The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (61 page)

Stray remarks in the Chinese annals suggest that the vessels employed on the Korean campaigns were not terribly large, either. The first involved nine hundred ships and forty thousand troops, an average of forty-four people per vessel. Even accounting for a number of these vessels being intended exclusively for carrying grain and other supplies, the largest ships probably had a total complement of no more than two hundred people, including crew. At the Geum River in 663, the Japanese lost 400 ships to a Chinese fleet of only 170. Whether this can be attributed to a difference in size between individual units, or to the Chinese securing a tactical advantage in the confined waters, is impossible to say. According to the Japanese chronicle, “
The Japanese warships which first arrived engaged the Tang fleet, but had not the advantage, and therefore retired. Great Tang stood on its guard in strict order of battle.” Such deliberation in deciding when and how to deploy their forces suggests that commanders on both sides had at least some experience of fleet engagements, but how such battles were fought remains unknown.

Because the high civilization of China was the cultural cynosure of all Northeast Asia, the Yellow Sea figures prominently in the written accounts of trade and warfare from the earliest times. The Sea of Japan (in Korean, Tonghae, or Eastern Sea) played a far less obvious role in the relations between
the underdeveloped east coast of Korea, western Japan, and the territory of the Jurchen. Apart from those on either side of the
Korea Strait, the principal ports of Korea and Japan all had a southerly orientation, and there were no major ports on the eastern shore of the Korean Peninsula, or the western side of Honshu. Yet even the Jurchen in the vicinity of northeast Korea and modern
Vladivostok had seafaring experience, and in 1019
fifty Jurchen ships raided along the east coast of Korea, the islands of Ise and
Tsushima, and the Japanese port at
Hakata Bay on
Kyushu. Yet the Jurchen never fully exploited this maritime capability and the focus of their southward expansion was always on the more direct overland routes toward
northern China.

China’s embrace of sea trade under the Northern Song was due to a combination of misfortune and opportunity. The collapse of its western frontier forced the emperor and many of his subjects to relocate to the east, closer to the center of the empire’s elaborate canal system and to the seaports upon whose business the treasury increasingly relied for revenues. Through all these vicissitudes, the
Chinese economy continued to grow, however. Imports once considered exotic and rare came to be seen as commodities, while mass-produced ceramics and other goods fed a growing export market that spanned the Monsoon Seas. At the same time that China’s sea trade was expanding, that of the Korean kingdoms was in decline, opening the way for Chinese merchants to dominate the traffic of Northeast Asia. China’s receptivity to trade had profound consequences for the states of Southeast Asia, not just in neighboring Vietnam, which achieved its independence from China, but also more southerly realms. From
Champa to
Srivijaya and Java, new, increasingly centralized states developed their own institutions to profit from and maintain trade. In the coming centuries, their prosperity would attract attention not only from their traditional trading partners in
China and the Indian Ocean, but also from the Mediterranean world to the west.

The establishment of the
Fatimid Caliphate
in Egypt in the tenth century signaled the start of a major realignment of Mediterranean and European commerce. The Red Sea became the destination of choice for Indian Ocean trade, which had spillover effects across the
Levant. Yet the rise of the only major Muslim state with maritime roots also led to a decline of Muslim fortunes in the central Mediterranean. The Fatimids possessed considerable naval experience, but they established their new capital up the Nile at Cairo and political realities directed their energies to threats from Southwest Asia, so that by the start of the Crusades at the end of the eleventh century they had lost their initiative on the Mediterranean. Political and religious factionalism likewise rendered the North African emirates incapable of effectively resisting the incipient commercial and military strength of Genoa,
Pisa, Amalfi, and Venice. The Italian city-states hardly presented a united front, but a host of religious, political, economic, and commercial changes in Latin (Catholic) Europe facilitated their takeover of Muslim-dominated trade routes and territories.

The wealth of the
Byzantine Empire, the caliphates, and Levantine ports continued to attract western traders and rulers, but the expansion of east–west trade across the Mediterranean was especially beneficial to merchants from western and northwest Europe and contributed incidentally to the establishment of wholly distinct and vibrant trading regimes on the Baltic and North Seas. And as the volume and value of trade between south and north grew, so did the impetus for mastering the Atlantic sea-lanes between the Mediterranean and northwest Europe. The consequent merging of northern and southern Europe’s distinct approaches to shipbuilding and navigation resulted
in the development of many of the tools European sailors would employ to illuminate the sea of darkness and discover for themselves new worlds.

The rise of the
Italian port cities and the ascendancy of the merchant class to a place of privilege and authority are hallmarks of the earliest stages of Europe’s medieval
commercial revolution. In no Mediterranean society since
Phoenicia and Carthage did merchants enjoy such respect or influence as they did in the great emporia of Venice on the Adriatic, Genoa on the Ligurian, and Pisa and Amalfi on the
Tyrrhenian Sea. Though few in number, the Venetians and Genoese extended their commercial and political influence throughout the Mediterranean, to the Black Sea, and, most influentially, to northern Europe, which they first reached via Alpine routes to the fairs of
Champagne and the centers of German trade, and after the thirteenth century by sea through the Strait of Gibraltar to Flanders and England.

