Imperial Ambition in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Genoese Merchants and the Spanish Crown by Céline Dauverd (review)

This work analyses the relations between the Spanish monarchy and the Genoese mercantile class between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, during the apogee of both Spain and Genoa. These powers led an imperialist drive, which was of an economic nature in the Genoese case and political or “dynastic,” in the author’s definition, in the Spanish one, which, under the common sign of Christianity, determined their joint actions against the Islamic Mediterranean. The relationship of Spain and Genoa is defined as symbiotic, that is, marked by a mutual interdependence, a nearly biological confluence of interest, in which the survival and prosperity of each depended to a large extent on the actions of the other one. Among the ties that united them, the financial one was of special importance, especially after Genoa began developing its financial activities after it lost access to the eastern markets with the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (in 1453). In time, the Genoese became the financial lifeline of the Spanish Crown. The new Genoese economic policy was based on the commercial prosperity offered by the southern Italian markets, controlled economically by the Genoese and politically by the Spanish; hence, the author’s choice of this region, especially Naples, as her observatory for the relationship between Genoa and Spain. Genoa possessed important mercantile interests in the area, and explicitly requested the support and protection of the Spanish Crown in exchange for financial support, without which the Spanish could not have dealt with all the fronts opened in the course of their imperial policy in Europe, and without which the profitability of the American enterprise was not guaranteed. This idea effectively conveys the notion of symbiosis stressed in the book.

The book is divided into eight chapters, and the author unfolds her argument through a well-articulated and easy-to-follow narrative thesis. It begins with a contextualization of the political situation in the western Mediterranean during the period under study. The second part addresses the economic context within which Genoa developed its mercantile activity in southern Italy, examining the financial growth that made it a leading economic and social power during the period of its alliance with the Spanish Crown, which, in turn, exercised its political domination over the region. The work ends with an analysis of the social projection of this position of leadership and of the role played by the Genoese in the local public religious manifestations.

Chapter 1 reconstructs the sequence of alliances and confrontations that led to the development of the “symbiotic” state of Genoese and Spanish in their drive toward supremacy. This is done by recalling Pistarino and Heers’s classic schema of the reorientation of Genoa toward the west. The process is, however, dated to a later date than usual, the late fifteenth century, with the death of the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II and the end of the privileges enjoyed by the Genoese in eastern markets. Genoa was to turn its commercial interests to the west, beginning its collaboration with the Spanish Crown and also its increasingly open struggle with France, which became progressively closer to the Turks who, in turn, began their corsair campaign in the West Mediterranean.

The diversification of Genoa’s commercial strategy in southern Italy, including cereal exports, a traditional activity for the Genoese, who had been practicing it since the twelfth century, and the production and commercialization of silk, was the secret behind its success. Diver-sification provided insurance against ruin and laid the foundations of a financial strength that eased the way of the Genoese into banking. This justifies the attention paid by the book to the organization of the silk trade, which is the topic of Chapter 3. In a brief synthesis based on the work of other authors, the chapter explains that the Genoese undertook three roles in...