian narrative sources. The documentary base is impressive: no less than 196 manuscripts and 20 published chronicles, which mention the episode as a major event for the Venetian history. Along with the quantitative challenge, the author had to overpass several methodological issues.
In many cases, there are no certainties about the chronicler, the moment when he accomplished his work, his sources or his motivations. Moreover, many pages were borrowed from previous narrative sources and it is difficult to determine if the chronicler simply cut and paste the fragments of interest or if he reshaped them according to his own views. Despite these difficulties, the analysis proposed by Serban Marin shows how the Venetian perceived the incident of Tana and how the Venetian historiography remembered this episode in short and in long term. Although in military terms the fall of Tana was a minor setback, for the chroniclers it was a major event as the destruction of the emporium was a huge blow for the Venetian commercial interests.
Fifty years later, Tana suffered another serious blow during the clash between the Golden Horde and Timur Lenk. Nagy Pienaru discusses in his chapter The Timurids and the Black Sea, the consequences of the emergence of a new dynamic factor of power in the area after the Timur Lenk’s conquest of Azerbaijan. Timur’s intention to revive the Persian IIkhanate opened the way for the confrontation in the Black Sea area with other major political actors: the Golden Horde and the Ottoman Empire. The competition for political supremacy was doubled by different commercial aims of the rivals. Despite the shock provoked in the Pontic region, the Timurid invasion did not alter significantly its commercial importance as the main trade centres and commercial routes resumed soon their activities. Moreover, after defeating both the Golden Horde and the Ottoman Empire, Timur Lenk tried to forge a vast commercial programme aimed to connect his capital, Samarkand, with the trade routes passing through the Black Sea, Central Asia, Persia and Azerbaijan. As his Ilkhanid predecessors or his rivals of the Golden Horde, he tried to ensure the necessary commodities for his territories by granting privileges to the main commercial agents of the time, the Genoese and the Venetians. These contacts went hand in hand with an anti-Ottoman alliance between Timur and the Christian princes, an illusion based on Timur Lenk’s allegedly favour towards Christians and on the previous attempts of collaboration between the Western powers and the Ilkhanate of Persia. Although the aforementioned alliance was never accomplished, the quest for an Oriental ally against the Ottomans still persisted. It revived in the second half of the 15th century by the Ak Koyunlu leader, Uzun Hassan and, later on, at the beginning of the 16th century by the emergence of Safavid Persia.
From the imperial policy of the Golden Horde and Timur Lenk the next chapter passes on two other “small” actors of the Black Sea area: The Principality of Theodoro (Mangup) and Stephen the Great’s Moldavia. Observations and Hypothesis.
Starting from an extremely dispersed documentation, Stefan S. Gorovei, emphasises the importance of the Black Sea in Moldavia’s policy during the reign of Stephen the Great (1457-1504). A well-known fact, the dynastic alliance between the prince and a princess of Mangup, Maria Asanina Palaeologina, is now placed in a wider perspective. The marriage strengthened the Prince's claim over the control of the north-western shores of the Black Sea, from the Danube’s mouth to Crimea. Moreover, the relations with the Principality of Theodoro implicitly assumed the protection of two ancient and prestigious metropolitans of Gothia and Crimea. However, such ambitions clashed with Mehemmed 11’s policy in the region especially after the outbreak of war between the Ottoman Empire and the principality of Moldavia in 1473. Despite Stephen the Great’s victory over Ottoman army in January 1475, the conquest of Theodoro by the Ottomans several months later put an end to Stephen's projects. From 1475 onwards, Moldavia was placed in a vulnerable position between the Ottoman Empire and the Khanate of Crimea, which in the same year became a satellite of the Porte. However, Stephen did not seem to abandon his Crimean projects. Two years later, in 1477, a Moldavian ambassador in Venice was instructed to discuss the project of the recovery of Crimea for the Christians.
The idea, although not realistic, may also be found in other documents from the end of the 15th century. In the chapter Attempts to Form a Genoese-PolishTartar Coalition against the Ottoman Empire in 1480-1484, Danuta QuiriniPoplawska adds more details regarding the Genoese efforts to recover the former colonies from Crimea. Some inhabitants of Sudak (Soldaia) and Caffa (Teodosija) such as Andrea Guasco, Gianotto Lomellini and Gabriele de Promontorio, who found shelter in Poland after the Ottoman conquest of Crimea, did not cease to think about the recovery of their former cities. After the Turkish attacks on Rhodes and the seizure of Otranto many other European realms were urged by Pope Sixtus Iv to join the fight against the sultan. The authorities of Genoa made, in their turn, preparations for the forthcoming anti-Ottoman campaign. The death of Mehemmed 11 and the ongoing struggle for succession to the Ottoman throne was a most convenient moment to start the intervention. Mengli 1 Giray, the Tatar Khan, to whom the Turkish suzerainty had been burdensome, appeared to support the Genoese claim for gaining back the Crimean colonies. Moreover, the authorities of Genoa started a diplomatic offensive intended to gain support for the forth-coming military expedition. In the Genoese strategy, King Casimir Iv Jagiello of Poland was a key actor. However, the embassy sent to Cracow in 1481 turned back without any concrete results. Similar outcomes had the negotiations with other Christian realms and, eventually, the scheduled recovery of Crimea remained one of the many unachieved projects of the 15th century.
Nonetheless, in 1484, the conquest of Licostomo and Moncastro by the Ottomans renewed, on short term, the Polish interest for the Black Sea. Liviu Pilat focuses in the chapter Dynastic Conflicts, Alliances and the Ottoman Imperial Policy in the Northern Black Sea (1489-1499) on the consequences of the Ottoman victory, which changed drastically the balance of power in the region. One of the most evident mutations concerned the relations of Polish Kingdom with Moldavia and the Crimean Khanate. Enjoying the protection of the Porte as tributary states, both Moldavia and the Khanate started an aggressive policy towards Poland and Lithuania, which also tensed the political relations between Poland and the Ottoman Empire. While Mengli Girey intended to control the mouths of the Dniepr, Stephen of Moldavia schemed to provoke a war between Istanbul and Cracow. Thus, Stephen decided to support the creation of a Russian principality as Ottoman tributary state, an endeavour also sustained by a former grand vizier, Mesih pasha. The plan was a part of a wider anti-Polish project, which also included Maximillian of Habsburg and Ivan 111 of Moscow. Eventually, despite the Moldavian and Ottoman support, the pretender was defeated and captured which put an end to Stephen’s plot. However, his anti-Polish policy continued in the next years reaching a climax in 1497 with an open confrontation between Moldavia and its powerful northern neighbour.
Moldavia and the Crimean Khanate are also the main actors of Michal Wasiucionek’s contribution Entangled Histories, Entangled Chancelleries? Moldavia and the Crimean Khanate between Pax Mongolica and Pax Ottomanica. While Liviu Pilat insisted on the political and military developments at the end of the 15th century, Michal Wasiucionek focuses on chancellery practices in Moldavia and the Crimean Khanate as an indicator of their place in the Ottoman system.
At stake is what the author calls the ‘Ottomanization’ of documents in the case of tributary states of the Porte, a process well-studied in the Crimean Khanate but less-known in the Moldavian case. Michal Wasiucionek argue that there are some features in documents issued by the Moldavian Prince for the internal use, which highlight the ruler’s connection with the sultan, seen as the supreme source of authority. It is the case of tugra-like cypher adopted by two Moldavian Princes Stefan Tomsa 11 (1611-1615, 1621-1623) and Miron Barnovschi (1626-1629, 1633) in documents granted to the boyars or Moldavian monasteries. In parallel with such borrowings from the Ottoman practice, both the Crimean as the Moldavian preserved their old-fashioned diplomatics’ elements as a way to reinforce their traditional sources of legitimacy. While the reasons, which determined the rulers from Bahcesaray and Iasi to adopt elements of Ottoman diplomatics could have been different, it is important to emphasise that the borrowings express their willingness to be integrated in the Ottoman hierarchy of power.
