Italian Domination of Commerce in Essay

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Wrote one later historian: "Historians who wax eloquent and indignant -- with considerable reason -- about the sack of Constantinople... rarely if ever mention the massacre of the Westerners in Constantinople in 1182 ... A nightmarish massacre of thousands…the slaughterers spared neither women nor children, neither old nor sick, neither priest nor monk. Cardinal John, the Pope's representative, was beheaded and his head was dragged through the streets at the tail of a dog; children were cut out of their mother's wombs; bodies of dead Westerners were exhumed and abused; some 4,000 who escaped death were sold into slavery to the Turks" (Carroll 1992, p. 131).

The policies that gave rise to such hatred were the result of Imperial policies and the imprudent regulation of duties, not simply religious prejudice: "Almost equally disastrous was the fact that the powerful Italian maritime republics were able to coerce the Emperor into granting their merchants exemption from import and export duties in all his harbors. Without destroying his revenue he could not grant similar privileges to his own merchants. The effect of these transactions upon Greek commerce and industry was obviously calamitous. The great element of monopoly which had been the fountain of Byzantine wealth in the tenth century, and which had been threatened in the eleventh, was nearly dried up in the twelfth.

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For almost the first time in several centuries … [the people of Constantinople] had to struggle with the chronic problem of a falling revenue and a growing deficit" (Davis, 2007, p. 86). During the 10th century, a number of fairs and bazaars, such as St. Demetrius' Fair, housed a wide array of goods and profited the Greek and other residents. But because of Italian dominance of the seas, these fairs and the ability of the city's Greek inhabitants to profit from them was eclipsed.

The Byzantines retook Constantinople in 1261, but the restored empire still remained dependant upon foreign imports. However, Genoese and Venetian traders were charged far higher duties for the privilege of trading in Constantinople, and the city afterwards maintained a strong merchant marine to force foreign ships to pay a duty to the state (Miller et al. 1978, pp. 149-150). Afterwards, the trade and the sale and production of goods was heavily regulated by the state, to ensure that a reoccurrence of the imbalanced power relation between Italian traders and Constantinople's political leaders did not flower into anger and disenfranchise the native populace.

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