THE MEDITERRANEAN IN THE AGE OF JAMES II OF ARAGONever more obvious, with the rebellion of Sassari and the out-
break of wider conflict with the Genoese, which brought
bloodthirsty Catalan raiding parties to the coasts near Genoa,
and which resulted in constant atrocities by Catalan privateers
against Genoese shipping in the western Mediterranean, and
vice versa. The Sardinian and Genoese conflicts distracted
Alfonso from plans for a Europe-wide crusade against the
Muslim kingdom of Granada; Spanish Muslim raiding parties
penetrated without much difficulty into the southern lands
of the kingdom of Valencia (1331). Thus Alfonso began to
learn the lesson that overseas adventures and the internal
affairs of the Iberian peninsula were difficult to manage at
the same time. Like his father, James, he was obsessive about
the monitoring of his health, though perhaps with good
reason: the king died at the age of twenty-seven, conceivably
laid low by disease picked up in his Sardinian campaign.THE GOLDEN AGE OF CATALAN TRADE
The fortunes of Catalan trade in the early fourteenth cen-
tury can be measured by looking at the extensive evidence
that survives from Majorca. Majorca City (Ciutat de Mallorca),
a boom town of the late thirteenth century, was dangerously
isolated during the War of the Vespers, for the quarrel be-
tween the king of Aragon and the king of Majorca denied
the Majorcans free access to the Catalan coast. In 1284, a
year from which there survives a collection of licences issued
to sailors wishing to leave Majorca, the Majorcans were trad-
ing intensively along the coast of what is now Algeria, mainly
in small or medium size vessels; larger boats linked Majorca
to Tunis, Genoa and Seville; all the evidence indicates that it
was in north Africa that the Catalan merchants of Majorca,
including a sizeable Jewish population, made their profits.
Majorca City contained up to one half of the population of
the island of Majorca, so that dependence on outside supplies
of grain and other necessities was always heavy: attempts by
James II of Majorca to stimulate local agricultural production
by the foundation or extension of small rural 'agro-towns'
were reasonably successful, but Majorca became known as a
centre for the production of rather specialised foodstuffs such