Two other chapters are dedicated to the political and military struggles in the Black Sea area towards the end of the 16th century. Dariusz Milewski’s contribution From Swierczowski to Wallachian Expedition of Jan Zamoyski: Rise of the Cossack Factor in Polish-Ottoman Relations (1574-1600) deals with the emergence of the Cossacks as a political factor in the North-Eastern Black Sea. In the last quarter of the 16th century the incursions for plunder in territories submitted to the Porte tensioned the usually peaceful relations. Even worse, after 1574, the Cossacks were involved in the struggle for the Moldavian throne supporting ephemeral pretenders such as Iwan Podkova and Peter “the Cossack”. Such involvement in territory submitted to the sultan was considered as a serious threat by the Ottomans who asked the Polish King to stop the incursions and to punish the responsible. As the King lacked the instruments able to solve the issue, the war was eventually avoided only due to the mediation of the English ambassador in Istanbul and to the diplomatic ability of the chancellor and hetman of the Polish Crown, Jan Zamoyski.
The Cossack issue was amplified in the last years of the 16th century by the “Long Turkish War” (1593-1606) and especially by the revolt of Wallachia and Moldavia against the Porte in November 1594. The chapter concerning War and Diplomacy in the Black Sea Region during the “Long War” put together several unpublished or well-known documents in an attempt to analyse the Ottoman policy towards the Black Sea and the Danube during the war. For the political circles in Istanbul the successful pursuit of the war in Hungary was intimately connected with the pacification of Wallachia and Moldavia and, implicitly, with the control of the Danube and the Black Sea. To achieve the goal, the Porte used both military and diplomatic measures. After the failure of the expedition in Wallachia in 1595, the Ottomans changed their strategy and tried to convince the rebel princes to abandon their allegiance to the Habsburgs. Thus, they used mediators trusted by both camps such as the English ambassador in Istanbul, Edward Barton or Meletios Pigas, the Patriarch of Alexandria and also locum tenens of the Patriarch of Constantinople. The latter used a wide range of arguments to convince Michael the Brave of Wallachia to accept the offered peace but, despite some progress, a full peace was never established. However, the negotiations had a side effect. Despite the diplomatic failure, the Danube frontier and the Black Sea area entered in a period of stasis as from 1598 the Prince of Wallachia directed his attention towards other targets.
Eventually the Porte overcame the challenges represented by the Cossacks and the rebel princes. Even if the Cossacks raids still afflicted the empire for a while,!® the Ottomans succeeded to reaffirm their grasp on the Black Sea and pax ottomanica remained the rule in the region until the rise of Russia as a Pontic power.
The studies gathered in the present volume mirror the thematic diversity of the history of the Black Sea. Some of them insist on general topics and the role of the big powers in the shaping of the destiny of the region, while others focus on details and the role of minor political actors in the struggle for hegemony.
Despite the thematic diversity, the contributions underlined that in the Later Middle Ages and Early Modern period the interest for the Black Sea, as a frontier zone between Christianity and Islam, was both strategic and commercial. War, religion and trade were used by different powers in their quest to achieve supremacy in the Black Sea. To simplify a more complex picture, it may be argued that, for a long period, the strategic goals remained almost the same: the hegemonic powers aimed to dominate sea by controlling the coasts or, at least, some key points (the Straits, the mouths of the Danube, the Crimean Peninsula, Caffa) and to eliminate other maritime powers from the area. Eventually, towards the end of the 15th century, the Ottoman Empire succeeded in transforming the zone in a sort of “inner lake” but even in the new circumstances, the previous trade routes continued to connect various regions inside and outside the Black Sea.
Using original manuscript and printed documents the authors employ different approaches and methods, which may explain why, sometimes, they may express divergent point of views on the same events. It is the case of the consequences of the fall of Caffa in 1475 seen as a huge blow for the Polish and regional trade (Danuta Quirini-Poplawska), or, on the contrary, as a reconfiguration of the system according to Ottoman aims (Ovidiu Cristea and Ovidiu Olar). The present introduction does not intend to settle the divergence. Further research will, certainly, enable a better understanding of the process as one of the aims of the volume is to stimulate the debate between historiographical schools and scholars.
Despite the unavoidable divergences the volume’s goal is to draw a comprehensive picture of the Black Sea in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, which witnessed the rapid decline of the previous masters of the region (Byzantines, Mongols, Genoese, and Venetians) and the rise of a new power (the Ottoman Empire). By taking into account the impact of major powers and minor political actors, the book proposes a long-term perspective of regional history. It offers, hopefully, a better understanding of the political and commercial history of the Black Sea between the 14th and the 16th centuries, and provides insights into the political and economic developments of the region.
The Genoese in the Black Sea (1261-1453): Metamorphoses of a Hegemony
Serban Papacostea
At the end of the uth century, the Latin West channelled towards the Eastern Mediterranean the energy it had recuperated in the past centuries through a vigorous, large-scale and longstanding conflict with the Islamic world, an action whose symbolic name is the crusade. A society with a strong demographic and economic growth, a numerous and well-trained military class, able of undertaking decisive actions, fast growing cities, especially in Italy—due mainly to its role as main intermediary in the trade between Asia and Europe—, an ecclesial and spiritual force—the Roman Church—with theocratical tendencies, a consequence of pope Gregory vi1’s reforms, these were the main factors of the strong offensive impulse of the Catholic world in the Eastern Mediterranean, the crusade, which, for several centuries, remained an important factor in the international relations of the age.
One of the main goals of these offensive waves of the Western world into the Eastern Mediterranean was the reestablishment of the direct contact with the Asian world, with its civilizational values and the no less desired products— spices and silk—, that were accessible only through intermediaries following the great geopolitical transformations from the 7th and 8th centuries, a consequence of the Arab conquests. From this time, the Arabs were the longstanding rulers of the Eastern Mediterranean, while the Black Sea, a subsidiary but not neglectable connection with inner Asia, was isolated from the Mediterranean region by the rigorous exclusivist regime imposed at the Straits—Bosporus and Dardanelles—by the Byzantine imperial power, determined to keep the vast material advantages resulting from the trade between Asia and Europe for itself.
The crusade stimulated decisively the development of cities—especially in Italy—after the conquest by the crusaders of several trade centres in Syria and Palestine, by making the oriental products more accessible and, equally, by frequently and massively employing their fleets for the transport of troops and equipment or even for military operations. Starting with the Third Crusade, the expeditions of the Western knights abandoned the land routes in favour of the sea routes that were quicker and more convenient. The naval strength of the Italian maritime cities—Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Amalfi—experienced a significant growth following these evolutions and increased their influence in determining the directions of the military actions, strategy and tactics. The economic finality of the holy expeditions appears more clearly in the crusade projects from the 13th and 14th centuries.!
Despite the efforts of the crusaders installed in Syria and Palestine since the end of the 11th century, the Islamic barrier couldn’t be pierced neither in the direction of the Persian Gulf, nor towards the Red Sea. This stalemate marked the limits of the crusade in the Eastern Mediterranean and foreshadowed its final fail. While the Eastern Mediterranean remained under the domination of Islam, the obstacle at the Straits, in the Byzantine area, was eventually removed. In 1204, the Fourth Crusade, with the decisive support of the Venetian fleet, conquered Constantinople and replaced the Byzantine authority from the Straits, opening the way towards the Black Sea, that will become in the future decades the main connection with inner Asia.
1 From Venetian Hegemony to Genoese Domination (1204-1261)
Based on the agreements concluded with the leaders of the crusaders, the Venetians obtained not only important territorial positions—both in the islands and on the continent—from the former Byzantine imperial area, but also had all the privileges they had previously extorted from the emperors of Constantinople confirmed by their allies. Moreover, using the clause that gave them the right to exclude their rivals from the trade of the newly created Latin Empire, the Venetians practically dictated its commercial policy.
