Living Beyond Frontiers Social Network Analysis of Genoese Merchants in the Castilian Atlantic 1450-1530

DOTTORATO DI RICERCA IN STORIA DELL'EUROPA DAL MEDIOEVO ALL'ETÀ CONTEMPORANEA FACOLTÀ DE SCIENZE DELLA COMNICAZIONE CICLO XXXIV DOCTORADO EN HISTORIA ''LIVING BEYOND FRONTIERS. SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS OF GENOESE MERCHANTS IN THE CASTILIAN ATLANTIC 1450-1530'' COORDINATORE Prof. Ph.D. Massimo Carlo Giannini PRESIDENTA Margarita Gomez Gomez DOTTORANDO/ DOCTORANDO Andrés Mesa Guarín TUTORI/ TUTORES Ph.D. Carlo Taviani Prof. Ph.D. Manuel Francisco Fernández Prof. Ph.D. Massimo Carlo Giannini Anni 2018/2021 Living Beyond Frontiers Social Network Analysis of Genoese Merchants in the Castilian Atlantic 1450-1530 Andrés Mesa Guarín Supervisor: Ph.D. C. Taviani Prof. Ph.D. M. Fernández Prof. Ph.D. M. Giannini Università degli Studi di Teramo Universidad de Sevilla This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Docttorato in Storia dell’Europa dal Medioevo all’età contemporanea March 2022 Abstract This dissertation studies the role of Genoese merchants in the Castilian Atlantic from 1450- 1530. It aims to study through quantitative analysis their community, forms of association, and financial enterprises. Furthermore, it takes the study of the sugar cane production and the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade as case studies to showcase the importance of the Ligurian merchant in the late medieval and early moden African and the Atlantic history. This research employs Social Network Analysis as an essential tool and methodology in tracing commercial circuits and social relations. Keywords: Economic History, Social Network Analysis, Guilds, Sugar, Slave. Questa tesi studia il ruolo dei mercanti genovesi nell’Atlantico castigliano dal 1450 al 1530. Ha lo scopo di studiare attraverso l’analisi quantitativa la loro comunità, le forme di associazione e le imprese finanziarie. Inoltre, prende come casi studio loa produzione della canna da zucchero e l’inizio della tratta transatlantica degli schiavi per mostrare l’importanza del mercante ligure in Africa e nell’Atlantico. Questa ricerca utilizza la Social Network Analysis come strumento e metodologia essenziale per tracciare circuiti commerciali e relazioni sociali. Parole chiave: Storia Economica, Social Network Analysis, Gilde, Zucchero, Schiavi. Esta tesis estudia el papel de los comerciantes genoveses en el Atlántico castellano desde 1450-1530. Tiene como objetivo estudiar a través del análisis cuantitativo su comunidad, formas de asociación y empresas financieras. Además, toma el estudio de la producción de caña de azúcar y el comienzo de la trata transatlántica de esclavos como estudios de caso para mostrar la importancia del comerciante Ligures en África y el Atlántico. Esta investigación emplea el Análisis de Redes Sociales como herramienta y metodología esencial en el rastreo de circuitos comerciales y relaciones sociales. Palabras clave: Historia económica, Análisis de redes sociales, Gremios, Azúcar, Esclavos. iii Acknowledgements I want to start by thanking my supervisors at the University of Teramo and the University of Seville. They all had a tremendous impact on my growth as a researcher and a person. I want to take this opportunity to thank my supervisor Carlo Taviani. He brought me to work with him in his project of Genoese merchant networks in the Atlantic and Africa at the DHI in Rome, introducing me to this intricate and fascinating world of commercial and financial enterprises. Thank you for your patience, guidance, and advice. Also, Manuel Fernández, who took me in without hesitation, welcomed me to Seville and showed me the ropes to research and move around the Andalusian archives, libraries, and academy. He took on the titanic enterprise of helping me and navigating the Spanish and Italian bureaucracies that allowed me to carry out this joint degree. I would like to make a special mention to Oscar Gelderblom. He has dedicated countless hours of conversation and advice over the past three years. His work and character are genuinely an example for me and many. To him, my undying gratitude and eternal debt. Also, I want to thank David Wheat, whose humility, dedication, and work ethic, have shown me the path for the betterment and scientific integrity. To my friends, classmates, and colleges, I would like to apologize for the oversights, for those moments in which work-talk took over our shared time, and for the moments of high stress and short temper. Eternal gratitude is owed to them because this dissertation came through from those countless discussions and shared coffees. Their unwavering support and company were always present at moments where life proved its hardest. Especial mention to Franziska Kleybolte, whose comments and though love have made this dissertation as coherent as possible. Finally, I want to thank my family for their unconditional love and support. To them, this work is dedicated. v Introduction xiii Vlack Trees being bitter, and that from the Whiter sort sweet and potable. [continues describing the islands] the next to it is Canaria, so called from the great