Maritime Republics - Origins and Development

Origins and Development

The economic growth of Europe around the year 1000, together with the lack of safety on the mainland trading routes, made possible the development of major commercial routes along the coast of the Mediterranean. In this context, the growing independence acquired by some coastal cities gave them a leading role in the European scene.

These cities, exposed to pirate raids (mostly Saracen), organized autonomously their defence, provided themselves heavy war fleets. Thus they were able in the 10th and 11th centuries to switch to the offensive role, taking advantage of the rivalry between the Byzantine and Islamic maritime powers and competing with them for the control of the commerce and trade routes with Asia and Africa.

On the institutional level, the cities formed from autonomous Republican governments, an expression of the merchant class, which constituted the backbone of their power. The history of the maritime republics intertwines both with the launch of European expansion to the East, and with the origins of modern capitalism as a mercantile and financial system. The merchants of the Italian maritime republics, using coins minted in gold (in disuse for centuries), began to develop new foreign exchange transactions and accounting. There were also stimulated technological advances in navigation, an essential support for the growth of mercantile wealth.

The Crusades offered them the opportunity for expansionist aims; the Crusades increasingly relied on Italian sea-transport, for which the Republics extracted concessions of colonies as well as a cash price. Venice, Amalfi, Ancona, and Ragusa were already engaged in trade with the Levant, but the phenomenon increased with the Crusades: thousands from the Italian maritime republics poured into the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea, creating bases, ports and commercial establishments known as "colonies". These were small gated enclaves, often just a single street, within a city, where the laws of the Italian city were administered by a governor appointed from home, and there would be a church under home jurisdiction, and shops with Italian styles of food. These Italian mercantile centers also had a large political influence locally: the Italian merchants were, in fact, forming in the center of their business, guild-like associations, directed at obtaining legal privileges, tax and customs from foreign governments within a clear policy; several personal dominions were born. Pera in Constantinople, first Genoese, then under the Ottomans Venetian, was the largest and best known Italian trading base.

The history of the various maritime republics is quite varied and this is understandable if we consider the difference in their longevity: Venice, Genoa, Noli, and Ragusa had a very long life with an independence that, outlasting the medieval period, continued up to the threshold of the contemporary era when the set of Italian and European states was devastated by the Napoleonic campaigns.

Other republics kept their independence until the Renaissance: Pisa, which came under the dominion of Florence in 1406, and Ancona, which came under control of the Papal States in 1532. Amalfi and Gaeta instead lost their independence very soon: the first in 1131 and the second in 1140, both having passed into the hands of the Normans.