450 nicholas doumanis
ample wood supplies, improvements in financial and commercial contracting, and
the clearance of privateers from Italian waters, made it easier for northern Italian
merchants to venture eastwards and tap into the vast and well-established markets of
Egypt, the Levant and Byzantium. Merchants traded raw materials (for example,
wool, metals) for such goods as spices, drugs, linens and silks. The eastern trade
certainly was a significant stimulus for Italian manufacturing and intercity commerce,
but so too was northern Europe, where population growth and an increasingly
prosperous aristocracy fueled demand for eastern goods. Richard Goldthwaite notes
that the major dynamic driving the ascent of such medieval cities as Florence and
Milan “arose out of the imbalance in the relative development of two vast economic
areas, Europe and the Near East” (Goldthwaite, 2009: 3–4).
The significance of Asian goods in Mediterranean life can be measured in other
ways. It is a commonplace among economic historians that China and India pocketed
much of the silver and gold accumulated by westerners. The Romans, from the time
of the Republic through to Justinian, from c. 200 bce to 600 ce, felt aggrieved that
they suffered a perennial balance of payments deficit with Persia and India, as did
western European states with the Ottoman Empire. In turn, the Ottomans had a
similar problem with Safavid Persia, and Persia with India (Dale, 2010). Another
measure was the symbolic value ascribed to Asian goods. In Europe, claims
McCormick, spices were not “the sort of thing one could expect in every priest’s
home.” Rather, in the early Middle Ages, a period of diminished trading activity
across the Mediterranean, pepper was the kind of gift that was fit for kings (McCormick,
2001: 709–10). Churches in Italy and the Carolingian state used silk extensively for
vestments and furnishings: in Latin Christendom the greatest consumer of silk in the
eighth and ninth century was the Papacy (McCormick, 2001: 721). Within the
Byzantine Empire, good quality silk was an important status symbol, which meant
that it was essential to anyone who wished to be regarded as an aristocrat (see also
Goskar, this volume). Asian goods also became essential to Mediterranean ritual prac-
tices and medical cures. Around 800, when the rate of Asian imports began to rise,
pepper and other spices, such as cloves, cinnamon, spikenard and ginger, were being
prescribed for ailments such as colds and stomach problems. Frankincense, myrrh and
balsam, which came either from Arabia or the Levant, were indispensable in Latin
Christian worship. Balsam was mixed with oil to “make chrism, the holy oil used in
baptism, ordinations and church dedications” (McCormick, 2001: 718).
Yet another measure of Asian significance was the wealth that accumulated at the
various access points in the eastern Mediterranean and further inland. Before
the Portuguese opened a trans-oceanic pathway to Asia and secured direct access to
south- and east-Asian markets, the flow of goods to the Mediterranean and Europe
was mediated by state powers that ensured that caravans converged on particular
towns, which made it easier to collect duties. Petra, Palmyra, Nisbis (Nusaybin),
Antioch, Trebizond (Trabzon), Kaffa (Feodosiia), and Aleppo were among the
cities that prospered as the preferred or state-designated entry points into the
Mediterranean world. These centers figured quite prominently in the imperial ambi-
tions of Mediterranean and West Asian states. Late Republican and Imperial Roman
policy in the Levant had much to do with establishing controls over the Asian trade
in silk, spices and perfumes (Bowersock, 1971: 227; 1973: 136–137; Fitzpatrick,
2011). Persia, under the Parthians and Sassanids, was just as interested in maintaining