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BLACK SEA EMPORIA AND THE MONGOL EMPIRE:

A REASSESSMENT OF THE PAX MONGOLICA

Nicola Di Cosmo

Abstract:

The term Pax Mongolica indicates a period of time (c. 1280-1360) during which Mongol

domination seemingly guaranteed security on the Eurasian commercial routes. At this

time the Italian maritime powers of Genoa and Venice established their commercial

emporia on the Black Sea. This essay examines the links between Mongol-controlled

continental Asia and Italian-controlled maritime trade by separating the sphere of

interests of the Venetian and Genoese governments from the sphere of activities of

private merchants, whose presence in China and Central Asia depended heavily upon

Mongol support. The end of the Pax Mongolica had a different impact on both these

two spheres.

Rsum

Le terme Pax Mongolica indique une priode (environ 1280-1360) pendant laquelle la

domination mongole assurait apparemment la scurit des itinraires commerciaux

eurasiatiques. A cette poque les puissances maritimes de Gnes et de Venise

tablissaient leurs emporia commerciaux sur la Mer Noire. Cette contribution tudie

les liens entre lAsie continentale contrle par les Mongols et le commerce maritime,

contrl par les Italiens en sparant la sphre dintrt des gouvernements vnitiens et

gnois de la sphre daction des commerants privs, dont la prsence en Chine et Asie

centrale dpendait du soutien mongol. La fin de la Pax Mongolica devrait affecter ces

deux sphres de faon diffrente.

jans2002Mquina de escribirEmpires and Emporia: The Orient in World Historical Space and Time, ed. Jos Gommans. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 53 (2010), pp. 83-108.

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The eye-witness account of Giosafatte Barbaro, a Venetian nobleman who lived in Tana

in the twilight of the history of the Venetian commercial base on the Black Sea, reports

that, after the destruction of Tana by Timur in 1395 and its slow and difficult

reconstruction, international traffic was no longer as florid as it used to be, and the

spices that had once reached those shores were now being taken to Syrian ports

(Skrinskaja 1968: 40). However, the Italian colonies on the Black Sea remained an

important commercial emporium for local products: hides and furs, wheat, slaves, caviar

and wine; but the transcontinental trade of silk and spices of the heyday of the Mongol

empire was by then a memory of the past.

Scores of historians have investigated the phenomenon of Italian commercial

colonies on the Black Sea between the 1270s and the mid-fifteenth century. This

phenomenal scholarly production has revealed precious archival documents that have

allowed, if not a complete reconstruction of the day-to-day activities of the emporia, at

the very least an excellent and detailed description of their history and of their historical

role in the context especially of European history for the two centuries of their existence.

Moreover, questions related to their nature, establishment, and operations have been

worked into broad syntheses on the formation of a thirteenth-century world system

(Abu-Lughod 1989; Liebermann 1993). They have also been regarded as an instance of

the expansion of Europe in the late Middle Ages (Phillips 1998: 96-114) and as a

possible blueprint for, or medieval precursor of, the Atlantic expansion of the

sixteenth century (Curtin 1984: 138). In this essay, I will focus on the broad question of

the position of these comptoirs within the Mongol empire and on the reasons for their

existence and survival.

The position of the Italian emporia on the Black Sea has often been seen in terms

of polarities: Europe and Asia, Christians and Tartars, local and international trade,

Genoa and Venice, before and after the end of the Pax Mongolica, states and merchants,

and so on. Although this type of analytical construct is hardly avoidable, some of these

dichotomies have perhaps been accepted too readily, while others should have been

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given greater relevance and emphasis. This essay examines some of these polarities by

focusing on how the Italian settlements, and the commercial interests that they

represented, interacted with the Mongols. The resulting thoughts are especially meant

as a reassessment, or recalibration, of the role of the Mongol empire in the establishment

of emporia, which is in some ways lesser and in some ways greater than commonly

assumed. In a nutshell, I will argue that the Mongol conquest played a relatively minor

role in the first impulse and determination of the Italian merchants to set up shop on

the Black Sea. However, the presence of the Mongol states was essential for shaping the

emporias local strategies of survival and development, in their role as components of a

commercial as well as political mechanism that connected the Mediterranean markets to

the great landmass of Eurasia beyond the Black Sea.

On the other hand, the notion of a European (or Italian) expansion needs to

be revisited by distinguishing between individual merchants commercial interests and

strategies, and the interests and strategies of the governments of Venice and Genoa. This

is one dichotomy that in my view has not been sufficiently investigated, and

reassessing the relative importance of the role played by Mediterranean maritime

powers and by the Mongol land empire may assist, I hope, in clarifying the manner in

which Black Sea history of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries can be brought to bear

on larger schemes of Eurasian and world history. As such, this essay is not so much a

contribution to Black Sea, European, or Mongol history, but a reflection on the

organization of a discourse of pre-1500 world history and the European response to

the unifying effect of the Mongol conquest.

Already decades ago the role of the Mongols in the establishment of the

settlements of Caffa and Tana by the Genoese and Venetian states was recognized in the

works of pioneers of Black Sea commercial and political history and trade (e.g. Iorga ,

1924: 92) and has since received either explicit or silent consensus by specialist historians.

The argument that the Mongols opened up a space that was filled by the most dynamic

and aggressive of the Italian maritime powers, Genoa, thanks to Byzantine support

obtained in 1261 through the Treaty of Nymphaeum (Nymphaion), has not been

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challenged, while the discussion has focused more on the actual size and relevance of

European trade beyond the Pontic region.

A traditional, if rough, periodization of the history of the emporia of Caffa on the

Crimean peninsula and Tana on the Sea of Azovthe two most important Italian

commercial basesdivides it into two periods. First came a phase of commercial and

even territorial expansion, supported by military actions and political maneuvers, which

included the establishment of an imposing commercial network that reached well

beyond the Black Sea littoral areas. The precise terminus ad quem of this rough

periodization shifts according to the relative weight given by various historians to

different events, but most people place it between 1350 and 1370. During these years the

mostly positive trends came to an end to be followed by a phase of entrenchment and

protection of mostly local interests. Then a period of decline began, which lasted until

the Ottoman conquest in the late fifteenth century, during which international trade

disappeared, and the Black Sea was cut off from the spice and silk trade of Central and

East Asia.

