the mediterranean and the atlantic 419
a much easier access to the fabulous fortunes to be made in the spice trade and,
eventually, to the silver mines of Mexico and Peru.
The rise of the Atlantic and the decline of the MediterraneanThe reasons for Mediterranean decline were manifold and not all of them related to
Prince Henry the Navigator’s (1394–1460) sponsorship of Atlantic explorations, to
the Portuguese access to Indian markets, or to the Castilian encounter with the New
World. The point here is that the rise of Atlantic realms to a hegemonic position par-
alleled chronologically a series of political, economic, and religious developments that
would have affected the western Mediterranean economy and the region’s political
role even without the developments in the Atlantic and Africa (Russell, 2001). What
were these economic and political changes?
The rise of the OttomansThe rise of the Sublime Porte, highlighted by the fall of Constantinople in 1453,
represented a direct threat to western powers by land and sea. Ottoman armies
marched to the gates of Vienna in the early sixteenth century. Ottoman ships and
Ottoman-sponsored corsairs, the fabled Barbarossa brothers above all, threatened the
shores of Christian nations long after the great Christian naval victory at Lepanto in
- Lepanto was of great symbolism in the confrontation between Islam and
Christianity, but it had little long-term impact on Mediterranean politics. These con-
flicts disrupted trade in the Mediterranean, made eastern goods more expensive, and
the coasts of the western Mediterranean unsafe.
One significant consequence of the rise of the Ottoman Empire and of corsair
activity in the western Mediterranean—a corsair presence that would remain a threat
into the nineteenth century—was to dry up a great deal of the trade between
Mediterranean Europe and Mediterranean Africa. In the Middle Ages, the capture
of enemies at sea, ransoming of slaves, raids on each other’s coasts, were part and
parcel of broader patterns of exchange. Majorca, to give one single example, had
important commercial ties—mostly carried out by Jews and later by conversos—with
North Africa. It was not all antagonism. Trade and exchange relationships pre-
vented the isolation of one shore of the Mediterranean from the other. Gradually, as
the Ottomans expanded their sphere of influence into North Africa and sanctioned
corsair operations from North African ports, commercial relations diminished or
vanished. One should note that these corsairs, operating from both shores of the
Middle Sea, were often renegades, bringing to their activities an added sectarian
dimension. The European Christian outposts on the Mediterranean—Ceuta after
1415 and Oran, conquered by Spain in the sixteenth century—did not provide an
entry point into the interior of Africa, nor did they become commercial entrepôts.
Between the Ottomans, the Spanish Mediterranean fleet, the Italian republics’
navies, and corsairs from both religions, western Mediterranean trade was, for all
practical purposes, asphyxiated. Italy and western Mediterranean islands such as
Majorca and Sicily suffered most of all. In many respects, these changes were not
directly related to the rise of Atlantic trade; yet, they further benefitted Atlantic
ventures.