THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN KINGDOMS 1200-1500first place the Canaries, which were the target of a flotilla
sent out from Majorca in 1342, in the hope of claiming these
remote islands for King James IIC^1 "
There were, of course, some distinctive features that
marked out the trade of M~jorca from that of the rest of
the Catalan world, notably Barcelona with its flourishing
textile industry. M~jorca was much more open to Italian
traders than was Barcelona, and had to be so if it was to
function as an entrepot between Italy, southern France, Spain
and north Mrica. The lesson of attempts to tax Barcelonan
merchants coming into Majorcan ports, between about 1299
and 1311, was that Majorca's success really depended on
the maintenance of open supply lines; when the Catalans
threatened to boycott Majorca if the charges were not lifted,
the king of M~orca had before long to give way. But in many
respects Majorca can be taken as a prime example of the
rapid and effective intrusion of Catalan sea-power and trad-
ing capital into the western Mediterranean, a sea that had
since the end of the eleventh century been dominated by
older naval powers: by Genoa, still a menace to Catalans and
Majorcans when it chose to pick a quarrel (as it did over the
invasion of Sardinia in 1323), and by Pi sa, already past its
peak by the early fourteenth century. In part the answer was
that along the trade routes many animosities were shoved to
one side, and Genoese, Pisans, Florentines, Catalans and
others invested side by side in the massively profitable trade
linking Mediterranean Europe to the Muslim world and to
the Atlantic Ocean.
The ending of the War of the Vespers liberated trade
across the western Mediterranean, restoring links between
Sicily and Barcelona, and reducing greatly the danger from
the privateers who prowled the seas under licence from the
warring Mediterranean kings. The open question remained
how long the Angevins of Naples would tolerate the survival
of an independent island kingdom of Sicily.:^16
- Fernandez-Armesto, BeforP Columbus, pp. 156-9.
- For the break in trade between Sicily and Barcelona, see D. Abulafia,
'Catalan merchants and the western Mediterranean, 1236-1300: stud-
ies in the notarial acts of Barcelona and Sicily', Viator: medieval and
Renaissance Studies, 16 ( 1985), pp. 232-3.