Historical analyses give more or less weight to a host of intervening factors, such

as the Black Death, the long conflicts between Genoa and Venice in 1350-5, local Mongol

hostility, the fourteenth-century commercial crisis, changes in trade practices reflecting

greater reliance on local agents, or the rise of Ottoman power in the Straits. On one issue,

however, there is consensus: namely, the falling apart of Mongol rule from Persia to

China, and the fragmentation of power in the Golden Horde and Central Asia that is,

the end of the Pax Mongolica no longer allowed merchants to frequent

Transeurasian continental routes, thus bringing the connection between Europe and

China, enabled by the Mongol conquest at the time of Marco Polos journey to Catai, to a

more or less sudden end (Petech 1962: 549, 558; Lopez 1963: 480; Nystazopoulou 1973:

571).

The activities carried out in Tana when the Venetians were able to come back in

1358, after the prohibition to sail to Tana fixed in the Peace Treaty of Milan (1355)

expired were generally limited to the local economy of the Pontic and Black Sea area,

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even though the routes that connected Tana to Central Asia (Urgench) were again

frequented from about 1360 (Berindei and Veinstein 1976: 123). In this connection, the

Mongol conquest and its demise thus both enabled and disrupted intercontinental trade.

It is important, first of all, to identify the actual position of the Mongols with respect to

trade. As the Mongols reached the shores of the Black Sea notwithstanding the fact

that their juggernaut has often been represented as a natural phenomenon, like a flood

or an eruption, than something pertaining to human history we need to realize that

their achievements, in terms of territorial conquest, military organization, and political

structures are closely connected to the history of the nomadic empires of northern East

Asia. It was certainly not an isolated fluke of history. Chinggis Khan and his

successors employed a variety of people in their service, in particular civil

administrators. This class of people included in the first place the Kitan and other

nomads with bureaucratic experience who have been aptly regarded as a nomadic

intelligentsia (Rachewiltz 1966: 124) having formerly been in the service of the Jin

dynasty but also other people from north China, Uighurs, and Muslims from Central

Asia.

Recent scholarship has emphasized the agency of the Mongol courts and

aristocracies in the analysis of commercial traffic, cultural exchanges, and transmission

of scientific, religious, and philosophical ideas across Eurasia (Allsen 2001: 189-211).

Focusing on the political culture of the Mongols, it is possible to understand the

advantages but also the limits of the partnerships forged by Mongol rulers and

European merchants on the shores of the Black Sea. The relationship between empire

builders and merchants on the Black Sea, in fact, contributes to defining the Mongol

empire, not only in relation to Europe or the lands over which it extended, but also in

relation to previous nomadic empires.

This discussion will be followed by an analysis, necessarily succinct, of the main

phases of the Venetian and Genoese expansion and will focus in particular on the

differences and similarities in which both related to the Mongol empire. There were

times when they operated in a similar fashion because they faced the same challenges

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and pursued similar objectives, but there were also differences deriving from their

respective strategies, investments, political backgrounds, and the size of their

communities. The final portion of this essay will be dedicated to the position of the

Italian colonies in the context of international trade at the time of its decline and to the

definition of their roles after the end of the Pax Mongolica. Given that decline is a

relative term, without denying it in principle I will consider its political and commercial

implications in a broad sense, and what it meant in relation to the expansion that had

occurred in the earlier, ascending phase.

Nomads, traders, and the Pax Mongolica

The historical circumstances of the encounter between the Mongols and European

traders often obscure the fact that it occurred at the intersection of two completely

independent trajectories. If we look at the full course of their separate paths rather than

simply at the point where they met, we can gain a broader perspective that allows us to

identify the preexisting characteristics that impinged upon the nature of the encounter.

In the case of the Black Sea the historical background of the Italian eastward expansion

has been given far more attention than the Mongol one, to the point that it is unclear in

what manner the imperial condition of the Mongols had any relevance to that

encounter except for the fact itself that they were the gate-keepers of markets in further

Asia.

Nomadic empires characteristically make themselves known outside their place

of origin (the steppes and forests of northern East Asia) in an apparently sudden and

destructive way. In historical terms, the cradle of the nomadic imperial tradition can be

identified with a certain precision, namely, the region of Mongolia. The first historically

documented nomadic empire was established by the Xiongnu in 209 BCE in southern

Mongolia (what is today Inner Mongolia) and then expanded to include an immense

territory in northern Mongolia, south Siberia, and a portion of Central Asia. From here

the imperial tradition moved both east and north. In the east the Manchurian Xianbi

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formed an imperial power establishing a dynasty from the fourth to sixth centuries that

was clearly inspired by a nomadic precedent. To the north the relatively small area

between the Orkhon and the Selengge rivers in northern Mongolia has been the core

area of some of the most important empires: the Trk, the Uighur, and the Mongol. And

again to the east of Mongolia, the Kitan and Jurchen dynasties partook of the same

traditions and political culture. The history of these empires has been largely

documented in the literate traditions of their enemies and often victims because this

development took place, as mentioned above, outside the original realms of the nomads.

What needs to be stressed here is that once a nomadic empire was constituted, the

manner of its coming into existence made it imperative for its leaders to exit their

natural environment; its history has therefore been recorded in the annals of the people

whom they threatened, invaded, or conquered.

Nomadic empires are odd, unwieldy, extremely powerful, and yet brittle

political formations. When such an empire comes into existence the nomadic population

of a certain area, habitually fragmented into multiple political entities and socially fluid,

emerges from a period of turmoil as a military centralized tribal confederation

characterized by solid leadership, an upper and lower government, a well-disciplined

army, and the ability to coordinate military operations over huge distances. The newly

born state (and this term is used advisedly to indicate a political structure that includes

institutions at a higher level than the aristocratic, kin-based ties, or presumed so, typical

of lower level power structures) proceeds either to invade other territories, including

powerful agrarian states and empires, for the sake of imposing tribute, or even to

conquer and rule them. In an article published several years ago I argued that the

extreme changes in the social and political orders that take place at the time of the

formation of a nomadic empire depend on how successfully a nomadic body politic

resolves a deep crisis, which could be ignited by a variety of economic, political, or social

motives, but most often occurs, in actual historical cases, as a combination of all of them

(Di Cosmo 1999). In essence, a crisis in a nomadic environment alters the existing

balance between the people and their resources: epidemics, droughts, invasions, or

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migrations, and the unchecked growth of intertribal violence are the most common

examples.