number of very large Dogs, of which Juba rought away two: and in this island there are som marks remaining of buildings. And as all these islands abund in plentifully with fruitful trees that yield pine nuts.’11 The Ligurians expeditions of less poetic remembrance in the fourteenth century, were led by the expansion spirit of the Portuguese crown. Lancelotto Malocello and Nicolosso da Recco in 1341 ‘re-discovered’ the Canaries. The story made its way to Boccaccio through Florentine merchants in Seville. Boccaccio’s account comes from a merchant mindset: talking about goods, opportunities, and the geographical details necessary to access such a market. As fourteenth-century merchants traveled to the islands to find good quality goatskins, dyes, and seal pelts: ‘et anchora pelli di becchi et di capre in buondato, et sevo, olio di pesce, et spoglie di foche, et anche lignami rossi, tingenti quasi fussono verzino, e fatti a simile del verzino’ ‘Quella moltitudine di giente mostrava desiderio di avere abboccamento et commercio, et trattenersi con que’ di sopra le navi...’ ‘...che fichi secchi, buoni che pareano di que’ da Cesena, entro a sporte di palma, et frumento assai più bello che ’l nostro, havendo li grani più lunghi et grossi, et sendo anche più bianco; et similmente dell’orzo, et altre biade di che quelli habitatori viveano...’12 However, this history of exploration and discovery has always been the subject of cultural or scientific studies. The importance of economy left to be anecdotal and the Genoese reduced to mavericks. This sentiment can be traced to economic historiography. The three maxims used to describe Ligurian man of affairs, do not allow the approach to them as community oriented individuals – ‘piety, austerity, and individualism.’ 13 In turn, this definition made them the opposite of other Italian merchant nations, especially to the Tuscan, traditionally recognized as centralized company oriented, dealing mainly on commodity trade (like silk, cloth, and other fabrics). They employed branch operations across different European markets, between whom a financial web of credit and debits sustained the exchange system. 11G. Plinius Secundus. Natural History. Wernerian Club, 1848, book iv, chp. xxxii. 12Boccaccio, Giovanni. Delle Canaria. In https://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Della_Canaria 13 R. S. Lopez. “Le marchand génois: Un profil collectif”. In: Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales. Vol. 13. 3. Cambridge University Press. 1958, pp. 501–515. xiv Introduction One would probably add more adjectives to the previous description of the Genoese like acute, slick, smooth, even Machiavellian. As their operations, seemingly individualistic, short term, and relying on limited liability, took advantage of their collective identity when suited, and on institutions created to protect long-distance trade, private property, and facilitated rapid exchange and traceability. Furthermore, their understanding of risk operations allowed them to maneuver in a wide range of markets successfully, from London to Morocco, from Lisbon to Crimea, and from Flanders to Italy. The flexibility and seemingly anarchy, loosely described in the previous paragraph, has created a supposed tension between the traces left by the market operations and the attempts to create a general understanding of the Genoese financial and commodity market. 14 One would argue in favor of a harmony product of the negotiation between law, institutions, and the flexibility that the markets and individuals can make out of it. Thus, by studying the Genoese-Castilian market, one can show the singularities found in this market or created by this individuals. In order to do so, one takes two different approaches from the traditional economic historiography. First, the employment of social network analysis (SNA) to trace and measure Ligurian relationships and commercial circuits. Second, the approach to the late medieval and early modern Atlantic market through the theoretical framework of network economies over that of price economies. As this dissertation relies heavily on the theoretical frameworks developed in Social Network Analysis and Network Economies, in the following pages I will present a brief introduction to the main principles and concepts developed by these schools of thought. Thus, the reader will be able read the rest of the dissertation with more ease. Social Network Analysis (SNA) Over the past decades, interest in networks and network theory has grown increasingly. This interest obeys in part on technological development and the economic markets the reliance in this technologies and systems. The sociological side of this interest has received the name of Social Network Analysis (SNA). However, most of today’s methodological system which constitutes SNA has been used since the 1930s. 15 Many of the tools developed from this methodology in the advance of social and behavioral sciences, from graph theory and blockmodels to sociometry, combine strong statistical models and coherent measurable representation of the results. All 14 J. Heers. Genova nel Quattrocento: civiltà mediterranea, grande capitalismo e capitalismo popolare. Jaca Book, 1984; S. A. Epstein and S. Epstein. Genoa and the Genoese, 958-1528. Univ of North Carolina Press, 2001; Q. Van Doosselaere. Commercial agreements and social dynamics in medieval Genoa. Cambridge University Press, 2009. 