Negotiating Trade: Merchant Manuals and Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Medieval Mediterranean
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v30i1.407Keywords:
Religion, Study abroad, Education abroad, Intercultural, Cross-confessional material, Arab-Turkic regionsAbstract
This essay explores Italian mercantile perceptions of the non-western Mediterranean world during the late Middle Ages. In particular, it analyzes the corpus of merchant manuals known as pratiche della mercatura and argues that the intercultural and cross-confessional material included in these handbooks were vital components that helped facilitate trade across ethno-religious frontiers in the Arab-Turkic regions. This paper opens with an examination of the “traditional” manual genre, with particular emphasis on Francesco Pegolotti’s Libro di divisamenti di paesi (c. 1310-40). Pegolotti and other pratiche compilers proffered practical counsel on linguistic exchange, local folklore and customs, and resourceful intermediaries (dragomans) that could accommodate cultural assimilation for the trader abroad. The remainder of the essay builds on the fruitful historiographical shifts of recent years and identifies two additional manuals: Leonardo Frescobaldi’s Viaggio in Egitto(c. 1390) and Goro Dati’s Sfera(c. 1435). These texts, cascaded to a wide merchant audience, include striking language on the common theological underpinnings of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. These two authors, and specifically Dati, also highlight the complex character of the Italian merchant and reveal that economic self-interest helped construct common ground across major barriers of faith in the medieval Mediterranean.
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References
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Bec, Christian. Les Marchands Écrivains: Affaires et Humanisme à Florence, 1375-1434. Paris: Mouton, 1967. Print.
Bertolini, Lucia. “Censimento dei manoscritti della Sfera del Dati: i manoscritti della Biblioteca Laurenzia.” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa III (1982): 665-705. Print.
Braudel, Fernand. La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II. Paris: A. Colin, 1966. Print.
Catlos, Brian. Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c. 1050-1614. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Print.
Çelebi, Evliya. Narratives of Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, in the Seventeenth Century. Trans. Joseph von Hammer. Vol. 2. London: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1834. Print.
Constable, Olivia. Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging, Trade, and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Print.
Cotrugli, Benedetto. Il libro dell’arte di mercatura. Ed. Ugo Tucci. Venice: Arsenale, 1990. Print.
Dash, Mike. “Blonde cargoes: Finnish children in the slave markets of medieval Crimea.” A Blast from the Past Jan. 2015. Web. 5 June 2016.
Dati, Goro. Il libro segreto. Ed. Carlo Gargiolli. 1869. Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingue, 1968. Print.
“---. La sfera: libri quattro in ottava rima: scritti nel secolo XIV da F. Leonardo di Stagio Dati. Eds. G.C. Galetti, E. Narducci. Milan: G. Daelli, 1865.”
Durrell, Lawrence. Balthazar. New York: Dutton, 1961. Print.
Epstein, Steven. Purity Lost: Transgressing Boundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1000-1400. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Print.
Finch, Roger. “Christianity among the Cumans.” Surugadai University Studies 35 (2008): 75-96. Print.
Fiorina, Carly. “Town Hall Meeting.” Windham, NH. 4 Oct. 2015. Speech.
Frescobaldi, Leonardo. Visit to the Holy Places of Egypt, Sinai, Palestine, and Syria in 1384. Ed. and trans. Theophilus Bellorini and Eugene Hoade. Jerusalem: Franciscan Press, 1948. Print.
Grendler, Paul. Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1989. Print.
Horden, Peregrine, and Nicholas Purcell. The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Print.
Jacoby, David. Review of Purity Lost by Steven Epstein. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. American Historical Review October 2008: 1213. Print.
Lopez, Robert. “Stars and Spices: The Earliest Italian Manual of Commercial Practice.” Economy, Society, and Government in Medieval Italy: Essays in Memory of Robert L. Reynolds. Eds. David Herlihy, Robert Lopez, Vsevolod Slessarev. Kent: Kent State University Press, 1969. 35-42. Print.
Lopez, Robert, and Irving Raymond. Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961. Print.
Mallette, Karla. “Lingua Franca.” A Companion to Mediterranean History. Eds. Peregrine Horden, Sharon Kinoshita. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. 79-90. Print.
Ortega, Stephen. Negotiating Transcultural Relations in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Ottoman-Venetian Encounters. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Print.
Pegolotti, Francesco. La pratica della mercatura. Ed. Allan Evans. Cambridge: The Medieval Academy of America, 1936. Print.
Polo, Marco. Le devisement du monde. Ed. Philippe Ménard. 6 vols. Geneva: Droz, 2001-2009. Print.
Rothman, E. Natalie. Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011. Print.
Segatto, Filiberto. “Un’immagine quattrocentesca del mondo: la Sfera del Dati.” Accademia nazionale dei Lincei: Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologische. 27 (1983): 147-81. Print.
Spufford, Peter. “Late Medieval Merchants’ Notebooks: A Project; Their Potential for the History of Banking.” Kaufmannsbücher und Handelspraktiken vom Spätmittelalter bis zum beginnenden 20. Jahrhundert. Eds. M. A. Denzel, J. C. Hocquet, H. Witthöft. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2002. 47-62. Print.
Stanley, Joseph. “From Medieval Corporatism to Civic Humanism: Merchant and Guild Cultural in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Florence.” Diss. SUNY Binghamton, 2011. Print.
Tietze, Andreas. The Koman Riddles and Turkic Folklore. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Print.
Valérian, Dominique. “The Medieval Mediterranean.” A Companion to Mediterranean History. Eds. Peregrine Horden, Sharon Kinoshita. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. 79-90. Print.
Ventura, Gian Francesco Pagnini della, ed. Della decimal e di varie alter gravezze imposte dal comune di Firenze: della moneta e della mercatura de’ Fiorentini fino al secolo XVI. Vol. 3. 1755-1756. Bologna: Forni, 1967. Print.
Witthöft, Harald. “Sizilische Tari – italienische libbra – nordwesteuropäische Mark. Pegolottis ‘Pratica della Mercatura’ (1310-1340) in neueren Forschungen.” Hochfinanz – Wirtschaftsräume – Innovationen. Festschrift für Wolfgang von Stromer. Eds. Uwe Bestmann, Franz Irsigler, Jürgen Schneider. Trier: Auenthal, 1987. 421-468. Print.
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Published
2018-01-31
How to Cite
Stanley, J. F. (2018). Negotiating Trade: Merchant Manuals and Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Medieval Mediterranean. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 30(1), 102–112. https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v30i1.407
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