Overcoming such a crisis required the transformation of political and social

orders, which typically resulted in a prolonged period of war and in the concentration of

enormous power in the hands of a small oligarchy at the top of a newly created military

aristocracy. Evidently not every crisis resulted in the formation of an empire. Sometimes

people simply moved away. But in cases in which fighting over dwindling resources

was accompanied by a high level of militarization, the appearance of especially gifted

political and military leaders gradually produced a centralization process of certain

socio-political units whether we call them tribes, clans, or nations which were

reorganized into a vertical structure that primarily included a military, but also,

depending on its specific nature, a civil administration. This new order, however, was

extremely top heavy, with large bodies of military men, their families, and court

apparatuses concentrated in relatively small areas.

In order to support such a large body of people now directly dependant upon the

state, as well as to reward allies and loyal subjects, the charismatic leader of the

newly-born nomadic empire required far more resources than the capacity of the steppe

pastoral economy could provide, reduced at any rate by the crisis itself and the

prolonged wars and devastations. Hence, resources needed to be acquired (quickly)

from the outside. Eruptions of nomads from the depths of their grasslands and deserts

correspond, thus, to this specific need. The hardest achievement, for the nomadic

political elite, was to find adequate means through which external resources could be

obtained. From the early empire of the Xiongnu down to the Mongols (and beyond) the

history of these large nomadic formations is one of developing more efficient and

sophisticated means to ensure that the wealth of other states, consisting of commodities,

people (a kind of commodity), and money, flowed to the khans court and to a

sprawling aristocratic elite.

Trade, in terms of both state monopoly of certain types of commodity and state

control over commercial routes and markets, constituted one of these means. In

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particular it was from the time of the Trk empire in the sixth century that a partnership

between nomadic rulers and Central Asian merchants was first forged, as the Turks took

control of the caravan routes that Sogdian merchants had turned into large networks of

international trade. Byzantine contacts with China were established under the patronage

of Turk rulers at that time. Likewise, it was the patronage of Central Asian merchants by

the Uighur elite in the eighth century that was responsible for their conversion to

Manichaeism (Mackerras 1990).

The Mongol conquest took place at a time when the nomads had already

mastered several means of wealth extraction, including exaction of tribute, profits from

trade, and taxation of agricultural and other peoples who came under the nomads

domination. All of these means were also used, with different degrees of success, by the

Mongols in the course of their conquests and by their successor states in the lands they

came to dominate. The khans of the Golden Horde extracted tribute from Russian cities

and taxed the population as well as the trade. Establishing a partnership with foreign

merchants was therefore part of the history of nomadic empires and of the political

culture of the Mongols, who had already established several partnerships with Chinese,

Uighur, and Central Asian merchants before reaching the Black Sea.

Especially important in this respect was the institution of the ortagh, from the

Turkish ortaq, meaning partner, or socium in the Codex Cumanicus (Jackson 2005: 291;

Allsen 1989: 85). This term denotes the merchant-partners of the Mongol aristocrats, who

were licensed by the government and acted under its protection and authority. We do

not have a complete picture of these merchants but we do know that in China, during

the Yuan period, their status altered considerably. However, they operated throughout

the Mongol empire and came in all likelihood primarily from Central Asia, Iran, the

Caucasus, and other western regions. They were in charge of provisioning the courts

and the estates of the local aristocrats with everything that was needed, and were paid

directly by the emperor, aristocrats, and by the heads of the local governments for their

services. They moved large quantities of goods, and were also in charge of the

procurement of rare and special goods, including precious ones. The aristocrats and the

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courts were magnets of high-end and high-volume consumption. This system of

partnership, as mentioned above, may have been in operation from before the time of

the Mongols, especially in the context of the relationship between Sogdian merchants

and Turkic rulers.

In other words, the political background of the Mongols amply explains the

facility with which a common ground could be found between rulers and merchants of

any religion or language. There was no need for European merchants to educate the

Mongols to the benefits of trade, or to persuade them to make special concessions,

because the Mongols were perfectly attuned to commercial partnerships, and were

surely aware of the advantages that an outlet toward the rich Mediterranean markets

could mean for the development of commercial activities not only in the Pontic region

but across Asia.

The Pax Mongolica

Before turning to the question of what happened when the Mongols were no longer in

charge as their empire rapidly dissolved, we briefly need to discuss the notion of the

Pax Mongolica. Given the common understanding of the cyclicality of nomadic

empires, whereby each cycle includes a moment of unity that would eventually come to

an end with the dissolution of the original political edifice and many reasons have

been presented to explain that phenomenon, including the nomads poor management

of succession laws it is quite natural that the notion of an end of the Pax Mongolica

would not be controversial. Yet the term has its share of problems. In the first place, a

degree of ambiguity is carried by its Latin rendering and its obvious analogy with the

Pax Romana: in Tacitus words: ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. The notion of a

desert called peace stands for the brutality and wholesome destruction through which

the conquest, and thus the peace, was achieved. The Mongol conquest was also

destructive, and indeed proverbially so, and therefore the term Pax Mongolica can very

well carry the same bitter irony. But this is not the way (or at least not the primary and

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common way) in which it is used and understood in the context of East-West relations

during the Mongol empire. In this instance it is most often used to refer to a real and

rather beneficial peace, as well as, metonymically, to a Mongol empire that actually no

longer existed as a unified political entity. If the Pax Romana presumes a Roman empire,

and indeed it would make little sense without it, the Pax Mongolica presumes a Mongol

empire, except that during the time under consideration (roughly 1270-1360) the unified

Mongol empire as such had been replaced by four khanates that were not infrequently at

war with each other. What it can therefore refer to is only a more or less stable political

situation across lands separately ruled by Mongols which for about a century allowed

for the flow of goods and people across continental Eurasia.