The Black Sea is not explicitly mentioned in the conventions between the Venetians and the crusaders, maybe because the Byzantine legacy in this area had been already contested in 1204 or was severely diminished.* Although the testimonies concerning the activity of the Mediterranean merchants in the Black Sea during this time are scarce, we can be sure, that in a quarter century, the Venetians had explored and knew the most part of the seashore and its main trade centres.* In 1232, a Venetian contract written in Constantinople signalled the capacity of the merchants to carry out their activity “all across the Great Sea” (one of the main denominations of the Black Sea during that age). In 1246-1247, while passing though Kiev, the missionary John of Plano Carpini noticed the presence in the city of a group of Latin merchants from Constantinople. Another Catholic missionary, William of Rubruck, also found Latin merchants from Constantinople in Sudak (Soldaia), Crimea’s main commercial centre at that time. Besides, Sudak (Soldaia)® was the starting point for two Venetian merchants, Niccolo and Maffeo Polo, who explored the Asian continent between 1259 and 1260.
The commercial cooperation between Venice and Genoa in the Latin Empire and especially in the Black Sea during that time was remarkable. The cooperation between the two main thalassocracies of the Mediterranean—a short respite of a quarter century in a long a bitter rivalry—ensured the essential naval defence of the empire founded by the crusaders and assaulted by numerous enemies. The end of this cooperation will hasten the fall of the Latin Empire.
2 Genoese Domination in the Black Sea®
A Genoese-Venetian agreement on a Mediterranean scale created the favourable conditions for the joint exploitation of the Black Sea Trade; the breaking of this agreement, also on a Mediterranean scale, ended their collaboration and, from one consequence to another, restructured “the whole political and economic map of the Levant”, according to the sharp observation of Roberto Sabatino Lopez.
In June 1258, after repeated clashes, the Venetians and the Pisans drove the Genoese out of Acre, the main trade centre from the territories controlled by the crusaders in Palestine. Although they retreated to Tyre, another trade centre in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Genoese did not consent to their loss. Their refused to accept this fait accompli determined a new political orientation of the commune in the Eastern Mediterranean. Ending the compromise with Venice, that had ensured their access to the Latin Empire and in the Black Sea, the Genoese authorities approached the Byzantine emperor exiled in Nicaea, Michael vi11 Palaeologus (1257-1282), the founder of the last Byzantine dynasty. The joined interests of the two powers found their diplomatic expression in a famous document, the treaty concluded on 13 March 1261 at Nymphaion, the summer residence of the Nicaean emperors. In essence, the Treaty of Nymphaion substituted Venice with Genoa in the Byzantine Empire under the Palaeologian restoration.
Besides other numerous concessions—customs and tax exemptions, privileged settling grounds in various cities of the empire, the exclusion of their adversaries, excepting the Pisans, from the commercial activity of the empire under restoration—, Michael Palaeologus ensured an exceptional regime for the Genoese in the Black Sea: “Also, the emperor promises and agrees not to allow henceforth any Latin, excepting the Genoese and the Pisans, to travel and trade in the Black Sea, excepting his own [= the emperors’ men], whom shall bring him the money or the goods of our treasury. The Genoese shall not be hindered from travelling to the Black Sea and return with goods from there, but they shall be free to go and return, without any kommerkion [= customs]”.”
The exceptionally favourable regime obtained for their Black Sea trade by the Genoese negotiators of the treaty concluded with Byzantium is the evidence of their knowledge of the exceptional resources of the Black Sea trade, both the regional ones and those resulting from the establishment of the trade routes with inner Asia, through the territories of the two parts of the Mongol Empire neighbouring the Black Sea—the Golden Horde in the North, with its centre at Sarai, on the Volga, and the Iranian Ilkhanate in the South, with its centre at Tabriz.
Their determination to fully exploit this commercial potential explains the extraordinary intensity of the Genoese activity in the Black Sea during the first decades after Nymphaion, noticed by the contemporaries. The Byzantine historian Pachymeres observed that not long after the Genoese had settled in the Straits, they were sailing also in the middle of winter, in extremely dangerous conditions, around the Black Sea, on their ships.®
Settled permanently on the Bosporus since 1267, at Pera (Galata), a neighbourhood of Constantinople, which they will turn into the most solid base of their domination of the Black Sea, the Genoese quickly entered all the main trade centres close to the sea. In the territories regained by Byzantium on the Western shore of the Black Sea, the Genoese are mentioned by the sources at Vicina and Mesembria. A Byzantine settlement on the maritime Danube, Vicina, whose location isn’t yet clear, was the centre of an intense Genoese commercial activity, whose significant documentary traces can be found in the documents instrumented in 1281 by the Genoese notary Gabriele di Predono. Until the middle of the 14th century, Vicina will remain the main centre of Genoese trade at the Danube.
In the territories under the direct control of the Golden Horde, of paramount importance was the Genoese settlement of Caffa, on the Eastern shore of the Crimea. Founded on the ruins of the ancient settlement of Theodosia, on the bases of a—most likely—verbal agreement with the rulers of the Golden Horde, Caffa will become during the following decades one of the most important European trade centres and a pillar of the developing hegemony of the Genoese in the Northern Black Sea.9 A Venetian source observes that, at the end of the 13th century, the inhabitants of Caffa had commercial connections “with all the lands in the North, the East and the West’! thus explaining the city’s rapidly growing wealth. Caffa was closely connected with Tana, situated at the mouth of the Don into the Azov Sea and the starting point of the route towards Central Asia and the Extreme East, which was massively and almost exclusively exploited by the Genoese during this first stage of their domination of the Black Sea. Since the last decade of the 13th century we also have the first mention about the Genoese activity at the Dniester Liman, at Maurocastrum (Moncastro) or CetateaAlba (Bialgorod).
On the Southern shore of the Black Sea, their most important position was at Trebizond, the meeting point of the trade routes from the Black Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. This connection became extremely important after Trebizond entered the sphere of influence of the Mongol Empire in Iran, during the reign of emperor John Komnenos (1282-1297). Settled in large numbers in Trebizond," the Genoese took over an important share of the settlement’s commercial function.
Also on the Southern shore, the Genoese are mentioned before the end of the 13th century at Sinope, Amissos (Samsun), Amastri (Samastro) and Heraclea Pontica (Puntarachia). The Caucasian shore also received the attention of the Genoese during this early stage of their penetration of the Black Sea. At Sevastopolis, one of the main centres of the slave trade, they are first mentioned in 1280, and at Faxium (Batumi) in 1290.
Therefore, in several decades, the Genoese had explored all the areas and were actively settled in most of the centres of the Black Sea shore, taking over their main commercial functions. First of all, they've gained control over the trade route between Europe and Asia through the Black Sea, which became during this age the main way for obtaining spices and silk, a rapid source of wealth.
However, the Genoese were not content with this first gain in the Black Sea trade—the connection between Asia and the Mediterranean. They had also successfully infiltrated the inter-Pontic relations, substituting most of the local populations in the traditional exchanges between the local trade centres. The direct commercial advantage resulting from this exchange was considerably enhanced by the gains obtained through naval transport, from naval taxes—a source of great profits.
The exceptional revenue realized by the Genoese from the Black Sea trade was due mainly to the privileged regime they were ensured following the Treaty of Nymphaion. The preservation and even the consolidation of this regime was their main goal during the first decades of their domination over the Black Sea and remained also during the following century, in different conditions, the ideal frame towards which they tended.
The clause of the Treaty of Nymphaion concerning the Pisans, hard to neglect as rivals by the Genoese, became void after 1282 when, following the catastrophic defeat inflicted on their fleet at Meloria by the Genoese, Pisa left the race of the main Mediterranean thalassocracies.! The right kept by the Byzantines to trade in the Black Sea—otherwise limited, according to the treaty, to the ships of the imperial treasury—, will be rigorously restricted by the Genoese. A complaint sent to the patriarch of Constantinople, Gregory 11 (1283-1289) and resent by him to the general logothete, incriminated the intolerable abuses committed by the Genoese in the Black Sea, such as forcing the Greek to unload the merchandises from the imperial ships and to load them on their own ships, actions during which they sometimes made use of their weapons.'* The ferocity shown by the Genoese in the monopolization, even by force, of the naval transport and its inherent advantages, shows the wealth gained from this activity. Although remote, this information reveals the serious effect, which this practice had on the Byzantine-Genoese relations. It goes without saying that if the Genoese resorted to such means against the imperial authorities and despite the Treaty of Nymphaion, they were even more unscrupulous concerning the interests of the other Black Sea nations, who were prevented from making use of naval transport and enjoying its advantages.
