Italian Renaissance Diplomacy and Commerce with Western Mediterranean Islam: Venice, Florence and the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada in the Fifteenth Century

Abstract

The importance of the position of Italian mercantile republics in the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada (1232-1492) during the early Renaissance is widely known. Genoa, Venice and Florence played a decisive role in facilitating the external commerce of the last Muslim state in the Iberian Peninsula, helping Granada to survive in a complex and rapidly changing geopolitical context, with an increasingly strong Crown of Castile pressing the Sultanate on the Iberian Peninsula, and a divided and turbulent Islamic world in the Western Mediterranean, as a long-established historiographical tradition has shown. Scholars have mainly devoted their attention to the relationship of Granada with Genoa, which is understandable if we remember that the Superba had a privileged position in the Nasrid Sultanate. the Genoese were not the only ones who took the opportunity to trade in Nasrid lands. Without minimising the significance of Genoese involvement in developing the region’s commercial potential, other issues to be addressed include the activity of perhaps less visible but far from insignificant merchant communities, including the Venetians and Florentines. Their activities in the Nasrid kingdom were important in their own right, and it certainly complicates a vision defined perhaps too much by Genoese domination until quite recently. To consider the relations between Venice and Florence, on the one hand, and the Sultanate of Granada on the other, enhances our understanding of the role Renaissance Italian states played within the heterogeneous structures of Western Mediterranean Islam. This enhanced narrative may be constructed on the complementary pillars of diplomacy and commerce. Therefore, this essay will study the diplomatic and commercial strategies followed by Renaissance Venice and Florence in Granada, comparing them with their approach to other Western Mediterranean Muslim states. As will become evident, Venice proved to be a very useful model for Florence but, at the same time, it will be clear that if Florence followed the Venetian example in Egypt and the Maghreb, it did not do the same regarding Granada. The differences did not result, though, in a more successful position for either of these Italian republics in Granada, which remained always a secondary market in their economies.