At the turn of the first millennium, as is true today, the Mediterranean straddled distinct and very different communities. However, while contemporary economic power lies in the West, the reverse was true prior to the revival of medieval long-distance trade.

From the time of antique trading, commerce in the West had slowed down nearly to a halt; the European economy had shrunk, and the decrease in population levels had sharply reduced the size of urban centers. Even the largest Italian ports were nothing more than villages when compared to bustling and sophisticated eastern cities such as Constantinople, Baghdad, and Cairo. In the overall context of the subsistence economy of the early medieval West, urban centers had in some ways offered fewer economic opportunities than the countryside. Whatever degree of importance the medieval cities had managed to maintain was often not because of their role as commercial meeting points but, rather, because of the military protection they could provide against the regular marauding of pirates and other invaders.

As the millennium approached, the balance of power changed and European communities, which had been in decline for hundreds of years, were able once again to challenge the military supremacy of the East and eventually gain economic dominance. It is from that period until the mid fifteenth century that Italian cities, Venice and Genoa in particular, controlled the Mediterranean Sea and served as anchors for the economic expansion that subsequently led to Western domination of the rest of the world.