Ever since the first years after the Treaty of Nymphaion, the Genoese had shown an exceptional interest for the Northern coast of the Black Sea, under the rule of the Golden Horde. When the Genoese from the Black Sea founded their colony at Caffa, Genoa tried, during the peace negotiations with Venice (1268), to impose—in the eventuality of a ceasefire and of a Venetian comeback in the region—to the rival republic the acceptation of a lacunary clause that forbade their direct access to the great trade route under the rule of the Golden Horde, i.e. at Tana, “quod non iretur ad Tanam”> A minimum condition for the restoration of peace, the clause concerning Tana dominated the Venetian-Genoese relations in the Black Sea until the Ottoman conquest.
That’s how profitable was the gain obtained through this privileged exploitation, without any direct competition, of this connection with the Asian continent. The attempts to gain or restrict access to this route were the main causes of the three Venetian-Genoese wars waged in and for the Black Sea.
Therefore, the regime of the Black Sea trade formulated by the Treaty of Nymphaion created exceptionally favourable conditions for the activity of the Genoese merchants: the restriction of the competition due to the clauses of the treaty and its gradual elimination through acts of force allowed the Genoese to hold a quasi-monopoly, buying the merchandises in the most favourable conditions, taking over most of the naval transport and making huge profits. According to the Byzantine historian George Pachymeres, the massive exploitation of the Black Sea trade by the Genoese had tipped the scales of power—wealth and naval forces—in favour of Genoa and against Venice.
At the end of his book, Divisament du monde, later renamed Il Milione, whose text was written in a Genoese prison, where he was detained as a was prisoner during the final years of the 13th century, Marco Polo explains his silence on the Black Sea (Mar Maggiore). The region was so well-known by his European readers—Genoese, Pisans “and many others”—that, as the illustrious Venetian states, it was futile to tarry over realities well-known to his contemporaries. Being at the time “a crossroads (plaque tournante) of international trade’, according to Gheorghe Bratianu’s inspired formula,!® the Black Sea amply rewarded the main intermediaries of this function, i.e. the Genoese. However, just because it had obtained the main status in the Eurasian exchanges, the Black Sea shall become the object of violent clashes for more than a century between Venice, determined to open its way towards the source of these miraculous treasures, and Genoa, committed to defend the privileged it had obtained at Nymphaion and the immense advantages that came alongside it.
Venice’s tolerance for the extraordinary consolidation of the Genoese hegemony to its disadvantage ended in 1291, when the last crusader stronghold in the Holy Land and the outpost of the republic’s Eastern trade, the fortress of Accra, was conquered by the Muslims. Banished from this privileged position, Venice forced its entrance into the Black Sea, especially towards the Northern coast, where it settled after an agreement with the almighty Nogai, one of the main chieftains of the Golden Horde. This Venetian initiative, that seriously threatened the system of Genoese domination in the Black Sea, was the main cause of the First War of the Straits (1294-1299),!” during which Venice and Genoa competed for the exploitation of the Black Sea trade. Despite the great victories it had gained at Lajazzo and Curzola, at the conclusion of the Treaty of Milan (1299) Genoa was unable to force its rival to entirely abandon its autonomous commercial activity in the territories of the Golden Horde; it had to settle with a long-term postponement—of probably twenty years—of the return of the Venetian trade in the Black Sea and of the presence of the Venetian warships in the region. The Treaty of Milan and its unavoidable consequences were the starting point of a new stage for the Genoese hegemony in the Black Sea.
3 The Genoese Hegemony under the Direction of the Metropolis (1299-1343)"
Genoa made good use of the respite obtained through the Treaty of Milan, consolidating its positions in the Black Sea and making them able to withstand the old and new adversities attracted by its commercial hegemony. The golden age of exploitation without major competition, inaugurated by the Treaty of Nymphaion, was over at the end of the First War of the Straits. The new phase, that promised to be far more difficult, because it introduced permanently— after the respite settled by the Treaty of Milan—the commercial and naval power of Venice in the Black Sea, required appropriate measures for the predictable dangers. The timespan between the Treaty of Nymphaion and the Treaty of Milan was characterized, as far as the activity of the Genoese in the Black Sea is concerned, by the free, tumultuous and even anarchic individual initiatives. The new situation created by the Treaty of Milan demanded the intervention of the metropolis, both for the protection of its subjects’ activity and in order to remove the serious inconveniences often caused by their spontaneous and uncontrolled actions.
The accommodation to the new situation began with the fortification of the main Genoese centres in the Black Sea, in order to shelter the inhabitants and their goods and to promote the general interests of Genoese trade. The earliest manifestation of this new policy can be seen in Pera, the warranty for the free navigation of the Genoese in and out of the Mediterranean. Favoured by the increasingly serious situation of the Byzantine Empire, threatened by the perspective of a new crusade for the restoration of the Latin Empire, by the progresses of the Turks in Asia Minor and by the actions of the Catalan mercenaries, Genoa systematically consolidated its position from Pera. Gradually, the colony evolved from the its original status of strictly controlled autonomy, imposed by Michael vii! Palaeologus, to that of quasi-sovereignty, in less than two decades after the conclusion of the Treaty of Milan. In March 1304, threatened by foreign hostile forces, emperor Andronicus 11 Palaeologus (1282-1328) made substantial concessions to the Genoese, inscribed in a new privilege.!9 The territory granted to his guests in the previous century was widely expanded, a clue for the prosperity of the Bosporus colony and its perspectives of development. The imperial privilege allowed the Genoese to raise public buildings, fortify their homes and even surround the conceded land with a moat, an important stage towards their complete autonomy. The interdiction to erect a defensive wall around the settlement, explicitly inscribed in the imperial privilege (preter murum castri), will not last long against the rapid development of the Genoese power in the Straits and the Black Sea. The juridical status of the Genoese from the Byzantine Empire was also consolidated after the emperor formally renounced his right to appoint vassals from their ranks and implicitly to remove them from the influence of the authorities in Pera. From a commercial point of view, the document of 1304 confirmed all the previous privileges of the Genoese—libertates sine impedimenta—, including that of using their own trade weights and especially that of taxing the inhabitants of their settlement. It is true that the privilege forbade Pera to take foreign citizens under its protection, but this interdiction will soon fall into disuse, given the determination of the Genoese to maximize their profits though the dominant position they had ensured at the Straits. In fact, based on the position of strength they had gained between the 13th and 14th centuries, they strived and managed to attract most of the goods flow in and from the Black Sea. Within decades, the income of the customs in Pera surpassed six times that of the imperial customs in Constantinople.
In 1304, the consolidated relationship with Byzantium determined Genoa to issue the statute of Pera—Magnum Volumen Peyre—, drafted ever since 1300, an event that marked decisively the autonomous regime of the settlement. Based on this code of laws, otherwise an exact copy of Genoa’s juridical regime, the Genoese settlements from the Black Sea, excepting Caffa, were subordinated to the authorities in Pera.
Forced by the circumstances and by its growing weakness, Byzantium offered new concessions to the Genoese or assented tacitly their increasingly bolder violations of the perfected agreements. The repeated attempts by the declining empire to contain the abusive extension of the agreements by its guests in Pera proved futile.
Inspired by its success with Pera, gradually consolidated after 1299, Genoa saw itself as entitled and was tempted to extend the privileged status forcefully obtained from the Byzantines in the Bosporus to the whole ensemble of its Black Sea positions. The regime of the Black Sea trade would, therefore, be aligned to that of the command centre in Pera and together they would have formed the frame of the Genoese hegemony in the region. The conception of the leadership in Genoa concerning this aspect can be easily observed from the title of its newly appointed representative in Pera, Gavino Tartaro, invested in 1300— therefore after the conclusion of the Treaty of Milan—with the title of “vicar for the commune of Genoa in all the empire of Romania and the Great Sea”. The establishment of this institution represents the first clue of Genoa’s intention to extend the privileged regime of Pera to the ensemble of its Black Sea trade and—generally—in the Byzantine Empire. The main components of the under-building Genoese commercial hegemony were, as in Pera, on the one hand the preferential customs regime, if not the total exemption from customs, an advantage that considerably increased their commercial profit and consolidated the position of the main centre at the expense of the competing settlements, and on the other hand the building of fortifications, that ensured the safety of their own merchants against potential aggressors. A whole series of other advantages were linked to this essential frame.