The importance of the Mongols, no matter whether they ruled in Russia, Persia,

or China, consisted on the one hand in allowing commerce to flourish by the social and

political changes they brought to the region, including the establishment of large

nomadic courts and the encouragement of trade in urban centers. Moreover, they

actively protected and maintained trade routes, ensuring that they remained open and

operational. The combination of these aspects of Mongol agency made trade

connections and volume grow to unprecedented levels, thus favoring cultural exchanges,

missionary activity, and the spread of scientific knowledge. Christianity, Islam, and

Buddhism all benefited, or tried to benefit, from this favorable climate; the tastes of

people ranging from clothes to food became more cosmopolitan, and men of science

were able to compare their knowledge and exchange ideas at various Mongol courts.

Even forms of sport and entertainment such as the royal hunt and musical spectacles

were enriched and changed by the flow of people, animals, and goods.

Hence, the end of the Pax Mongolica indicated the onset of a reversal of this

general trend, with the following consequences: regionalization of commerce, a

slowdown or outright cessation of traffic along the international continental trade routes,

and a radical redefinition of the nature and relevance of those bridgeheads of Asian

trade that were the Black Sea emporia. The end of the Pax Mongolica was ushered in (to

the extent that an end can be ushered in) by the disintegration of whatever Mongol

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unity had existed before. This process was, however, more similar to a long agony than

to a sudden death and began with the abrupt end of the Ilkhanid dynasty in 1340. After

Persia it was the turn of the Golden Horde to experience internal disorders and

succession struggles in the 1360s, although it continued to limp along and even found a

new unity under Tokhtamish in the later part of the century, just before Tamerlanes rise

and conquests. The heaviest blow to Mongol power came from the collapse of the Yuan

dynasty in 1368, which was replaced by the native Chinese Ming, who closed their doors

completely to foreign traders. Central Asia likewise experienced political upheaval and

divisions.

The concomitant rise of states on the margins of continental Central Eurasia

Muscovy, the Ottoman Empire, and the Ming dynasty can be regarded as a counter-

effect of the end of the Pax Mongolica (and one that has not been sufficiently studied or

appreciated) but these newly established states were not able to reactivate the unified

network of communication, which soon faded and disappeared. Overland international

trade was thus rerouted along the easier, safer, and in any case long-existing maritime

routes. It became regionalized within certain areas, which led to a greater emphasis on

local rather than long-distance trade. In other words, as the Mongol empire crumbled, so

did the network of communication it had created. The end of the Pax Mongolica,

moreover, acquired a particularly dark tonality as it nearly coincided with the spread of

the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century and the commercial crisis that hit Europe

and the Mediterranean world at the same time.

To the few who could perceive it, the Mongols arrival had appeared in the

thirteenth century as a comet that indicated the way to a brighter future of global trade

and unfettered exchange. They had demonstrated that it was possible to achieve a more

integrated world, and their role in preserving access to trade routes and markets, as long

as they could do so, cannot be underestimated. But at the same, the faint messianic

charge that some historians have detected in the Pax Mongolica and the flourishing of

Italian commercial centers in anticipation of the modern world system (Slater 2006:

281) cannot be properly estimated without looking at the actual merchants: how did

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they participate in the process of creating, through searching for trade and profits, new

connections between Europe and the worlds of farther Asia? It is at this point that we

must turn to the Italian emporia, and in particular to the two chief bases of Tana and

Caffa. The first one was mostly, but not exclusively, controlled by the Venetians, while

the second was controlled by the Genoese. The trading networks they created and

controlled remained in operation for about two hundred years, outlasting the Mongol

empire by many decades.

Maritime and land empires: how they defined each other

In the felicitous and often repeated definition by Bratianu, the Black Sea in the thirteenth

and fourteenth centuries was the plaque tournante of international trade, the

distribution center of goods and commodities from much of the known world. This

definition captures nicely the pivotal importance of the Black Sea in thirteenth and

fourteenth-century trade, but is especially effective if we also look at it as a moving piece

of equipment that connected two separate trade systems, or circuits, namely the

maritime system of Mediterranean trade and the land system of Eurasian trade. Not

incongruously, both systems had achieved a degree of real or potential political unity.

The fundamental function of the Black Sea emporia thus was, once the Italian ships

could sail across the Straits, to connect the Mediterranean maritime empire of which

both Genoa and Venice owned a substantial share and strove to control completely, with

the land empire created by the Mongols.

While in their analysis of the Italian emporia scholars have focused on the nature

of trade (whether it was mostly regional or long-distance), on the rivalry between Genoa

and Venice, on the relationship between the colony and the motherland, or on the

manner in which they evolved as urban centers, all of these aspects, and many more,

have to be placed against the background of the relationship between the Mediterranean

world and the land mass of Eurasia. Both were controlled by political forces with

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hegemonic powers or ambitions to the point that they constituted (and were regarded as)

some kind of empire.

Both Venice and Genoa included among their possessions settlement colonies

and trading centers (emporia, entrepts, comptoirs), some of which were under their

direct control and jurisdiction while others were not. The local conditions as well as the

agreements reached with the locally dominant powers determined the juridical position

of the settlements outside their direct jurisdiction. The sum of them generated trading

networks that allowed for a unified control over routes that ideally reached every

important market around the Mediterranean. The struggle among the various powers

that vied for control of those routes including not only Genoa and Venice, but also

Greeks, Catalans, Turks, and others set the stage for the development of

Mediterranean history for most of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, intersecting

also political history at the local and international level (most importantly, the Crusades).

While Venice and Genoa naturally conquered various territories, the land-based

Mongol empire was a much more muscular conquest empire. Yet the Mongols were a

tiny minority in the midst of populous regions that they had come to dominate by the

force of their arms. After 1260, as serious rivalries could no longer be resolved, the four

khanates that were the product of the break-up of the empire the khanate of Jochi, or

Golden Horde, in Russia, the Ilkhans in Persia, the Chaghatai khanate in Central Asia,

and the Yuan dynasty in China were not (and are not) regarded as four separate

empires. But, as mentioned above, some features of the original empire remained

operative, and the communication network created by the Mongols still allowed for the

relatively safe and easy passage from the Black Sea to India in the south and China in

the east.

