ports of Bougie and Ceuta in North Africa, and the Levant. Exports of northern French
and Flemish cloth, along with substantial credit activities in the form of money-exchange
contracts, underlay the Levant connections out of Marseille. Reexport of eastern
products, silks in particular, was directed to North Africa. The heyday of Marseille came
to an end with its conquest by Charles I of Anjou in 1262. From that date until at least the
mid-14th century, it was Montpellier, trading out of the French port of Aigues-Mortes,
that would dominate western trade with the Levant.
French Mediterranean trade underwent numerous changes in the later 13th and 14th
centuries. In the western Mediterranean, southern French trade linked Montpelliérains
and Marseillais with outlets in Majorca, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. North African
contacts moved farther east to Algiers and Collo once the Aragonese were implanted at
Ceuta. In the eastern Mediterranean, crusading losses on the Syrian mainland meant that
trading activities were forced back on the islands of Cyprus and Rhodes. Additional
eastern Mediterranean trading destinations included Armenia, Alexandria, and the
Byzantine empire. Papal prohibitions of trade with the infidel did not hinder southern
French Mediterranean commerce, but this trading network was further disrupted with the
breakup of the Mongol empire in Asia beginning in the 1330s.
Economic problems in the 14th century, the Black Death, and the Hundred Years’ War
occasioned decline in French trade. The Italian towns remained strong competitors, as did
the Majorcans and the Aragonese, particularly from their expanding port of Barcelona.
Kathryn L.Reyerson
[See also: AIGUES-MORTES; MARSEILLE; MERCHANTS; MONTPELLIER;
TRADE ROUTES]
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1885.
Lopez, Robert S., and Irving Raymond. Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World. New York:
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——. “Medieval Silks in Montpellier: The Silk Market ca. 1250–ca. l350.” Journal of European
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——. “Montpellier and the Byzantine Empire: Commercial Interaction in the Mediterranean World
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