The main tensions and conflicts generated by the new Genoese policy were signalled at Caffa and Trebizond, the main centres of the Black Sea trade, alongside Pera.
In the empire of the Golden Horde, the main source of tensions between the Tatars and the Genoese was the latter’s claim to fortify their settlement at Caffa and even the effective fortification of the colony as a show of strength, without the permission of khan Tokhta (1291-1312).2° When he decided to face the Genoese for this defiance, Tokhta sent a large army to conquer Caffa, and the settlement fell, but only after eight months of siege (1308). The vast means that were employed and the duration of the siege are proof for the existence at Caffa, at this date, of strong fortifications, already built during the previous years. The success of the Tatar khan did not last. After they left Caffa, the Genoese imposed a trade embargo—devetum, according to contemporary sources—against the territories of the Golden Horde, depriving the Tatars of one of their main sources of income. In 1313, after the coronation of a new khan, Uzbek (1313-1341), the Golden Horde capitulated. The new khan not only allowed the Genoese to return to Caffa, but he also granted them the right to fortify their settlement. Thus, in Caffa, as in Pera, the premises of evolution from autonomy to sovereignty were created. The following years will register the brightest achievement of this tendency.
A similar evolution can be remarked for Trebizond as well. The chronology of the events in uncertain, but their sense is clear. Most likely in 1304, encouraged—here also—by their success with Pera, which was mentioned deliberately, the Genoese asked emperor Alexios 11 Komnenos (1297-1330), among others, to renounce his control on the commercial activities of their businessmen, to exempt them of all taxes—firstly, of course, the customs— and to cease to pretend formal manifestations of dependency. Refused by the emperor, the Genoese in Trebizond left the city, according to the dispositions they had received, as a manifestation of a trade embargo. There followed a time of armed conflicts, during which the best documented episode is the joint Crimean expedition of the Trapezuntines and the Turks from Sinope, at Caffa, in 1313. After prolonged negotiations between 1314 and 1316, a peace treaty, concluded on 26 October 1316, ended the hostilities between the Genoese and the Trapezuntines, with favourable conditions for the first. The Genoese obtained their own ground in Trebizond, at the arsenal, with the right to fortify it and an extraterritorial status that implied the exemption from the imperial customs’ kommerkion on this territory. However, this concession was granted to the Genoese exclusively and did not include their guests of other origins.
In Pera, Caffa and Trebizond—the triangle of the great international trade in the Black Sea during this age—, the Genoese managed to extort vast privileges from the local rulers, according to their exclusivist demands. Lords of the Bosporus, the Genoese deliberately tried to impose to the entire Black Sea a regime as close to the hegemonic objective inscribed in the Black Sea clause of the Treaty of Nymphaion as possible.
Following the success of this first decisive operation—the fortification of their main Black Sea centres—, where they certainly had the initiative, in 1314 the authorities in Genoa created a central institution meant to regulate and supervise the trade of the Genoese in the Black Sea and their activity here in general, named Octo sapientes super factis navigandi et Maris Majoris (“The eight wise men in problems of navigation and of the Great Sea”) and subsequently rebaptized Officium Gazarie (Gazaria being the ancient name for the ‘land of the Khazars’, being the Crimea in a narrow sense and the empire of the Golden Horde in a broad sense). The decision of establishing this body of regulation and supervision for the Black Sea trade was justified by the conclusion that trade “in the Great Sea and Gazaria’ affected the whole Genoese commune, all its citizens and its “districtuals” (a word that designated the inhabitants of the neighbouring county, depending on the centre). Therefore, the decision was a clear statement concerning the key role played by the Black Sea trade in Genoa’s economy and, implicitly, the manifestation of the metropolis’ intention to systematically organise the exploitation of the extraordinary possibilities and perspectives, which the Black Sea offered for its trade.
The establishment of the council of the “eight wise men’, meant to coordinate the Black Sea trade from the centre signalled the decision to end the anarchic and over-individualistic activity of the Genoese in the Black Sea, which was no longer suited with the new situation following the Treaty of Milan. Following the general observation that “the Black Sea is filled with corsairs”*!—many of them from their own ranks—the new Genoese court announced a series of efficient measures to end that situation that was detrimental for the interests of the Ligurian Republic in the region. The specific measures elaborated during the years by the “wise men’ of Genoa were meant and partially succeeded to make the activity of the Genoese obey the rules from the centre.
One of Genoa’s most significant and pressing preoccupations was the urgent reconstruction of Caffa and the procuration of the necessary means for this goal. Some ordinances issued in 1316, forming together the “Code concerning Caffa” (Ordo de Caffa), met this urgent need. All ships sailing to the Northern coast of the Black Sea that passed Caffa during their voyage and the ones sailing back were obligated to lay at anchor for at least one day in the settlement’s docks and pay a tax for anchoring, carefully calculated according to the ship type, its tonnage and cargo. Those who opened and sold their merchandises in the settlement were taxed according to the local customs tariff. The attempt to avoid this obligation was sanctioned with heavy fines. Before entering the Black Sea, the commanders of the ships were forced to leave substantial collaterals at Pera, which were given back to them at their return, but only after they had proved the payment of the taxes in Caffa.
A series of commercial measures tended to concentrate as much as possible from the regional goods flow at Caffa, to the disadvantage of the other settlements. The Genoese citizens and those sharing their status were forbidden to station for more than three days at Soldaia (Sudak)—at that time still a thriving commercial centre—and strictly forbidden to carry out any commercial activities in the rival centre. In order to discourage the smugglers, another decision prevented the Genoese from unloading merchandises on the shore between Caffa and Soldaia (Sudak). The maintenance of these measures, given the Genoese naval and commercial supremacy, will unavoidably lead to the decline of Soldaia (Sudak) end, eventually, to its subordination to Caffa, an evolution that lasted several decades. Drastic measures to limit the commercial activity of the Genoese were adopted regarding Solkhat—the centre of the Tatar authority in the Crimea—and especially at Tana, the farthest outpost at the junction between the sea and the Eurasian continent. During 1316, together with the measures concerning Soldaia (Sudak) and Solkhat, the Genoese authorities forbade their subjects to “winter at Tana” and to build or own houses in the aforementioned settlement. The effort of the Genoese authorities to extend the navigation and trade restriction concerning Tana to all the trade agents from and outside the Black Sea will soon become the main cause of the great political and military confrontation in the region. The Black Sea shoreline stretching from the North to the North-West that Genoa wanted to control and subdue to its own commercial interests is known from the founding act of the Caffa bishopric, in 1318, at Genoa’s initiative. Seeing the settlement’s great prosperity, achieved in only a few years, Rome granted the newly-founded bishopric jurisdiction over the territories from Sarai on the Volga until Varna, in Bulgaria, and from the sea until the Russian territories. Gradually, during the following decades, the Genoese will attain control over the shoreline ruled at the time by the Golden Horde and will subordinate the activity of the main trade centres in the area to their commercial interests, mainly in order to ensure and consolidate the role of main organiser and beneficiary of regional trade for their settlement in Caffa.
At the same time, drastic measures were taken concerning the lucrative slave trade—one of the main merchandises provided by the Black Sea—, which the Genoese strived and mostly managed to reserve exclusively for themselves. The slaves bought in any of the Northern Black Sea or Caucasian centres were to be brought at Caffa and from here loaded on Genoese ships that transported them in the Mediterranean. A special office—Officium Sancti Anthonii—was established, to tax the selling and buying of slaves. Generally, and not only in the case of the transport of slaves, the Genoese managed to seize an important part of the naval taxes and the huge profit made from the exploitation of this trade area. The authorities in Caffa even managed to force the rival centre of Sinope, under the Seljuks, after repeated confrontations caused by commercial rivalry, not to build ships with larger cargo capacity than that indicated by themselves, an interdiction that was maintained until the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks.??