Neither the Italian maritime empires nor the Mongol one may be regarded as a

proper empire by the definition of late early modern empires, but both found a cohesive

element in the trade networks they controlled or fought to control. The empire-form is

not only relevant to the functioning of emporia, but it also defined them, that is, it

determined the political and cultural spaces within which they operated. They

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thought like empires. That is to say that our analysis cannot dismiss the fact that we

are dealing with two spheres, on land and on sea, that were imperial in a way in

which the Byzantines were not and the Ottomans became only at a later stage, well into

the fifteenth century. These imperial situations were enhanced by the ability of those

who dominated the sea and those who dominated the land in order to extend, and

possibly strengthen, their respective power by connecting with their counterparts on

land or sea. In other words, control over the Black Sea frontier defined and gave

coherence to the Mediterranean and Eurasian empires of Genoa and Venice on the one

side and the Mongols on the other. In this sense I believe it is possible to speak of an

Genoese-Venetian presence on the Black Sea as a unified, if internally fractured,

phenomenon, and one wholly different from the role played by the Byzantines,

Armenians, Turks, and other Italians as well.

Yet fractures are important and should be given full consideration within any

analysis that might cast a European maritime empire against a Mongol land empire.

The differences between the two Republics, not only in terms of mutual rivalry but also

in terms of style of government and pursuit of strategic and commercial interests, have

been remarked upon multiple times as one of the most important elements defining the

encounter between Europe and Asia on the Black Sea.

Several scholars have correctly pointed to the extremely varied world of Black

Sea comptoirs, where language, creed, or ethnicity apparently constituted no barrier to

business. Many people lived together in close quarters, and although in Caffa the

Italians were the majority, Greeks and Armenians nevertheless claimed a large share of

the population, together with Tartars and Saracens (Balard 1979: 210-1; Balard 1987).

These people mingled, formed partnerships, established families, and showed a

remarkable degree of mutual tolerance. In such a multinational world where

partnerships shifted constantly and ethnic affiliations were fluid it may seem odd to

regard Caffa and Tana as specifically belonging to a single camp. Yet the multiethnic

flavor of the settlements should not conceal the fact that the political and administrative

levers remained in the hands of the Genoese and Venetians, who also handled relations

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with local rulers for their security and defense. The governments of these cities, while

accountable to the representatives of the Golden Horde, were ultimately responsible for

ensuring that the emporia continued to perform their role as feeders to the

Mediterranean markets as well as to local centers of trade. Yet the manner in which the

Venetians and Genoese operated does not represent a single model, as is natural given

the differences in government, statutes, wealth, and organization of the trading

communities of both cities. These differences are also evident in the frequent contrasts

between the two, related to a long-established rivalry, but also to new conflicts

generated by their struggle over Black Sea routes and commercial bases.

It is well known that in Genoa and Venice the relationship between individual

merchants and the state was not the same. The accumulation of private wealth over state

resources and the considerable independence of private merchants from the state that

we find in Genoa (Pistarino 1988: 29) stands in stark contrast with the strict control

which the Venetian state was expected to exercise over the operations of its citizens and

to Venices lesser gap between private fortunes and public finances. As a result, within

the Genoese colonies, and Caffa in particular, being the capital of Genoese Romania,

there was considerable arm-wrestling between the officers sent by the central

government and the local elites (Balard 1981: 161). It is also significant that the Genoese

state often exploited rich overseas settlements to unburden part of its public debt by

charging fees to the local taxpayers. In 1308, just after Caffa was attacked by the khan of

the Golden Horde, Toqtoa, a special office was created in Genoa to regulate the

relationship between the metropolitan center and the Black Sea settlements as well as

the latters internal administration: the Officium Gazarie. This measure did not result in

greater state control over Caffa, but rather gave it a set of rules meant to regulate

administration and internal life in the Black Sea colonies.

In contrast, Venetian merchants were much more dependant on direct

intervention of the state for creating an environment that was secure and profitable. The

state spearheaded Venetian efforts to enter the Black Sea market and remained as much

as possible in control of the administration of their main settlement in Tana. Because of

17

their relative weakness, Venetian merchants often pleaded with their government to

protect them against affronts, injuries, and damages suffered at the hands of the more

aggressive Genoese, and expected their doge to intercede with the authority of his office

with both Genoa and the Mongols to grant them a degree of protection.

As has been persuasively argued by erban Papacostea (1979), the Genoese tried

in every way to retain the monopoly of the Black Sea trade in the face of competition,

principally from Venice and secondly from Pisan and Greek merchants. They succeeded

in this objective for a while, but in 1308 their position was severely weakened by the

sudden worsening of relations with the Mongols, who attacked Caffa and forced the

Genoese to abandon it temporarily. The primary cause for the military action of Toqtoa

Khan appears to have been the Genoese trade in slaves, which included Mongols and

other subjects of the Golden Horde whose trade was forbidden (Jackson 2005: 305).

Whether the Mongol action was undertaken out of pity for the fate of Mongol subjects is

difficult to say. However, considering that slavery was hardly unknown or even

proscribed within the Mongol empire, we must consider this to have been an unlikely

cause. The reason was, rather, the Genoese cavalier attitude toward the prohibition

imposed by the khan against trading Mongol subjects. Trade was allowed but regulated,

and the ability to impose certain terms was a matter of sovereignty, and therefore the

lesson imparted to the Genoese had probably meant, first of all, to make them feel the

weight of the khans authority (Bratianu 1929: 283).

