212 Jacoby
political and economic factors generated some major shifts in shipping routes
and in the relative importance of ports in the course of the 13th century.
Venetian Candia, Modon, Coron and Negroponte warrant particular atten-
tion. While their functions as transit stations in the Aegean have drawn some
attention, their contribution to the economy of Latin Greece itself has been
largely overlooked. These ports fulfilled multiple functions. They collected pro-
duce from their respective hinterland, distributed imported commodities, and
served as warehouses, transhipment stations and markets for goods in transit.
They supplied provisions, equipment, ship maintenance and repairs to local
and passing vessels. Besides handling goods in transit, resident merchants
acted as middlemen and provided information in complex trading business
ventures between several regions. They furthered the commercialisation of
rural and industrial products by their acquaintance with marketing opportuni-
ties, trading networks and transportation patterns. Their transactions involved
money-changing, banking, credit operations, and transfers of capital partly
achieved by investment in maritime trade. Commercial activity in major ports
of transit was particularly intensive in specific periods of the year, in close
connection with the seasonal navigation patterns in the Mediterranean. State
resources were invested in ships engaged in surveillance and the protection
of convoys, naval warfare, piracy, and the recruitment of sailors, archers and
crossbowmen, the latter especially in Crete.50 To these we may add the build-
ing and enlargement of arsenals, as in Coron, Modon, Negroponte and Candia,
as well as repeated improvements in harbours which, although not always suc-
cessful, ensured a flow of public money collected as taxes back into the local
economy, instead of being siphoned off to Venice. Cumulatively the functions
of the major ports generated large-scale employment and a substantial injec-
tion of cash in the local economies, which was reinvested in the rural sector,
trade, shipbuilding, transportation, other services, construction, or in individ-
ual consumption and the bolstering of social standing.
Following its conquest in the early 13th century, Candia’s strategic location
at the juncture of major east-west and north-south navigation lanes in the
Eastern Mediterranean, its harbour, and its function as administrative capital
of Venetian Crete furthered its role as sole Cretan port of call integrated within
the long-distance trade and shipping networks of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Its function was further boosted by the fall of the Frankish states in the
Levant in 1291 and the papal ban of that year on supplies to Mamluk Egypt
and Syria, which generated a restructuring of shipping routes in the Eastern
50 Jacoby, “Changing Economic Patterns,” p. 229.