4 The Assaulted and Saved Hegemony?
The forceful return of the Venetians in the Black Sea and their determination to found their own settlements—that would have unavoidably become competing centres for the Genoese and a stimulating factor of the anti-Genoese resistance of the local powers—was at the origin of the deep tensions and clashes that degenerated in great armed conflicts during their most terrible moments.
Twenty years after the conclusion of the Treaty of Milan, in 1319, the Venetians obtained from Emperor Alexios 11 of Trebizond (1297-1330) the right to maintain a dock in his capital, to settle in their own neighbourhood, to have a consul and—most importantly—the right to freedom of movement on his territory, that opened the way towards the Persian Ilkhanate, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.”*
Probably simultaneously, the Venetians also entered the territories of the Golden Horde. The mention of a Venetian consul at Tana around 1323-1325 indicates the presence of a fairly significant number of Venetians or the intention to prepare their colonization of this settlement. However, only in 1332 did the Golden Horde grant Venice the right to maintain its own community in Tana, granting them land and establishing their commercial and customs regime. In 1334, Venice decides to name a consul in Tana for a two-years term.
The Venetian presence in Tana undermined the Genoese hegemony in the Black Sea in a vital point. Ever since the first years after they entered the Black Sea, following the Treaty of Nymphaion, when they negotiated peace with Venice with the help of the Roman Curia, the Genoese conditioned the conclusion of the agreement on the acceptance of their demand for the Venetians not to settle in Tana: “quod non iretur ad Tanam’.”* The clause proposed by the Genoese was meant to prevent the direct access of the Venetians to the great trade route connecting the Northern Black Sea with Central Asia and the Far East, from where spices and especially silk came in large quantities. A negative evolution for Genoa, the settlement of the Venetians in Tana considerably increased the permanent tension between the two main Mediterranean thalassocracies—as its effects unfolded—, until it developed into an armed conflict during the Second War of the Straits (1350-1355).
The outbreak of hostilities was delayed by an unexpected reaction of Djanibeg Khan of the Golden Horde (1342-1357), who used the pretext of an incident happened at Tana between a Tatar and a Venetian to end—in 1343—the privileged regime of the two maritime powers in his territories, attacked and occupied Tana and besieged Caffa for a long time. Sharing the same enemy for several years, Venice and Genoa became allies and delayed their own conflict’s resolution. However, the fundamental tendencies of the Venetian and Genoese Black Sea policy still manifested themselves during their short alliance. Using the situation created by the khan’s actions, the Genoese of Caffa, who withstood the Tatar assault behind their strong walls, strived to concentrate the whole trade with and through the Golden Horde in their own centre and to permanently remove the Venetian thorn from Tana. The Venetian diplomats who were in Caffa during the hostilities mentioned in their reports that it was precisely this tendency of the Genoese policy in the region—the consolidation of Caffa’s sovereignty against the Tatar power and, consequently, the decision to dictate the rules of regional trade—that caused the reaction of the Tatar khan and motivated his decision to conquer Caffa.?”
The failure of the Tatar siege at Caffa, whose fortifications withstood the repeated Tatar assaults, emphasizing the weakness of the Golden Horde, determined the Genoese to apply even more rigorously than before their exclusivist commercial agenda in the Northern Black Sea and to prevent all Mediterranean or Black Sea merchants—excepting their own, naturally—from entering Tana. The Byzantine historian Nicephorus Gregoras vigorously condemns the Genoese claim of forbidding the Byzantines and Venetians from sailing in the “Maeotis’” (the Sea of Azov), at Tana, at Kerson and in all the shore regions under the rule of the “Scythians’ (i.e. the Tatars) beyond the “Istros” (the Danube).?° The first who felt the effects of this prohibition were the Byzantines, whose relations with the Genoese oscillated between the strict application of the Treaty of Nymphaion and the efforts of the imperial power to loosen or even remove the Genoese grip. The tensions reached a peak in 1346, after the Genoese occupied the Byzantine island of Chios. In order to sustain the unavoidable conflict with the Genoese, emperor John v1 Cantacuzenus (1347-1354) decided to restore the Byzantine naval power by building commercial and military ships, and lowered the customs in Constantinople in order to compensate the huge loss of the imperial treasury due to the Genoese customs house in Pera, whose tariffs were lower and therefore attracted the largest share of the goods flow passing through the Straits. Having correctly predicted the danger, the Genoese in Pera reacted accordingly: in August 1348 they attacked and destroyed the shipyard in Constantinople and the ships under construction there. The emperor’s attempt to restart the rebuilding of the fleet was annihilated by a new attack—equally efficient and vigorous— organised by the authorities of Pera. John Cantacuzenus resumed his anti-Genoese actions in 1351, when he allied himself with Venice in a supreme attempt to end the crippling dependency on Genoa. The treaty concluded between John Cantacuzenus and Venice foreshadowed the destruction of Pera and the banishment of the Genoese from the Bosporus. In response to the Genoese blockade at the entrance in the Black Sea the allies besieged Pera and initiated a series of naval actions against the Genoese positions in the Black Sea: it was the beginning of the Second War of the Straits (1350-1355). The anti-Genoese coalition was joined by the Catalans; in exchange, the Genoese were the beneficiaries of the saving support from the Ottoman Turks who occupied the Asia side of the Bosporus. The failure of the allies to remove the Genoese from the Straits determined the Venetians and the Catalans to retreat to the Mediterranean in order to continue the war there. Alone against the Genoese, the Byzantines capitulated and accepted the conditions imposed by their adversaries, first of all, the interdiction to sail to Tana without the permission of the Genoese. The Venetian-Genoese hostilities ended by a compromise peace (1355), after Venice accepted to give up its trade in Tana, but for only three years. The core cause of the discord between the two great Italian trade republics continued to affect their relations and foreshadowed a new outbreak of hostilities between them. The Genoese policy in the Black Sea during the war and immediately after the peace of 1355 will only sharpen the conflict of interests between the Venetians and the Genoese and start a new War of the Straits two decades later. Genoa was determined to maintain its Pontic hegemony, especially in the territories of the Golden Horde and above all, at Tana, in order to control and exploit according to its own interests and rules the regional trade that was the source of its extraordinary wealth and power accumulated in the years after 1261. In its turn, Venice was resolute not to be deprived of the immense advantages offered by the Black Sea trade and by its connection to Central Asia and the Far East. The conflicting interests of the two thalassocracies further shaped the course of the events in the Black Sea that reverberated across a vast area in Europe and Asia.
5 New Horizons of the Genoese Hegemony (1355-1381)?9
The partial failure of Genoa against Venice concerning the navigation to Tana did not prevent the Genoese from following their goals: on the long term, the removal of their commercial rivals from the mouth of the Don, and in the near future taking control of the Golden Horde’s Black Sea shore. In order to prevent the development of competing centres in the region—that could, eventually, become strategical bases able to dispute their hegemony in the Northern Black Sea—, the Genoese gradually occupied the main positions on the North-Western shore of the Black Sea, under the rule of the Tatar power. The vast program of commercial policy conceived in the previous decades by the Genoese authorities entered its active phase during the wars with the Golden Horde, Venice and its allies and after the conclusion of the peace of 1355.
Even before 1347, when the war with the Golden Horde was still raging, during the punitive expeditions against the Tatar shore, the Genoese of Caffa occupied the significant strategical centre of Cembalo (Simbolon, Balaklava), in order to prevent their adversaries from building a naval base on the Western shore of the Crimea, a very dangerous eventuality in their eyes. Between 1347 and 1350, when they mentioned the possibility for the Tatars to conquer the fort of Cembalo, the Genoese of Caffa informed the doge of Genoa that, if this attempt would succeed, they would lose control over the sea and be unable to supply the city. The occupation of the fort of Cembalo allowed the Genoese to control the Western shore of the Crimea, as they controlled the Eastern shore of the peninsula from Caffa. When the Golden Horde, determined to exploit the rivalry between the Genoese and the Venetians, granted the later the right to settle in the ports of Provato, Calitra and Soldaia (Sudak) on the Eastern shore of the Crimea, the first did not tarry in taking the necessary countermeasures to prevent the development of any significant trade centres in the vicinity of Caffa. In 1365, given the anarchy that had engulfed the Golden Horde during the reign of Khan Berdibek (1357-1359), the Genoese occupied Soldaia (Sudak), where they installed a consul, thus removing the perspective of the permanent Venetian presence in this still prosperous settlement. Thereby, Soldaia (Sudak) became an annex of the Genoese trade system.