All major incidents in the often stormy relations between Italian emporia and

Mongol rulers can be imputed to real or perceived breaches of Mongol sovereignty. The

most serious episode, which ushered in a long period of hostilities between Genoese and

Venetians on one side and Janibeg Khan (r. 1342-57) on the other, occurred in 1343 as a

consequence of the Venetian refusal to deliver to Mongol authorities a Venetian

nobleman, Andreolo Civran, who had been found guilty of having ambushed and slain

a Mongol with whom he had previously had an altercation. The subsequent turmoil all

but wiped out the Italian presence on the Black Sea, forcing the Franks (that is, the

Italians) to flee Tana to save their lifes and seek refuge in Caffa. Caffa, however, was

18

attacked, besieged, and nearly taken by the army of Janibeg. This episode is famously

known for the connection between the Mongols bombardment of Caffa with infected

corpses and animal carcasses and the spread of the Black Death that ravaged Europe

(Tononi 1884). But Caffa itself did not fall, and while this may be the best evidence that

the Black Death might not have been caused by the Mongol attack after all, it also

demonstrates the resilience of its inhabitants, the better defenses they had built since

Toqtoas attack (Balard 1988: 74), and their ability to establish independent centers of

power. At this point, Genoese and Venetians found themselves in the same boat, facing

an aggressive Mongol power, cut off from Tana and the northern routes, their bases

threatened, and suffering severe losses of money and people, many of whom were still

detained by the Mongols (Karpov 2001: 270-2).

Let us now examine more closely these events, which preceded the end of the

Pax Mongolica and therefore cannot be attributed to a state of confusion within the

Mongol empire. From the beginning the Mongol conquest had offered both Genoa and

Venice the chance to consolidate and expand their range of operations in Asia through

treaties with, and political support received from, the Mongol authorities. By the end of

the thirteenth century Genoas position had become permanent, and was to be further

consolidated (notwithstanding the aforementioned temporary setback) in the early

decades of the fourteenth century. Genoa thus became the single dominant power,

followed closely by Venice. The crisis of Tana in 1343 was essentially an accident of

history due to the inability of the Venetian consul and the resident authorities to

estimate the local reaction to the slaying of a Mongol once that crime had gone

unpunished, or by their failure to apprehend the guilty Venetian nobleman (Morozzo

della Rocca 1962: 285).

The crisis of Tana produced a temporary alliance between Venice and Genoa,

and even provided an extremely rare occurrence of common political action. The

weapon used by the Italians against the armies of Janibek was a commercial embargo,

a devetum that was intended to force the Khan to come to terms with them and renounce

his hostile intentions. What the crisis of Tana shows us is the weakness of the system or

19

the foreign relations between Italian emporia and Mongol khans, not so much in terms

of the efforts both made to create favorable conditions, but in terms of the absence of

safety nets in case the fragile political equilibriums were disrupted. It was essentially

sovereignty that was at stake, with its legal, ritual, and administrative accoutrements,

and the Mongols showed time and again that they would not condone any open

challenge to their authority.

This was, effectively, the flipside of an otherwise mostly favorable and

accommodating environment. If a strong, centralized political authority could make

trade safer, its costs would be relatively low and predictable, and its profits high;

however, the same central authority, if provoked, could threaten the very existence of

those foreign settlements. But the Genoese and Venetian strategy after the crisis of Tana

shows that the merchants also knew how important it was for the Mongols to keep the

commercial outlets of the Black Sea open to trade. They gambled and, in the end,

obtained a new treaty even though their success did not lead (as it could have) to the

development of a united front. On the contrary, it opened the door to a new war

between Venice and Genoa. Although trade was favored by a centralized and strong

Mongol state, the individual position of the emporia remained politically weak.

However, political independence (if not necessarily economic prosperity) grew during

the period of decline of the following decades in an inverse relation to the process of

political fragmentation of the Mongol empire.

Although the end of the Pax Mongolica is usually attributed to an organic and

perhaps inherent feature of Inner Asian empires, which produces cycles of unity and

dissolution, and even though it is true that Italian merchants had absolutely no way of

intervening in the political affairs of the four khanates taken together, it is not true that

they were innocent spectators in relation to the dissolution of the Golden Horde.

Genoese and Venetians were active participants in the political and military events that

accompanied the collapse of the Golden Horde, and especially Genoa took an active role

in local politics by supporting, also militarily, one side or the other. It may be argued

that this was the only feasible strategy to guarantee the foreigners survival in an

20

extremely complex and fluid political situation. At the same time, however, not just

survival, but expansion was a primary objective of Genoese politics, and this was only

possible if the central power was weak and vulnerable, and therefore ready to make

concessions in exchange for military or other subsidies. A significant example in this

respect is the war fought by Genoa against the lord of Sorgat, in which it received

assistance from Tokhtamyshs commander Qutlug Boga, and signed an extremely

advantageous treaty (Basso 1990: 15-6). By getting involved in Mongol politics, Caffa

was able to increase its independence, acquire a greater share of sovereign powers (such

as minting coins), and grew into a major local power at the same time that the Golden

Horde began to fall apart and the Pax Mongolica came to an end.

The growth of the local power of these emporia as the Mongol empire

dissolved is a phenomenon worth lingering on because it goes to show the importance

of political strategy against purely commercial interests. Not only was the first impulse

toward the Pontic region in the mid-fourteenth century dictated by strategic reasons, but

so were other crucial episodes. Already nearly a century ago, Mario Brunetti (1916)

identified the source-cause of the war that raged between Venice and Genoa in 1350 and

1355, as the struggle for control of the Black Sea trade. Undoubtedly, commercial

interests were involved, but a closer look reveals that the possibility of cooperation

created by the crisis of Tana and the imposition of the embargo against the Golden

Horde was in fact almost immediately denied by the Caffians who ignored it and

continued to trade with the Golden Horde. This generated intense Venetian protests

because of the danger of being wholly excluded from trade in the region while the

Genoese carried on their business in spite of the boycott decreed by the two dogi, as

Venices position was overall much weaker without its base in Tana, while its citizens

remained a powerless minority in Caffa. Already in 1347 Tana had witnessed the return

of a group of traders after separate peace treaties had been signed with Janibek; however,

full Venetian presence in Tana was only reestablished after the peace of Milan was

signed with Genoa in 1355 (Karpov 1996: 37).

