I commerci adriatici e mediterranei di Ancona nel XV secolo

Abstract

Ancona, located two hundred kilometers south of Venice on the western coast of the Adriatic Sea, is one of Italy’s main ports, especially for the international traffic of vehicles and passengers. Its fortunes began in the Middle Ages, when it became a shipping port for western goods headed east and a gateway for eastern products to the west. Although some scholars hesitate to call it a “maritime republic” because of its subjection to the pope, Ancona was a fierce economic rival of Venice for centuries, challenging—just like Ragusa (Dubrovnik) on the Dalmatian coast—Venetian thalassocracy in the Adriatic.1Giulia Spallacci’s book, derived from her PhD thesis at the University of Bologna, reconstructs Ancona’s trade history during a “long fifteenth century” (1345–1514), a period of buoyant economic growth for the city. Based on sources conserved in Italian and Croatian archives and on a rich bibliography, Spallacci first examines the political reality of Ancona, its maritime legislation, the distinctive features of its commercial treaties, and Venetian influence on its business development. She then analyzes the evolution of trade relations between Ancona and other Adriatic centers on both the western (Fermo, Recanati, Ravenna, Rimini) and the eastern side (Trieste, Senj, Split, Trogir, Zadar, Ragusa, Kotor, Durrës). Finally, she focuses on its commerce with Turks—to whom the Anconitans sold weapons to fight the Venetians—and on the products traded in the city’s market.The chapter concerning relations with Ragusa is particularly long and multifaceted due to the special links between the cities. “Ancona needed easy access to Balkan raw materials, while Ragusa needed food products, which it obtained through the port of Ancona,” writes Spallacci.2 More precisely, under a commercial treaty signed in 1292, Ancona exported wheat, wine, and salt to Ragusa, and Ragusan merchants brought hides, wax, furs, barrel staves, and grana (a brilliant red dye made from kermes) to Ancona. The document specifies that hides, wax, furs, and staves came from Byzantine territories in Europe (Romania) and the red dye from both Dalmatia (Sclavonia) and Byzantium (Romania).3 Later, with the growth of Ragusan trades in the Balkans and the Lower Danube, part of the hides and wax would arrive in Ancona from Wallachia, as stated in the Memoir by the Genoese Franco Sivori.4 Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century agreements greatly expand this scenario. According to the treaty of 1372 (renewed in 1397 and 1440), Anconitans traded grain, legumes, wine, salt, soap, oil, cheese, salted meats, livestock, and clothes in Ragusa; in Ancona, Ragusans sold hooded cloaks from Dalmatia and spices, sugar, cotton, and silks from the Peloponnese (Morea), Tartary, and the Crimea (Gazaria), not to mention gold, silver, pearls, and precious stones.5 The situation evolved further from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century: the granting of equal customs facilities to the Ragusans and to the Florentine, Sienese, and Lucchese merchants operating in the city made Ancona the preferred shipping port for Tuscan woolens directed to Constantinople and the Levant.6In addition to the historical essay, the book contains a complete transcription of sixty documents, including treaties between Ancona and Alexandria (Egypt), Kotor, Ragusa, Trogir, Venice, and Zadar, as well as summaries of 436 commercial agreements drawn up by Anconitan notaries and a short dictionary of medieval mercantile terms.With its impressive documentary apparatus and meticulous historical reconstruction, Ancona and Adriatic and Mediterranean Trading in the Fifteenth Century is a key resource for the analysis of commercial relations between Italy and the Balkans from a non-Venetian, but still significant, perspective.