The Golden Horde did not accept these losses easily. But its repeated attempts to recuperate these lost positions—although successful at some point, under emir Mamai (1361-1380)—ended in a total defeat, i.e. with the total Genoese control of the Crimean shore. Three treaties concluded between the two powers—in 1380, 1381 and 1387—not only recognized the Genoese possession of the previously occupied positions, but also over along strip of shore situated in-between—“the shore of Gothia (riparia Gotie) and the shore of Soldaia (riparia Soldaie)”—, including the settlements (casali) alongside it. Thus, the risk of the Tatars building hostile ports, under their control, was eliminated, as well as the perspective of a Venetian settlement in the peninsula.
The Genoese effort to control the Golden Horde’s Black Sea shore was not limited to the Crimea. To the West, previous to 1381, the Genoese settled at the mouth of the Dnieper, where they dominated Lerici castle, an important strategic position and a station on the Caffa-Pera route. In 1386, there is mention of an embassy from the Genoese of Caffa that came at Moncastro to negotiate with the authorities of Moldavia. Since this event took place at a date when Caffa was still at war with the Golden Horde, it means that Moncastro was no longer under Tatar rule and—perhaps—but had come under Genoese domination.
One of the most significant mutations in the Black Sea during the VenetianGenoese war, caused by its antecedents and consequences, was the beginning of the Genoese domination at the Mouth of the Danube, substituting both the Byzantines and the Tatars. No later than 1359, the Genoese controlled the significant fortified centre of Licostomo, taken from the Byzantines as a consequence of the successive Byzantine-Genoese conflicts from the middle of the 14th century. The key to the lower course of the Danube and to the connection with Central Europe through this route—the military and commercial complex of Licostomo-Kilia—also came under Genoese domination.
As a result of the competition with Venice and of the wars resulting from it, as well as the hostilities with the Golden Horde, Genoa gained complete control over the most significant centres of the Black Sea shore, previously under the domination of the Golden Horde. This evolution and its consequences will strongly and lastingly influence the situation of the whole region between the Carpathians and the Danube, both from an economic and political point of view. Defeating the hostility of their numerous adversaries, the Genoese had accomplished at the middle of the 14th century—by military means—the program of commercial policy they had projected at the beginning of the same century. Trade generated a commercial policy, and this, in its turn, was the cause of vast armed conflicts, with deep political consequences.
Only Tana remained outside the control of the Genoese and was seen by them as a serious shortage, as it prevented them from exploiting this branch of the silk and spice trade as they pleased, i.e. for maximal profit. However, since the Genoese were not disposed to give up these advantages, they will look for other means to achieve their goal, i-e. to replace their rivals as the main commercial intermediary between the East and the West. The pursuit of this objective inaugurated a new direction for the Genoese policy in the Black Sea.
Ever since the war with the Venetians, the Genoese from the Black Sea had established relations with the Hungarian king Louis of Anjou (1342-1382), whose expeditions against the Tatars had brought the borders of his kingdom in the vicinity of the Lower Danube. In 1358, when the Genoese were already masters of Licostomo, the king of Hungary granted the inhabitants of Brasov—a city destined by its geographical position to be the main link between the Lower Danube, the Black Sea and Central Europe, through Transylvania and Hungary—an ample privilege, giving them the right to travel freely until the Mouth of the Danube. In the same year, the Hungarian king broke the Venetian domination over the Dalmatian coast, offering the merchants of his country the possibility to engage in commercial operations in and through the Adriatic, a domain previously reserved for the Venetian Republic. Genoa and Hungary’s common adversity towards Venice was at the origin of the alliance between the two powers, which planned to completely remove the Venetian Republic from the Black Sea and Mediterranean trade and to annihilate its traditional function as the main intermediary between East and West. Within the frame of this alliance, the Genoese inaugurated an important communication line from Licostomo-Kilia to Brasov and further on towards Central Europe, through Wallachia, which imposed its participation to the benefits of this trade route—that quickly became one of the main arteries of European trade—by force of arms. When, in 1368, the ruler of Wallachia, Vladislav-Vlaicu, opened this route by an ample privilege granted to the merchants of Brasov, the influx of merchants from Central Europe towards the Danube ports increased to such an extent that the king of Hungary—in order to protect the interests of the inhabitants of Brasov and probably at their request—granted the city “staple rights” (jus stapuli). According to these rights, the foreign merchants coming from Poland, Bohemia and other regions were compelled to bring their merchandises to Brasov, where the local tradesmen bought and transported them towards the sea. The commercial cooperation between Genoa and Hungary also extended towards the Adriatic. Louis of Anjou created favourable conditions on the Dalmatian shore both for the merchants from his kingdom and the Genoese, in order to ensure the supply of Oriental products for his dominions and, through them, for the Central-European space. This cooperation in the two seas was meant to complete the project of completely removing Venice from the Oriental trade and isolating it from the great routes of international trade. The success of this project would have meant death by asphyxiation— from a commercial point of view—of the great Venetian power. The commercial privileges granted to the Genoese merchants in Hungary, the presence of several Genoese admirals at the court of king Louis and the military cooperation of the two powers at the Lower Danube are the signs of their alliance that will—soon—manifest itself in a vast military action against Venice.
The commercial project anticipated the supply of Oriental products for Germany through Genoa, and for Austria, Hungary and Bohemia through the Danube route. Venice was to be cut off from the main routes of international trade that had previously ensured its prosperity and power.
Understanding the gravity of the situation, Venice retaliated. In 1376, it obtained from Byzantium the concession of the island of Tenedos that controls the crossing through the Dardanelles, threatening Genoese access in the Black Sea. This was the main cause of the Third War of the Straits/War of Chioggia (1376-1381) during which Venice was on the brink of total defeat, being blockaded by the Genoese fleet and besieged on land by the Hungarian armies, being saved only by a great collective effort and the heroism of its sailors.
The role of the Black Sea in this vast conflict can be clearly seen in the light of the allies’ action program, of the preliminary negotiations and of the peace treaty. According to a Venetian source, in 1376 the Genoese had obtained from the Byzantine emperor the commitment that he will prevent their rivals from “sailing to Tana”. According to the same source, during their great victories against the Venetians, the Genoese would have tried to force their adversaries to give up their autonomous commercial activity in the Black Sea altogether and only trade “in the places they [the Genoese] possessed in that sea” or, in other words, ad loca januensium.*° The achievement of this goal would have brought the Black Sea back to the regime imposed by the Genoese at Nymphaion and even more than that, given the evolution of the situation in Byzantium and in the Black Sea in general. In 1381, at the conclusion of the Treaty of Turin, Genoa was forced to settle again with a short-term withdrawal of the Venetians from Tana. Generally, the problems of the Veneto-Genoese rivalry in the Black Sea were unchanged compared to the pre-war situation, but the Genoese maintained their hegemony in the region.
The opening of a new trade route, connecting the Black Sea and Central Europe through Moldavia and Poland, considerably increased the area of action of the Genoese in the region.
For the remainder of the 14th century and in the first half of the next one, the Genoese continued to consolidate they hegemony by conquering of building several fortifications along the shoreline, an activity which impressed the locals to such an extent that they attributed until late all the ruins of such castles or forts in the region to the Genoese. Considering the naval forces maintained by Pera and Caffa and—to a lesser extent—by its other settlements, Genoa’s capacity of sending its squadrons in the Black Sea in case of need was the best guarantee for the stability of the system that the Genoese had imposed on the Black Sea trade.
6 The Stabilization of the Equilibrium: the End of the Genoese Hegemony in the Black Sea (1381-1453)*!
The peace of 1381, that maintained the right of the Venetians to come back to Tana, maintained the previous equilibrium between the two Italian trade republics in the Black Sea and—alongside it—the main source of their rivalry: Venice remained an autonomous agent in the Black Sea, especially in the Northern part, at Tana, and Genoa, waiting for a favourable occasion to restart its maximal project, consolidated its previously gained positions.
