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Genoa and the Security of the Seas: the Mission of Babilano Lomellino in 1350

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

David Abulafia
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Extract

For Genoa the ‘crisis of the fourteenth century’ had political as well as economic reality; the strife within the city and its colonies of Guelfs and Ghibellines was mirrored in its diplomatic affairs, as Genoa searched for friends in Guelf Naples or Ghibelline Sicily. The appearance of Catalan naval power presented a direct threat to Genoese shipping, however peaceful the intent of the latter might be; and attempts at co-operation between Genoa and Venice foundered on the banks of suspicion and envy. Commercial recession brought serious worry to what was still a trading, rather than industrial, centre, and there was a reluctance to waste valuable naval resources in attempts to eliminate Venetian or Catalan rivals. This attitude was not confined to Genoa, and perhaps explains why the western trading cities were more anxious to settle their differences by negotiation and compromise than they had been in the thirteenth century. Severest problem of all was that of the ‘pestifferam mortalitatem mundo totali occursam’; in the years immediately following the arrival of the Black Death (1347) the maritime cities found themselves suddenly deprived of invaluable manpower, and yet, paradoxically, they were not without the means to pay for the services of sailors and ship-builders if only these men could be found. Money, the money of dead men, there was in plenty; but neither the Genoese nor the Venetians knew how to adapt to the rapid change in the structure of demand that the pestilence engendered.

Type
Research Article
Information
Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 45 , November 1977 , pp. 272 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © British School at Rome 1977

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References

1 Interesting from this angle is Kedar, B. Z.'s attempt to gauge the mood of Genoese merchants of the period: Merchants in Crisis: Genoese and Venetian men of affairs and the fourteenth century depression (New Haven, 1976)Google Scholar.

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