21

The tensions created by the mutual mistrust between the Genoese and the

Venetians, and the fact that each felt it was imperative to maintain ones own position on

the Black Sea while at the same time preventing other merchants, for instance the

Greeks, from coming in to fill the gap not only made the embargo ineffective, but also

increased competition to a breaking point, and they went to war in 1350 to resolve their

differences over access to the Black Sea. The risks connected with a prolonged war,

which in the end weakened both contenders, must have been evident. Venice had to

react to Genoas expansion into the Black Sea, reinforced by its acquisition of a

prominent position at Chios and Pera. After having gained the support of Byzantium

and of the Crown of Aragon, the Venetians fought an all-out war that was enormously

costly and ended with the temporary loss of their rights of navigation to Tana (until

1358), but otherwise there was no clear victory by either power.

The most significant result, from the point of view of long-term political trends,

was the emergence of the Ottoman Empire as a growing force in the area. Through their

support of Genoa, the Ottomans entered the war, obtained important positions, built

fortresses, and made essential tactical progress along a strategy that eventually led to the

conquest of Constantinople in 1453. It was therefore the arrival of the Ottomans and the

establishment of their power in the region which finally forced the Italians to abandon

the field: not the Black Death, the many wars between them, the destruction of

Tamerlanes campaigns, and certainly not the end of the Pax Mongolica which in fact

resulted in the growth of their involvement in local affairs.

State power and individual initiative in emporia and empires

The deadly struggle between the two Republics across the ideal temporal divide

represented by the end of the Pax Mongolica shows, in my view, the importance of the

Black Sea regardless of purely commercial interests, and especially regardless of

international long-distance trade opportunities. On the contrary, battles appear to

have grown more intense and also extended to the Mediterranean, while international

22

trade via the Black Sea was waning. Such a disjuncture indicates, in my view, a most

critical fissure in the operations of both the Genoese and Venetian emporia between a

strictly private sphere of action, which could extend all the way to China, and the sphere

of action where state interests and strategies were played out, which remained anchored

in the maritime trading network of which the Black Sea emporia had become an

important part (Di Cosmo 2005). By state sphere I mean the nature of commercial

penetration, such as strategic planning, financing, military support, and international

relations, and the ways in which the comptoirs worked, for instance with regard to

internal administration, defense, and local diplomacy.

The establishment of Caffa, Tana, and the other emporia was not only due to the

entrepreneurship of private merchants, but also to heavy investments by the state, even

though surely uneven and subject, especially in the case of Genoa, to limitations

inherent in the economic and political situation within the metropolitan government.

They did so because from the mid-thirteenth century the Black Sea constituted a source

for the import of grains and cereals (Karpov 1993). Given that both Venice and Genoa

were subject to the threat of embargos from their hinterland rivals, the ability to seek

basic supplies from abroad and to get them by sea was not just of economic interest but

of fundamental strategic importance. In the chronicle by Martin da Canal (1972: 324-5;

Berindei-Veinstein 135-6) it is said that Venice sought to enter the Black Sea because of

its lack of grain. This was around 1260, that is, before any knowledge of potential trade

with China could have been acquired, and therefore before any desire to participate in a

network of international trade would have become a factor in the establishment of

commercial relations with the Pontic region. This is important in my view because both

the Treaty of Nymphaeum (1261) between Genoa and Byzantium and the efforts

undertaken around the same time by both Venice and Genoa to begin their commercial

penetration of Romania, or Gazaria, established a terminus a quo that cannot easily be

placed in a causeeffect relationship with a Pax Mongolica that was still in the process of

being established and only began to yield some results after Marco Polos sojourn in

China in the late thirteenth century. This consideration goes to show that the chief

23

impulse for opening Black Sea routes was strategic rather than commercial, and that the

first commercial objective was to take control of the internal Black Sea trade, which

allowed for the transport of grain and other commodities mainly from the north to the

south coast.

The huge resources that both the maritime Republics invested in the wars from

1350 onward, and the risks that they were consciously taking, indicate that the Black Sea

markets had become an essential element in both Genoas and Venices political

strategies. But if we assume that access to the flow of commercial goods from Greater

Asia had been a primary stimulus for the development of the Black Sea colonies, would

this justify a life-and-death war at a time when commerce with Iran had already

diminished, and relations with the Golden Horde Khan Janibeg were highly unstable?

More to the point, why had the governments of Genoa and Venice never been interested

in pursuing a policy of penetration of markets beyond the Black Sea?

Even during the heyday of overland trade to China, Central Asia, and Persia,

regardless of the volume of the trade, its value, the number of people involved, or

whether they were professional merchants or fortune-seeking adventurers, the

governments of Genoa and Venice had not been involved in trying to establish relations

with the political authorities in these distant lands (Di Cosmo 2005: 403-6). No political

representatives or even merchants with proper diplomatic authority and instructions

were dispatched, even at times when there were explicit overtures and concrete

possibilities for them to do so. Sending an embassy to China would not by any means

have been eccentric. The Polos, who went from Venice to China in the mid-thirteenth

century, combined in their mission both commercial and diplomatic interests as carriers

of Papal letters. There were missionaries in China, and the merchant community seems

to have been prosperous and numerous. Yet, despite all the Genoese people who had

been trading in China and in the rest of Asia whose activities and names have been

documented (Lopez 1977: 13-33), the lack of interest of the Genoese government remains

truly striking. Nor did Venice do any better. Asking ourselves why this was the case is

24

by no means an idle question considering the glaring disparity in state investments in

trade in the Black Sea area and in regions further along the trade routes.

The answers one could offer could be several: contacts with China were not

interesting to the Genoese and Venetian governments because that country lay far

beyond the territorial and commercial range which a maritime power could hope or aim

to control. Another reason can easily be found in the lack of adequate resources, given

that even the normal administration of Caffa and Tana cost more than the metropolitan

governments could afford, added to all the expenses already associated with the defense

of their interests on the Black Sea. An additional problem lies in our inability to estimate

how important those faraway markets really were. The sources that have reached us are

incomplete, not only due to the vagaries of history, but also because the production of

documentation varied according to the respective style of operation and the

prevailing commercial and administrative cultures in each area. The secretive mentality

of the Genoese merchants and the preference for oral rather than written exchanges of

information make the availability of written materials even more problematic (Bagrow

1956: 6).

