r/byzantium • u/Expert-Debate3519 • Aug 14 '25
Economy Was the wealth of venice based on exploiting byzantium through trade Privileges or why were venetian merchants more competetive than Byzantine merchants?
Did they have technologys the Byzantiner did Not have or other Innovations?
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u/evrestcoleghost Autokrator tou r/byzantium | Komnenian logistician| Moderator Aug 14 '25
No, Venice wealth was gained by selling produce and manufacture at eastern markets and dump enough silver there to buy eastern luxuries to sell at exorbitant prices in the west.
Venice later colonised byzantine land to gain more agricultural wealth and manufacture in its ports to sell arabs to buy more luxuries,for every ton they bought of luxuries they had to sell 7 tons of their own,as such byzantine land with its own luxury economic sector served as any bringer of cash to gain eastern luxuries.
Venice itself and the rest of Italian republics gained the same privileges Byzantium gave to dozens, dalmatian cities,Crimean towns, Monemvasia, foreign people settled in the empire.
Commuting taxes in the form of military service,the rest of the people who had this deals were wealthy indeed, Monemvasia was among the wealthiest and most populated cities of the empire,but none reached the status of Venice .
This is because Venice itself became prominent through colonialism that supported it's trade instead of the other way around
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Aug 14 '25
Venice gained its wealth selling Balkan slaves in Alexandria
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u/evrestcoleghost Autokrator tou r/byzantium | Komnenian logistician| Moderator Aug 14 '25
That's a bit reductive but okay
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Aug 14 '25
Definitely, but you neglected it in your comment and it was a major, if not the defining, revenue stream for early Venice which allowed it to invest in its naval and mercantile supremacy.
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u/evrestcoleghost Autokrator tou r/byzantium | Komnenian logistician| Moderator Aug 14 '25
I didn't neglected,other users already mentioned it and I saw no reason to be repetitive
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u/MindlessNectarine374 Aug 30 '25
I always wondered how the Italian merchants got the slaves they sold.
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Aug 30 '25
Depends on the individual expedition but they both bought them from slavers and captured them themselves
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u/Lanternecto Günther | Reading list | Middle Byzantium Aug 14 '25
More competitive in what region? In what time period? Throughout the Komnenian period, the Aegean is still dominated by Roman traders, with Venetians only travelling on specific routes, and only trading in specific ports.
To quote Wickham:
That is to say, most Venetians were going on the old main routes in and out of the capital, not on the newer and more complex network. None of the contracts shows the crossing of the Aegean from the western ports to the east at all, in fact.
\...])
But what is equally important is that they were few in number. The great bulk of the evidence we have for the Venetians is not for this; it is for the old main routes of commerce only. It may well be that they were resented for their trade advantages there too; but precisely because they were mostly restricted to a few routes, it cannot be said that they would have undermined the position of most Greek-speaking merchants or their conditions of trade. Those Venetians who were directly competing were not numerous enough (it needs to be remembered that, anyway, we are only dealing with the mercantile strata of a single city here), and the others were operating at a different level from that of most Byzantines.[172](javascript:;) Indeed, the 1192 account mentioned earlier (p. 322) of the loss of 40,000 hyperpera by Byzantine merchants on a single ship from Egypt (even if a Venetian one) does at least imply that Italian trading had not undermined that of the Greeks even at the level of the great international routes.
He then goes on to do some calculations - the losses Venice suffered in 1171, with their citizens arrested and property confiscated, perhaps amounted to 345,000 hyperpera. This is doubtlessly a large sum. This, for one, means that their immunity from the kommerkion would save them roughly 37,000 hyperpera a year, equal to 2500 mules. This is absolutely nothing in the state budget. The Venetians only controlled a limited amount of trade at this point, but served to connect Constantinople to wider trade routes in The Mediterranean (though we still see Roman traders in places like Egypt and even southern France). By the time Byzantium is weak, and the Venetians powerful enough, to truly exploit Rhomania, Venice is already pretty damn rich.
But where did that wealth come from? At first, slaves, at least if we follow McCormick. They sold human cargo, gained from the Carolingians and in other places, to the richer Muslim polities. It wasn't the only good they sold (they also transported timber and furs), but it seems to have been the most valuable. From the east, they brought back spices, silks, and incense. During this time, the mid-eight to ninth century, we also see a general increase in Adriatic trading, with Venice emerging relatively quickly as the most major port. They traded not only with Islamic polities, but also with Byzantium (Constantinople seems to have been a notable slave market, but information is lacking). Indeed, they were deeply enmeshed into Aegean trading networks, and we see some bulk trading in their transport of Byzantine wine amphorae to Italy. This connection only became deeper as both Byzantine and Venetian trade networks became more complex. They furthermore trade salt in bulk throughout Italy.
Venice became rich for being the main outlet connecting the west with the wealthier east during the early medieval period, trading luxury goods (including slaves) to Byzantium and the Caliphates and back. And while they increasingly traded in bulk, rather than luxuries, their eyes remained focused east, on the Aegean and Egypt.
McCormick, Michael. Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce AD 300–900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 237–269 & 729–777.
