(a) - Northern Italy: The maritime republics

Summary

AT the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the economies of the three major Italian maritime republics were flourishing. Their maritime commerce brought in wealth which enriched those engaged in trade, filtered through to the rest of the populace and funded the physical embellishment of their cities. Genoa and Venice also had transalpine trade by land with France and southern Germany which made significant contributions to their prosperity. This foreign trade was secured by the republics by means of political and economic treaties and agreements with their trading partners. After the massacre of the Latins in Constantinople in 1182, Pisa and Genoa negotiated renewal of their privileges and re-establishment of their quarters in 1192. In 1198, Venice finally reached agreement with the Byzantines on her claims for compensation for losses incurred in 1171 and for re-establishment of her quarter. In the Holy Land, in return for their participation in the Third Crusade, the republics received confirmation of their earlier privileges in the crusader states and grants of new ones: the most important being those of Conrad of Montferrat to the Venetians in 1192, in Tyre; and of Guy of Lusignan to the Pisans in 1189 and the Genoese in 1190, in Acre. In Egypt the aftermath of the Third Crusade did not lend itself to renegotiation of the earlier commercial treaties of the republics with the Ayyubid sultans. But while formal treaties were not renegotiated until 1205 (with Venice), the ships of the republics nevertheless crowded Alexandria in the decades of relative peace between 1191 and 1217.