222 chapter four
progressed.309 the annexation of podolia that followed then stimulated
Lithuania’s appetite for expansion at the expense of the Golden horde:
after 1365, tartars watched without intervening while Kiev, with a great
part of the ukraine, was brought within the Grand Duchy’s borders.310
the Genoese could only profit from the manifestly rudderless state of
the ulus of Jochi. In 1365 they occupied Soldaia, without meeting the least
resistance from the steppe.311 If we bear in mind the limited value of the
ports of provato and calitra, the occupation is shown to have weighed as
much against the Venetians as against the tartars, rendering almost com-
pletely pointless the Jochid grant of crimean bridgeheads to merchants
from the Serenissima. Genoa’s new territorial acquisition was the second,
after the conquest of Balaklava twenty years earlier, and continued the
same effort to consolidate caffa’s dominant role on the Northern Black
Sea coast. Genoa’s strategy met with an unexpected tartar response: at
some point between 1376 and 1380, Mamai reconquered Soldaia.312 this
action was the only move by the Jochid state in two decades of violent
convulsion that may be called an active expression of Black Sea policy,
and even this was a spasm from a febrile state. the return of the town to
Jochid rule was far too short-lived to be of any economic benefit either to
the tartars or to the Venetians.
otherwise, it was impossible to have a trade policy such as had been
the norm until 1361, since the crumbling of Jochid state power had com-
pletely changed the conditions for long-distance trade in the cuman
steppe: in the vast territory between the mouth of the Don and the amu
Darya, there was no longer any supreme authority such as had hitherto
offered exemplary safety, infrastructure and facilities for merchant cara-
vans to travel. During the whole period of the civil wars, there is no men-
tion of Venetian consuls at tana,313 an unmistakable sign of the decline
of trade in the Golden horde interior and at its Black Sea periphery. Nor
309 the battle and its consequences are described in the ruthene-Lithuanian chron-
icle (text and variants in rhode, Ostgrenze, p. 220, and Knoll, Rise, p. 246), and Sarnicki,
Annales, col. 1134; cf. commentaries in Brătianu, “Demetrius,” pp. 274–281.
310 according to Spuler, Horde, p. 119, this took place sometime between 1365 and 1370;
Grekov, Yakubovskiy, Orda, p. 282, agree that it was “after 1365.”
311 Stella/Muratori, col. 1094, Sanjian, Colophons, p. 94; bibliography and commentary
at papacostea, “tana,” p. 214.
312 a Genoese garrison of 42 men is attested here for the last time in 1376 (Balard, I,
p. 159), while toqtamïsh’s treaty of 1380 restoring the citadel to their rule mentions that
Mamai had chased them out (Sacy, “pièces,” p. 54; ciocîltan, “restauraţia,” p. 580).
313 cf. the list published in Nystazopoulou-pélékidis, Venise, p. 48.