306 Milanese
century that Catalan merchants reached a leading position in Alghero’s coral
trade, though in 1378 coral harvesting was still practiced by fishermen of
Marsiglia, who had retained a leading place in the field since the second half of
the thirteenth century. The tax exemption granted to coral harvesting, which
the Catalans of Alghero—merchants or pobladors117—recognized in 1372, was
only the first of the royal provisions enacted in order to establish an Aragonese
monopoly on profitable activities in Alghero.118
In the fifteenth century, particularly after the conquest, Sardinia and its
principal ports in Cagliari and Alghero played a growing role in the system
of Catalan maritime commerce. The exemption on customs duty granted to
Catalan merchants limits the study of mercantile activity on the basis of cus-
toms records from Cagliari, which nonetheless appears to have been lively,
based on the only known register (1427–1429).119 The same problem exists in
Alghero, where the sole known customs record covers the period from 3 April
1409 to 1 April 1411, but what it reveals about the nature of trade and the volume
of goods cannot be deemed accurate, due to the modes of producing records.120
What needs to be emphasized with regard to this long period of continuity is
the consistent documentation of the trade in wooden barrels of wine along
the Marsiglia (Tolone)-Alghero route.121 This was a significant component
of Alghero’s medieval trade, as it indicates the mobility of the merchants of
Marsiglia, Toulone, Montpellier, and Perpiñan in the Mediterranean,122 and
their firm presence in the city of Alghero, whose documents contain a wealth
of evidence on this strong connection.
Languedoc and Provence were home to some of the wealthiest Jewish
families, such as the Carcassona, who started arriving in Alghero after 1370
117 On the Catalan repopulation of Alghero, see especially Rafael Conde y Delgado de Molina,
“Il ripopolamento catalano di Alghero,” in Mattone and Sanna, Alghero, la Catalogna, il
Mediterraneo, pp. 75–104.
118 Mattone and Sanna, “Per una storia economica,” pp. 752–753.
119 Corrado Zedda, “I rapporti commerciali tra la Sardegna e il Mediterraneo dal XIII al XV
Secolo. Continuità e mutamenti,” Archivio storico e giuridico sardo di Sassari n.s. 12 (2007),
pp. 172, 184.
120 Angelo Castellaccio, “Vino e fisco nei registri doganali di Alghero (sec. XV),” in La vite e il
vino. Storia e diritto (secoli XI–XIX ) (Rome, 1999), vol. 1, pp. 245–274.
121 Castellaccio, “Vino e fisco nei registri doganali di Alghero (sec. XV),” p. 252; Marco
Milanese, A. Deiana, R. Filigheddu, and Daniela Rovina, “Fonti archeologiche e archeo-
botaniche per la storia della vite e del vino nella Sardegna nord-occidentale (sec. XIV–
XVII),” in La vite e il vino, vol. 1, pp. 531–577.
122 D. Abulafia, El commercio y el reino, p. 116; D. Abulafia, “The Problem of the Kingdom of
Maiorca. 2: Economic Identity,” Mediterranean Historical Review 6 (1991).