The fiscal interests of the Byzantine state and the non-state sector of private merchants, bankers, shipping and so on always co-existed in a state of tension. The priorities for the government were embedded in the fiscal machinery, ways and means of regulating the extraction, distribution and consumption of resources, based upon a strongly autarkic relationship between consumption and agricultural production. Thus until the later eleventh century the export of finished goods, the flow of internal commerce between provincial centres, as well as between the provinces and Constantinople, and the movement of raw materials and livestock, were determined to a large extent by three related factors. First, the needs of the army and treasury for materials and provisions; second, the need for cash revenues to support mercenary forces and the imperial court; and third, the needs of the city of Constantinople, which dominated regional trade in its hinterland. The pattern of supply and demand had been heavily slanted towards Constantinople since the fifth century, a pattern which was even more accentuated after the loss of central Asia Minor in the 1070s. Until the development of the western economies from the later tenth and eleventh centuries, trade in the Byzantine world had been largely inward-looking, from the provinces and from the empire’s neighbours to Constantinople and between the provinces, or with the Islamic world - textiles and finished items of clothing, metalwork, and luxury items such as spices, for example. After the later ninth century this commerce was a flourishing aspect of the internal economy of Byzantine society, and large numbers of traders and entrepreneurs were associated with it. And although the fiscal priorities of the state continued to dominate, the number of trading ports around the Black Sea (from which Italians were excluded before the Fourth Crusade) suggests that long-distance trade by Byzantine merchants before 1204 must have been substantial.
In addition, social constraints played a role. Most well-off Byzantines derived their wealth largely from agricultural production. The possession of land bestowed social status, along with membership of the imperial system. Wealth from trade and commerce was, in comparison with that derived through rents and state positions, of less importance, so that while merchants were an active element in urban economies and playing an important role in the distribution of locally-produced commodities, they occupied a subordinate position in the process of wealth creation as a whole, and in particular in the perception of society in general in respect of the maintenance of the social order as it was understood. For the social elite, they were simply suppliers of luxury items or disposers of the surpluses from their estates, whether in local towns or fairs, or the capital. The government also inhibited enterprise to an extent through the means it employed to control and tax the movement of goods.
In this context, the longer-term results for the Byzantine economy and state of the rise of the Italian maritime cities - especially Venice and Genoa - were unfortunate. The naval weakness of the imperial government throughout the twelfth century, particularly in respect of the threat from the Normans in Sicily, directly promoted reliance upon Venetian assistance, purchased through commercial concessions. The role played by Venice, Pisa, Genoa and other cities after the First Crusade paved the way for Italian commercial infiltration of the Byzantine economic and exchange sphere during the twelfth century, culminating in the concessions made by emperors after Manuel I. It was because Italian commerce was on a small scale, and regarded as unimportant to the economic priorities of both state and aristocracy, that it was enabled to prosper. Demographic expansion in Italy stimulated the demand for Byzantine grain and other agrarian produce, which meant that Venetian and other traders slowly built up an established network of routes, ports and market bases, originally based on carrying Byzantine bulk as well as luxury goods and Italian or western imports to Constantinople, later expanding to a longer-distance commerce to meet the needs of an expanding Italian market.
The much more complex Mediterranean-wide market that evolved during the twelfth century was a market upon which cities such as Venice and Genoa depended very heavily for their political existence and the power and wealth of their ruling elites. The expulsion of Venetians from Constantinople under Manuel I in 1171 had serious effects on Venice, for example, but encouraged a much more direct interventionist approach in the Byzantine sphere. Internal strife in Genoa at the same period reveals similar concerns, as competing factions struggled for pre-eminence in the making of policy in respect of trade with east and west.
After 1261, Byzantine merchants and the Byzantine state were unable to compete with Italian and other commercial capital and shipping. In the mid-fourteenth century the Emperor John VI attempted to exploit the political situation in the Black Sea at the expense of the Genoese and to bolster the position of Byzantine merchants. Genoese military and naval power soon re-established their pre-eminence. While the emperor’s plan reveals the importance of commercial revenues to the much-reduced empire, it was now too late to change the pattern. Although some Byzantine aristocrats took an active interest in commerce, Byzantines or ‘Greeks’ played a generally subordinate role to Italians, sometimes as business partners, often as small-time entrepreneurs, as middlemen, and as wholesalers; frequently as small-scale moneylenders/bankers; rarely as large-scale bankers (although there were some), or major investors, still more rarely in major commercial contracts. The market demands of Italian-borne commerce began also to influence the patterns of production, consumption and taste within the empire, while in its final century or so the state itself had lost any effective role in managing or directing the production of wealth.
Map 10.4 Commerce, trade and production c. 1200-1400.
World History
