The politics of violence and trade: Denia and Pisa in the eleventh century

Abstract

In the eleventh century, as ports and cities expanded their involvement in the Mediterranean, they came into contact and conflict with one another; both were integral parts of the Mediterranean renewal after the relative decline of the early Middle Ages. Of these cities, relations between Pisa and Denia were perhaps the most exemplary of the extremes possible within the new Mediterranean. On the surface, theirs would seem to be merely a series of clashes based on religious friction, jih ad, or territorial ambitions, as shown by their conflict over Sardinia. However, when viewed together with diplomatic and commercial relations, it becomes apparent that violence was only a part of the Mediterranean dynamic, and that where conflict did exist it was along new lines. Economic ambitions were becoming the motivating factor, and trade routes and commerce were the new stakes in the medieval Mediterranean.In the eleventh century, as ports and cities expanded their involvement in the Mediterranean, they came into contact and conflict with one another; both were integral parts of the Mediterranean renewal after the relative decline of the early Middle Ages. Indeed, contact and conflict often simultaneously characterized relations between emerging powers, and brisk trade, direct and indirect, was concomitant with armed clashes over territory and sea routes. Nowhere, perhaps, were these more intense than in the relations between Christian and Muslim powers in the