Mediterranean Sea

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Mediterranean Sea

From ancient times the Mediterranean Sea served as a great highway, linking the lands around its shores. It played an important role in the Roman Empire, in the rise of Italy's maritime* cities, and in the expansion of the Islamic world across northern Africa to Spain. In the centuries before the Renaissance, Venice and Genoa regarded the Mediterranean as their own special province to use and to fight over.

Economic Role of the Mediterranean. The economic importance of the Mediterranean Sea in the late Middle Ages was reflected in the prosperity of the northern Italian cities that controlled the sea. Venice served as the hub of European commerce throughout the 1400s. The most profitable part of its trade was in spices obtained from ports in Egypt and along the eastern Mediterranean coast. Venice also imported Egyptian cotton, Greek wine, North African grain, and other goods from around the Mediterranean in exchange for cash or cloth, usually from Germany.

Venice's maritime and commercial rival, Genoa, dealt in spices as well. However, Genoa was better known for its trade in silks, which came from China by way of ports on the Black Sea. Genoa also controlled the trade in alum, a mineral salt from the eastern Mediterranean that was used in the manufacture of cloth. The city exported alum to England and Flanders* in exchange for wool. From the mid-1400s Genoa's trade in the eastern Mediterranean was threatened by the rising power of the Ottoman Turks*. As a result, Genoa focused its commercial activity on the western part of the sea.

Ottoman Rise. The Ottoman Turks emerged as a major force in the Mediterranean during the 1400s. In 1453 they conquered the Byzantine* capital of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul). With control over Constantinople's harbor and shipbuilding industry, the Turks had the means to become a major naval power. Against them stood Christian Europe. Their main rivals in the eastern Mediterranean Sea were the Venetians, who had established a string of coastal and island forts to contain the Ottoman threat. The Turks broke this chain in 1480, landing an invasion force in Italy. Although they abandoned the invasion on the death of their leader, Mehmed II, they maintained the pressure on the Venetian bases in the eastern Mediterranean.

By the mid-1500s the Turkish fleet greatly outnumbered that of Venice and its allies. However, the Ottomans knew that the key to maritime domination was the possession of bases in key locations. They captured Egypt in 1517, the Greek island of Rhodes in 1522, and the North African port of Tripoli in 1551, extending their control of Mediterranean lands from Dalmatia to Morocco.

In 1570 an Ottoman attack on Cyprus, an island controlled by Venice, led to a naval alliance between Spain, Genoa, Venice, and the papacy*. The following year, the Christian fleet soundly defeated the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto. Although the Turks built a new fleet and occupied Cyprus, they no longer presented a major threat to Europeans. However, for the next century the Mediterranean saw constant piracy, raiding, and naval skirmishes between Europeans and Turks.

By the end of the 1500s, Europe's economy had shifted away from the Mediterranean to the manufacturing and banking centers of England and central and northern Europe. However, for the two centuries of the Renaissance the Mediterranean Sea had served as the major route between the Western and Eastern worlds, the place where Christians and Muslims met in trade and in war.

* maritime: relating to the sea or shipping
* Flanders: region along the coasts of present-day Belgium, France, and the Netherlands
* Ottoman Turks: Turkish followers of Islam who founded the Ottoman Empire in the 1300s; the empire eventually included large areas of eastern Europe, the Middle East, and northern Africa
* Byzantine: referring to the Eastern Christian Empire based in Constantinople (a.d. 476–1453)