Situated in the midst of an extensive
lagoon that runs about fifty kilometers from the Po estuary in the south to the mouth of the Piave River in the north and with an average width of about eleven kilometers between the
lidi
and the mainland, the islands of Venice were home to an amphibious people who congregated in
island parishes characteristically dominated by a church overlooking a wharf or boatyard. The Venetians depended on wheat purchased in the Italian interior since they could grow none themselves, and Venetian
barges routinely ascended the Po the more than three hundred kilometers to
Pavia—capital of the
kingdom of Italy—and
Milan as early as the sixth century. It was in the
river trades that the Venetians honed the commercial, martial, and diplomatic skills that served them in their expansion down the Adriatic and into the eastern Mediterranean. Aghlabid raids rendered the Adriatic an anarchic sea in the tenth century, but the Venetians grew increasingly assertive. In the year 1000,
Pietro II Orseolo defeated Dalmatian pirates in a series of battles that established Venice’s primacy in the northern Adriatic. Diplomatically, Orseolo secured the backing of both the
Byzantines and what would be known as the Holy Roman Empire by arranging marriages between Venetians and the ruling families of each. In later centuries, Orseolo’s rule came to be seen as the commencement of the Most Serene Republic’s rise, and the anniversary of his departure on the Dalmatian campaign was celebrated in an ever more elaborate ceremony by which Venice was spiritually joined to the Adriatic. The
sposalizio
(“wedding”) took place annually on Ascension Day when the
doge, his retainers, members of the clergy, and ambassadors to Venice put
out in the splendid state barge
Bucintoro
. Declaring “
We wed thee, Adriatic, as a sign of our true and perpetual dominion,” the doge dropped into the sea a gold ring blessed by the Patriarch of Grado. In this act,
Venice proclaimed its mastery over the sea and affirmed its exclusive relationship against other prospective suitors.

Naval power in the Italian maritime cities evolved in completely different ways from that of the Byzantine Empire and the caliphates. Lacking a vast territory, Venice’s fleet was concentrated in one place, and when the city did acquire colonies, these were astride shipping lanes with which the Venetians were already intimately familiar; thus the exercise of naval power evolved organically from merchants’ priorities. The organization of Venice’s naval forces likewise reflected the city’s commercial foundations. Merchants sailed in armed ships as a matter of course—the difference between “armed” and “unarmed” vessels was usually determined by the size of the crew—and regulations specifying the type and quantity of weapons carried by both crew and merchants merely codified standing practice. Ships on long voyages routinely
sailed together for safety, but in 1308 the Signoria required that ships bound for
Cyprus and
Cilician Armenia or for the Black Sea port of
Tana sail in convoy.

The majority of ships in Venice were privately built and owned, although the government regulated their size and rig so that in the event of war it would have access to the sorts of vessels it needed. Shipbuilders were originally concentrated on the Rialto, but by the twelfth century they had moved to the area of the
Arsenale, which combined the functions of government shipyard, chandlery, and weapons depot. In wartime, the state purchased or hired ships from private owners, and if additional vessels were needed, these could be ordered from private yards or shipwrights could be seconded to the Arsenale. By the 1200s, Venice had the industrial capacity to provide the Fourth Crusade with
about three hundred ships including
horse transports, round ships, and fifty galleys. A century later, Dante drew on his memory of the government shipyard to describe the eighth circle of hell where,

In anticipation of wartime emergencies,
the state required that all able-bodied men between the ages of twenty and sixty be registered in their home parish. All eligible parishioners were divided into groups of a dozen, one of whom, chosen by lot, joined a ship while the others contributed one lira per month toward his maintenance. (In extraordinary circumstances, the number drafted was much higher.) The state provided five lira per month per sailor, who could get out of service by paying the government six lira for someone to go in his stead.

Around the same time that Venice was asserting its dominion of the Adriatic, and half a century before
William the Conqueror invaded England, Norman knights began appearing in
Italy where they hired themselves out to one or another rival Christian noble. The most infamous of these mercenaries was
Robert Hauteville, called Guiscard (“cunning”). In 1059, the
pope named him duke of
Apulia,
Calabria, and Sicily, provided he could wrest these territories from Byzantine and Kalbid control. Two years later, he and his brother Roger defeated a Byzantine army sent to enforce
Constantinople’s claim to Apulia and Calabria. When the port of Reggio fell, the way was open for the Hautevilles’ invasion of Sicily. In 1060, the
Normans landed virtually unopposed and made an alliance of convenience with one of several rival emirs.
Palermo fell in 1072 followed shortly by the rest of Sicily, thus ending 250 years of Muslim rule on the island. The year before capturing Palermo, Guiscard seized the Adriatic port of Bari, the last Byzantine stronghold in Italy. A decade later, he crossed to
Dyrrachium with about 150 ships intending to march on Constantinople, but he postponed his plan when the pope enlisted his help against the Holy Roman Empire. The Byzantines recouped their losses with Venetian help, and
in 1085 Guiscard crossed the Adriatic a second time, but his sudden death eliminated the Norman threat to the Byzantines, and Emperor
Alexius I was able to turn his attention to the threat posed by the
Seljuq Turks.

Even though Norman control of the
Strait of Otranto posed a direct threat to Venetian interests, Alexius could only enlist Venetian support “
with promises and bribes.” Laid out in a
chrysobull (imperial decree) in 1082, these included acknowledging the Venetian
doge and his successors as lords of Venice, Dalmatia, and
Croatia, and granting them additional commercial advantages at the empire’s principal ports as far east as
Antioch. This was the Byzantines’ first major concession to Venice as a commercial carrier and a significant step in the Venetians’ evolution from regional purveyors of salt, fish, and grain to a major Mediterranean power. Alexius has been criticized for selling out the empire, but the long years of warfare had forced the Byzantines to extreme measures and his immediate aim was to arrest the economy’s downward spiral. In this he seems to have been successful.

In addition to opening Byzantine ports to Venetian traders, the chrysobull of 1082 set aside a quarter for them in Constantinople,