15 P. J. Carrington, J. Scott, and S. Wasserman. Models and methods in social network analysis. Vol. 28. Cambridge university press, 2005, p. 1. Introduction xv tools or methods rely on the important realization that actions’ ‘social contexts’ matter and must be demonstrable and verifiable. The effects of this simple realization go beyond social sciences. Scientists know that epidemics move at different speeds through seemingly uniform populations.16 The data is an essential determinant in the possible use of this methodology. The most common type of study that employs SNA are those that relate to the nature of kinship and community structures. The usual name that receives such data is ‘relational data,’ different from ‘attribute data,’ which refers to the individual characteristics. However, these individual qualities or characteristics can be translated or thought of in terms of ‘relational data’ and a relation can be considered an individual’s attribute. From the name, two arguments can be developed. First, the sources presuppose the existence of some form of relationship between the subjects studied. Thus, the object of study is never thought in a vacuum but concerning others. In other words, the data is social, which is the same as saying that its origin is rooted in each society’s values and symbols. Therefore, the finding of this data involves a process of interpretation and transformation by the researcher. The importance of SNA appears in the acknowledgment that some relationships that may define attributes of an individual, should not be reduced to a property of the individual. For example, serfdom, identity, kinship, even nobility or professions cannot be thought of in a vacuum outside of their reality and context. Their existence obeys to social and power relations that created them and the actual enactment of a said experience. An individual is a blacksmith because he provides the services of a metalsmith who creates objects out of metal, and others pay for said services. If nobody pays for his blacksmith services, but they do for his masonry, his actual profession is that of a mason. Thus, relations are not qualities of the individuals but of the system (society, market, globe, guild, etc.). Some of the key concepts that constitute the heart of SNA are ‘actor, tie, dyad, triad, subgroup, relation, and nework.’ 17 Actor refers to the individuals (can be entities or groups) that constitute the studied networks. Tie, or relational tie, refers to the social ties between a pair of actors. Dyad or Triads correspond to the levels of relationships established between actors, either two or three. Subgroup refers to subsets of actors. For example, a dyad can be a subgroup of a triad. GroupindexSocial Network Analysis!Group is officially defined as a ‘collection of actors in which ties are to be measured.’ 18 However, the importance of SNA is found in the possibility 16 I. Z. Kiss, J. C. Miller, P. L. Simon, et al. Mathematics of epidemics on networks. Vol. 598. Springer, 2017; M. Olshaker and M. T. Osterholm. Deadliest enemy: our war against killer germs. Hachette UK, 2017. 17 S. Wasserman, K. Faust, and D Iacobucci. Social network analysis: Theory and methods. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1995, p. 17. 18Ibid., p. 19. xvi Introduction to study in greater volumes the relationships between individuals within a society. Thus, the definition of relationindexSocial Network Analysis!Relation and social networkindexSocial Network Analysis!Social Network constitute the result of collecting specific ties among members of a group. Therefore, a network constitutes the finite set of actors and the relations defined on them.19 The same principles can think of the exchange’s product of economic transactions. In the example mentioned above, the wheat exchanged is a quality of the economic system and not an intrinsic characteristic of the farmer or the merchant. In this case, the research identifies two problems that concern SNA. On the one hand, who is a Genoese in the Castilian Atlantic? On the other, how are they operating in the Atlantic market? Thus, the Ligurians are the actors studied, their economic transactions are the relations and the network will be discovered and described by the research. To answer the previous questions, this research relies on notarial sources which intrinsically are constructed by a minimum of two parties. Thus, they are perfect example of relational data. They constitute an official system of tracing human relations, economic transactions, and conflict resolution. Other sources provide relational data about the Genoese merchants in the Atlantic, like letters, official commendations, and juridical processes, these also constitute sources from which relations can be discerned. These other sources are used to cross-reference the results offered by network analysis. A few measures that will be