210 Jacoby
The complex web of regional short and medium-range trading and ship-
ping of the Eastern Mediterranean displayed basic continuity with respect to
the Byzantine period in its orientations, communication networks, and ranges,
despite the Latin conquests of the early 13th century. Foodstuffs and some
other commodities partly remained within the Aegean region itself, such as
some raw silk for the local manufacture of textiles. However, a partial restruc-
turing of networks occurred as a result of a change in the economic orienta-
tion of the region, especially pronounced in the territories conquered by the
Latins. As noted above, instead of being largely geared toward Constantinople
and the internal Byzantine market, Latin Greece rapidly integrated within the
patterns of the western trading system. Still, the 14th and 15th centuries wit-
nessed the intensification of wine and cheese exports from the Aegean space
to Constantinople and beyond, to the Black Sea, especially from Crete, partly
in response to increasing demand in Ottoman and Mongol territories. These
exports partly financed growing western purchases of grain, oriental luxury
silks, gems and spices, as well as raw silk, hides and wax. A growing volume of
Cretan wine and cheese was also dispatched to Alexandria in the 14th and 15th
century, the merchants returning with spices.46
Industrial commodities, such as silk, cotton and kermes, were mostly or
even exclusively conveyed to major transit and transhipment stations within
the region in order to be dispatched to western industrial centres. Cabotage
ensured the collection of these commodities and the distribution of foreign
goods. However, commodities were also shipped directly from production sites
or ports in which they had been collected to their western destinations, namely
Constantinople, the Black Sea, Cyprus, the Mamluk countries, or Tunisia.
In addition to demand and supply, examined so far, political factors also
impacted upon the channelling of goods, shipping patterns, and maritime
lanes in the later Middle Ages. The rivalry between Venice and Genoa in long-
distance trade and shipping resulted in the fragmentation of the Eastern
Mediterranean and especially the Aegean along political lines. Each of the
two maritime powers consolidated its dominance over specific waterways and
maritime spaces, Venice on the western and Genoa on the eastern Aegean, a
process completed by the mid-14th century. The two maritime powers pro-
moted the development of their own transit and transhipment stations, whose
46 Gasparis, “The Trade in Agricultural Products,” pp. 128–29, 138–47; David Jacoby, “Creta
e Venezia nel contesto economico del Mediterraneo orientale sino alla metà del
Quattrocento,” in Venezia e Creta: atti del convegno internazionale di studi, ed. Gherardo
Ortalli (Venice, 1998), pp. 85–87, 97–100.