THE \'I>'ESTERI'\ MEDITERR,\NEAI'\ KINGDOMS 1~00-1.~00generated by plague from 1347 onwards. Thus Minorca, long
a pastoral backwater, became a major wool exporter by 1400,
supplying the famous Tuscan merchant Francesco Datini,
the 'merchant of Prato', with large amounts of wool; and
Majorcan cloths made from Minorcan and other wools were
in sound demand. It was only with the civil war of 1462-72
that a sharp decline set in, as Barcelona was incapacitated;
even so, recent studies suggest that the merchants bounced
back once the war was over.^41 Barcelona did not collapse;
maybe it did not even decline; but it experienced lengthy
crises and, during the civil war, severe recession.
The question of the 'decline' of Catalonia can be addressed
from another angle. It is true that the once frequent sailings
of Catalan and Majorcan ships to Flanders and England
came to an effective end by the mid-fifteenth century. The
other side of the coin is the increasing interest of Catalan
cloth makers in English wool, brought in mainly on Italian
ships. This new supply did much to stimulate the city's
economy in the mid-fifteenth century. While the Italians
and other foreign merchants now dominated the long-
distance sailings into the Atlantic, the ships that passed
through Aragonese waters were now visiting a more con-
veniently situated port than Barcelona: Valencia. Here there
was a veritable economic boom in the fifteenth century.^4 ~
In 1483 it may have had four times the population of
Barcelona, though this is clearly an extreme contrast taken
from Barcelona's worst years. Valencia was itself a source of
rice, dried fruits and other luxuries typical of the Islamic
world, many of which were less easily accessible elsewhere
than they had been before because of the Turkish advances
in the eastern Mediterranean. Their availability in Spain
brought Flemish, German, Milanese, Venetian and other
merchants to Valencia. n Another attraction was the magnifi-
cent 'Hispano-Moresque' pottery made to order in the area
around Valencia for the nobility of Europe. The excellent
- M. Pelaez, Catalunya desprls de fa i!;Uerra civil del segle XV (Barcelona,
1981). - ]. Guiral-Hadziiossif, ValPnce, jmrt mPditennneen au XVe sihle (14 J0-
1525) (Paris, 1986); A. Furi6 (ed.), Vafi'nria, un merrat medieval (Val-
encia, 1985). - P. Mainoni, Mercanti Iombardi fra Barcellona e Valenza nel basso medioevo
(Milan, 1983), partially reprinted in Furi6, Valimcia, pp. 81-156.