Given that the paucity of information is especially troublesome when we

examine long-range and international trade, historians have been especially divided

when considering the volume of trade and number of merchants who ventured beyond

the Black Sea area to reach the remote markets of Tabriz, Urgench, or Beijing. Good

reasons have been brought to bear on both sides of the question, and it is unlikely that a

definitive answer or even a majority consensus can be reached. Some scholars have

argued that, at least at the height of Genoese activity on the Black Sea, commercial

relations with the Far East had become systemic, and a substantial number of

professional merchants rather than occasional travelers and seekers of fortune had

established bases in China (Lopez 1970: 346). Others, however, have been less ready to

endorse that view, and tend to regard this type of trade at any rate as a luxury trade

with more occasional than systemic characteristics (Bautier 1970: 311-31). Important

documents such as Pegolottis commercial manual (Pegolotti 1936), the merchants

25

lexicon contained in the Codex Cumanicus, and various maps (Bagrow 1956) have

nonetheless allowed important glimpses into a shadowy commercial milieu that could

hardly have been limited to a few occasional adventurers.

Yet the question of local versus international trade should probably be posited in

different terms, once we take into account the full trajectory of Genoese and Venetian

involvement on the Black Sea. First, the expansion of Venice and Genoa was linked to

strategic reasons that had to do with their needs for food and other supplies transported

by sea routes. Second, competition over the routes across the Straits was part of the

overall struggle between Genoa and Venice for control over the commercial networks in

the Mediterranean. Third, the Mongol presence in the Pontic region did create a

favorable environment for both the establishment of local bases and the exploitation of

these as termini of long-distance trade, especially after the war between the Golden

Horde and the Ilkhans blocked the overland route from the Pontic to North Africa.

However, international trade was a sphere that pertained to private rather than to state

interests. The sphere of state interests remained solidly anchored to the Black Sea and

never went beyond it.

This, as I have argued above, was because both Genoa and Venice had assessed

the importance of the Black Sea primarily in strategic terms; as a potential source of

supplies needed in case they faced a land embargo. The commercial importance of the

Black Sea trade, initially only of secondary importance, grew with the expansion of the

emporia, and over time the two levels became intertwined and could not be separated.

The local products, especially grain, cereals, and slaves (but also fish, caviar, timber,

hides, and other commodities) could guarantee hefty, if not always stable, returns, and

were also the products that were most needed from a strategic viewpoint. Although the

spice and silk trade had been lost to the Black Sea, it could still be accessed once it was

rerouted, in the final decades of the fourteenth century, toward Alexandria by the Indian

Ocean sea route.

26

Conclusion

The end of the Pax Mongolica, far from tolling the death bell for Italian presence on the

Black Sea, even strengthened the position of Genoa, which expanded in the littoral areas

in the Crimea and elsewhere along the Black Sea coast. The population of Tana also

grew consistently to the end of the fourteenth century (Pubblici 2005). Until the

Ottoman conquest (which by the way followed several years after the fall of

Constantinople) the Italian colonies demonstrated remarkable tenacity even amid the

radical changes of these political and economic contexts.

The resilience of their presence is in my view far more significant than the

collapse of international trade following the demise of the Mongol realm, because it

demonstrates that the private engagement in international, long-distance trade was far

less important than the strategic concerns that had constituted the first impulse toward

the development of permanent emporia on the shores of western Asia. The importance

of the Mongols rests with the fact that in them merchants found partners with whom

they could do business. The protection the Mongols offered to international trade was

an added bonus that was understood and grasped by those merchants and adventurers

who had the means, the predisposition, the temperament, and the opportunity to seek

their fortune in distant lands. We may presume they did so often in partnership with

local traders, almost certainly Muslims from Persia and Central Asia, who had

knowledge of routes and markets. Notary acts provide plenty of information on

partnerships between Italian merchants and Greeks, Saracens, and others, but we

must admit that specific information on how such international trade was organized and

carried out is woefully scarce.

The question of how relevant the emporia on the Black Sea were with respect to

the expansion of Europe or to a pre-1500 world system, should be approached, then,

from the perspective of what it meant for the Genoese and the Venetians to connect with

the Mongol empire and, vice versa, how the Mongols related to the Mediterranean

world and to the sea-faring peoples who appeared at their doorstep. The discussion

27

above suggests looking at a dual sphere: a soft commercial presence in China, Persia,

and Central Asia, not supported or monitored by the state, and a hard conglomerate

of interests around the Black Sea and especially on the Crimea and Sea of Azov that was

controlled, monitored, protected, and partly financed by the state even when it was

financially and militarily difficult to do so, and even in the face of substantial political

autonomy sought by the major colonial settlements, such as Caffa.

The soft sphere, which came into existence because of the active support,

efforts, and interest of the Mongols, was not structurally linked with the broader

strategic interests of the Italian powers, as evidenced by their lack of interest in pursuing

diplomatic liaisons or even responding to invitations. It was a sphere in which private

citizens, most of them probably from Genoa, organized themselves, for example by

collecting information such as those tools of trade that we may recognize in the Codex

Cumanicus and Pegolottis manual. It was the independence of mind and profit-seeking

spirit of adventure of individual merchants that made them transcend the limits of their

states activity. This is not to say, of course, that the hard sphere defended by the state

was not crossed by tensions between private and state interests, or that state

intervention was always a determining factor. Undoubtedly, private interests were also

prominent in the management of Caffa, Tana, Pera, and other colonies, but they were

part and parcel of the fundamental, underlying strategic interests of their home

governments; and of course the three wars fought by Venice and Genoa over the Straits

and the Black Sea routes are the clearest expression of this tendency.

For a short time, however, the Italian comptoirs made the Black Sea the nerve

center of international trade by allowing a connection between Mongol-dominated areas

and the Mediterranean markets. The Mongols, we might say, brought the economy of

maritime trade into their system and, without renouncing their sovereign prerogatives,

allowed their establishment because of a common interest in connecting land and sea

into a unified system. That legacy was fully appreciated by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet

the Conqueror, and was perfectly reflected in the title he chose for himself, Sultan of

the two lands and Khaghan of the two seas (Inalcik 1979: 74).

28

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