The year 1387 marked a triple success for the Genoese. In Crimea, the Tatars permanently gave up control on the shore of the peninsula following a solemn treaty. South from the Mouth of the Danube, Ivanko, son and ear of the despot Dobrotitsa, granted them an ample commercial privilege according to their terms, after a long conflict.32 Moreover, in these conditions, during or after the war, the Genoese captured the important fortress of Kaliakra;3? with this place, the whole Nort-western shore of the Black Sea, from the Crimea until South of the Mouth of the Danube, that was previously under the domination of the Golden Horde, entered under the commercial control of the Genoese, according to the program conceived seven decades before. Also in 1387, sultan Murad I (1362-1389) closed the Ottoman-Genoese conflict generated by the Hungarian-Genoese alliance and re-established the good relations with Genoa established by his father in 1352.54
Both in the North-Western and in the Southern and Eastern parts of the Black Sea, the Genoese rigorously defended their prerogative to dictate the rules of commercial activity in according to their own interests.?> Their position of strength, built with responsibility and a sense of continuity since the beginning of their activity in the Black Sea, was undoubtedly the main cause for the hostility of the locals; they were, however, powerless as long as they didn't have the support of an equal naval power, which—in the given conditions— could have been only Venice.
A significant—but hard to evaluate—decrease for trade on the route through the Golden Horde was Tamerlane’s assault of 1395 against the main trade centres of the route linking the Black Sea with Central Asia and the Far East—Urgench, Sarai, Tana—in order to render this route unusable and promote the commercial road crossing his own territories. The profitability of the trade route from the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean also decreased due to the unrests from the Persian I]khanate and its successor states. The attempts undertaken during the following decades by those interested in reactivating the commercial activity on the routes of the Golden Horde and the Ikhanate confirm this decline, but also the maintenance of Eurasian trade on the itineraries opened during the 13th century. The Genoese from the Black Sea found a compensation for this loss in the great development of the continental routes through Wallachia and Moldavia, opened with their decisive contribution. Although trade with Central Europe had its special conditions in and through the two Romanian countries, the Genoese from the Black Sea were still the main suppliers of Oriental products. Neither the conquest of the Licostomo fort by Moldavia in the first decade of the 15th century did end the commercial role of the Genoese at the Mouth of the Danube.
The Genoese hegemony faced one of its toughest challenges between 1433 and 1434, when it countered a general rebellion of the other Black Sea powers, sustained by the Venetian diplomacy and navy. At the end of February 1433, the Greeks of Cembalo—at the suggestion of the prince of Mangup and encouraged by the Crimean Tatars—occupied the Genoese fort. Caffa called on the metropolis, asking for a swift intervention since, otherwise, as the city’s authorities states, “our other places” would have been in danger. A valid apprehension, since the loss of Cembalo triggered a general anti-Genoese movement in the Black Sea. Shortly after this event, the Genoese in Pera and Trebizond had to face the hostility of their “hosts”, Byzantium and Trebizond, whom were determined to recuperate at least a part of their traditional incomes that their guests had taken over. The Genoese in Cetatea Alba (Moncastro, BilhorodDnistrovskyi) were also in danger of losing their traditional privileges due to a hostile initiative of the Moldavian authorities, who asked the Venetian bailo in Constantinople to open a trade route in this direction, a clear clue that up to this date the Genoese monopoly functioned at the mouth of the Dniester. Caffa itself, the cornerstone of the whole Genoese trade system in the Northern Black Sea, was in danger of losing its commercial hegemony; even worse, its very existence was threatened by the attack unleashed by the Crimean Tatars, who considered it the right time to recuperate their former commercial and territorial positions, taken over by the Genoese. Venice was behind all this, being at war during these years with the Duchy of Milan, the sovereign of Genoa at that time. Therefore, an extraordinary conglomerate of hostile forces threatened at that time to tear apart the whole hegemonic system organised and consolidated by Genoa for almost two centuries. A massive naval intervention from the metropolis was the only way of saving this system.
In March 1434, a large Genoese squadron sailed towards the Black Sea and headed for the fort of Cembalo, which it reconquered at the beginning of June. This rapid success restored Genoa’s prestige in the Black Sea, even if it’s next military operation, the attempt of an expeditionary force to conquer Solkhat, the centre of Tatar power in the Crimea, ended up in defeat. Although the Genoese naval expedition didn’t manage to complete the mission it was entrusted, the main elements of the Genoese hegemony were saved. A significant indication for this return to the status quo ante was the cancellation of the Venetian initiative to install a vice-consul in Moncastro, a centre that remained under the commercial control of the Genoese. The system was saved from its inner adversaries, but will succumb in the following decades under the blows of the rapidly expanding Ottoman power.
During the clashes with their Black Sea adversaries and Venice, the Genoese enjoyed the saving military support of the Ottoman Turks. The Genoese payed their duty ten years later, during the crusade of Varna, when they provided the necessary naval means for sultan Murad 11 (1421-1451) to transport the bulk of his forces—blocked in Asia Minor—to Europe. However, the sultan’s victory was the prelude of the conquest of Constantinople by Mehmet 11, in 1453 that annihilated the existential condition of the Genoese hegemony in the Black Sea, i.e. the free connection with the metropolis through the Straits. Reduced to its own forces, the Genoese hegemony in the Black Sea suffered a series of amputations. The conquest of Caffa in 1475 by the new masters of the Straits put an end to the Genoese chapter in the history of the Black Sea.
In conclusion, the Genoese domination was unchallenged in the Black Sea due to the exceptional regime imposed to the Byzantine Empire by the Treaty of Nymphaion, in March 1261 that allowed Genoa to remove all the other significant competitors from the region. Until the end of the 13th century, the Genoese exploited the commercial—regional and intercontinental—resources of the Black Sea trade in an unbridled, individualistic and anarchic manner. The Treaty of Nymphaion remained the ideal frame for the Genoese in the Black Sea.
The perspective of a Venetian comeback in the Black Sea, according to a clause from the Treaty of Milan of 1299, introduced an extremely dangerous competitive factor and an unavoidable stimulus for the other regional powers that determined Genoa to reorganize the rules of its Black Sea trade. A central body—established for this purpose—decided the fortification of the main centres of Genoese trade in the Black Sea. The first measures in this direction were consolidated during the 14th century and the following ones by the creation of a network of Genoese fortified settlements all across the sea shore. Thus, the Genoese hegemony had considerably enhanced its military dimension.
The effective comeback of the Venetians as an autonomous commercial factor was the cause of the Genoese attempts to eliminate them, especially from the Northern Black Sea and most of all from Tana, an extremely sensitive point on the route towards inner Asia and the sources of Oriental products.
The conflict with the Golden Horde that tried to assault Caffa in 1343, and the failure in removing the Venetians from Tana by force of arms in 1350-1355 inaugurated the chapter of direct control over the North-Western Black Sea, after the occupation of the main strategic and commercial centres. In the second half of the 14th century, installed at the Mouth of the Danube and the Dniester Liman, the Genoese opened two great trade routes towards Central Europe, through Wallachia and Moldavia. Genoa’s alliance with Hungary, that had recuperated the Dalmatian shore under the rule of king Louis of Anjou, was at the origin of a vast commercial and military cooperation, aimed at removing Venice from the great routes of international trade.
The failure of this new attempt to solve the complicated problem of the Venetian presence in Tana in collaboration with Hungary forced Genoa to find a long-term adaptation to this situation. In these conditions, the Genoese maintained hegemony over the Black Sea trade for as long as the metropolis managed to maintain the naval connections with its settlements in the Black Sea and to protect them with its naval power in case of need. The establishment of Ottoman domination in the Straits ended this vital link and—along with it—the Genoese hegemony in the Black Sea.
Acknowledgements
Professor Serban Papacostea passed away without being able to revise the present text. We decided to publish it as a humble homage to a scholar who had an important contribution to the development of the studies of medieval Black Sea.
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