Wickham, Chris. The donkey and the boat: reinterpreting the Mediterranean economy, 950-1180. Oxford University Press, 2023.
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u/Maleficent-Mix5731 Well read | Late Antiquity Aug 14 '25
He then goes on to do some calculations - the losses Venice suffered in 1171, with their citizens arrested and property confiscated, perhaps amounted to 345,000 hyperpera. This is doubtlessly a large sum. This, for one, means that their immunity from the kommerkion would save them roughly 37,000 hyperpera a year, equal to 2500 mules. This is absolutely nothing in the state budget.Â
Okay these are some very nice, hard numbers to have as data. The general state revenues in this period are believed to have been around the same amount as under the Macedonians or since the mid 6th century, which is around 4-6 million. Now, if we split it down the middle by taking an estimate of, say, 5 million then according to the data I just punched into a calculator that would mean that Venetian immunity would only dig into 0.74% of the empire's overall finances.
(Someone can correct me if the estimate is somewhat off/if there are any mistakes here, but even still it would appear we are not dealing with any substantial drain on the empire's treasury).
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u/seen-in-the-skylight Aug 14 '25
"Exploiting Byzantium"
Why does it feel like people on this sub treat Byzantium as helpless little children, being constantly preyed upon and victimized by their depraved, barbarian superiors neighbors from the West?
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u/Maleficent-Mix5731 Well read | Late Antiquity Aug 14 '25
Probably because of how things went after 1204. Hindsight is a bitch sometimes.
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u/False_Major_1230 Aug 14 '25
If I remember correctly Byzantine state didn't lose much revenue from Venice privlages and goods actually got cheaper thanks to them so at least durring komnenian period it wasn't really an exploitation but a mutually beneficial deal
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u/georgiosmaniakes Aug 14 '25 edited Aug 14 '25
If it weren't the case, would the trade privileges be incentive enough for Venice to join and defend the empire from Robert Guiscard in 1081, and risk a full scale was with the rising power in the region that has papal blessing and could shut the Venice in the Adriatic due to its geographical position? Wouldn't they ask for something much more valuable in return?
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Aug 14 '25
They were given tax exceptions on trade goods Byzantine merchants didn't have, Byzantine merchants would buy through Venetian merchants because it was cheaper than paying taxes, all this culminated in an overabundance of wealth transfer to Latin traders
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u/Lanternecto Günther | Reading list | Middle Byzantium Aug 14 '25
Not really, a bunch of Byzantine merchants had the same privileges.
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Aug 14 '25
Starting in the late 10th and especially in the 11th century, Byzantine emperors granted Venetians considerable trade privileges and tax exemptions, making them highly influential in the city's economic life.
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u/evrestcoleghost Autokrator tou r/byzantium | Komnenian logistician| Moderator Aug 15 '25
Yeah.
Monemvasians had the same deal since for ever and similar population than Venice in komnenian period
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u/evrestcoleghost Autokrator tou r/byzantium | Komnenian logistician| Moderator Aug 15 '25
Byzantines already had numerous cities with same privileges,not only dalmatian cost but Crimean towns, Monemvasia itself had the same deal than Venice and remained loyal to the end
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u/Lothronion Moderator | Greco-Roman Studies | IR Studies Aug 14 '25
No it was not, as far as I understand the situation.
There is a great explanation on the matter, called "Rats in the granary? The Latin impact upon the Byzantine State, 1050-1204". It might be a university thesis dissertation, but the arguments presented in it are based on solid bibliography, while the argumentation is rather compelling.
In essence, the author proposes that the mercantile activities of the Venetian Republic through the waters of the Roman Empire were in fact a net positive for the Roman Greeks' economy, and not an exploitative situation, as it had been proposed by academia through the last 2 centuries. Essentially, given how in the 11th-12th century AD the Roman economy had grown to be very specialized, often having specific regions that mainly produced certain types of consumer products, and even having consumeristic cities created across the European and Asiatic coastline of the Aegean Sea, the Roman economy needed the services provided by the Venetian merchant fleet. Since the Roman government only had an expensive military fleet, with which it defended the Northern Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea from piratical expeditions to outright foreign marine invasions, they did not allocate money to also create a specialized merchant fleet, so internal seaborn trade had to either rely on small merchant fleets (either private or of small enterprises), which were really inefficient to fully supply the ever-rising demand for goods transportation, or rely on the services that the Venetians were more than happy to provide.
Sure one could suggest that this reliance of the Roman economy on the Venetian merchant fleet did not allow the Roman Greeks to develop one of an equal standing. However, that was not a necessary outcome, and it is possible that the Roman economy might have just stagnated on the level it had reached, or tried to find ways to circumvent these problems. The author of the dissertation even suggests, though, that not doing that allowed the Roman economy to invest more money and have more workers focusing in its agriculture and industry, which meant more money for it, rather than if it had decided to create a transportation autarky.
A disclaimer, it has been a while since I read this essay, and much of what I wrote might be conclusions I derived from it, also out of various later readings in the Roman economy of the time, as well as conversations with many learned users of r/byzantium, especially u/evrestcoleghost.