used constantly across the dissertation are those of Centrality, Eccentricity, Closnesscentrality, Betweenesscentrality, Eginvectorcentrality, and number of Triangles. • Centrality: Tt is a qualification assigned to actors in a network. The most connected actor, or node, will have the highest centrality degree. • Closnesscentrality: It measures the average shortest distance from each actor at an extreme of the network to the other extreme. • Betweenesscentrality: This measure shows which individuals are better ’bridges’ between actors in a network. • Eccentricity: The maximum distance from an actor (x) to any other one. In social networks, the reciprocal of eccentricity is used to measure the importance of a node within a network. • Eigenvector centrality: The measure of the influence an actor has on a network. If many others point to a node or if the neighboring actors have many connections. 19Wasserman, Faust, and Iacobucci, Social network analysis: Theory and methods, p. 20. Introduction xvii • Number of Triangles: Refers to the finding of triads. It is used to detect communities and measure the cohesiveness of those communities. When relevant in the dissertation, it will explain how these measures are used and their relevance to each case. Experts have already done their theoretical explanation, and this study takes on their work.20 Network Economies vs. Price Economies The importance of network economies relies heavily on the understanding of networks created by SNA, as it has allowed the study of behavior through the analysis of the decisions made by groups. In the aforementioned example of the farmer and the merchant, the price is the defining factor that informs the decision to sell or buy. However, the example considered many variables that affect risk-taking decisions, like society, the market, and other individuals. This approach to the economy is more descriptive than scientific, as it seeks to make sense of a perceived reality and not pretends to predict it. However, trends could be identified and estimations made. For studying the medieval and early modern economies, this type of economic behavior is very important. These trends are not new or unique to twentieth-century social media. They need to be put in perspective, especially as the understanding of past credit and financial markets grows more and more. For example, technologies or economic institutions can be better understood by understanding the social network in which the decision is made. The first thing that one has to bear in mind when approaching economic studies through networks is that they apply when interactions of any kind depend on complementary systems. Since no individual or productive system is self-sufficient in itself, then basically everything falls into this category. Furthermore, researchers have found that the market benefits from the integration of many other markets. It creates a distribution of risk and profits, which in turn benefits production and consumers. The opposite of this sort of understanding is that of monopolies. They search to control the profits of every step of the production chain under one actor. This research found that the Genoese function across the Atlantic market aware of the utility of adopting institutions and behaviors that many others used. Economic theories define this type of behavior as displaying ‘network effects.’ 21 This sort of behavior which seems rational and coherent in an economic environment, is hard to imitate and gives an edge to the Ligurians. The effects of their network mentality 20 Wasserman, Faust, and Iacobucci, Social network analysis: Theory and methods; Carrington, Scott, and Wasserman, Models and methods in social network analysis; F. Battiston et al. “Networks beyond pairwise interactions: structure and dynamics”. In: arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.01764 (2020); E. O. Laumann, P. V. Marsden, and D. Prensky. “The boundary specification problem in network analysis”. In: Research methods in social network analysis 61 (1989), p. 87. 21 D. Birke. “The economics of networks: A survey of the empirical literature”. In: Journal of Economic Surveys 23.4 (2009), pp. 762–793. xviii Introduction reached their technology adoption in terms of accounting techniques and formalization of associations (chapter 3). The impact of network effect over the late medieval merchants can be seen in the utility they saw in not formalizing association contracts or the lack of constitution of large multinational firms. This absence is inferred by the lack of presence of such contracts in the archives, further developed in the chapter 2 and chapter 3 chapters. One will argue that the adoption of this practice allowed for rapid exchange. These practices, in turn, were complemented by the creation of complementary services supported by the market organization. Thus, the existence of networks of relations translated into possible networks of exchange that allowed the market to operate with the actual completion of commodities or financial transactions. The study of Genoese merchants in the Iberian Peninsula has had important contributions in the past, that goes beyond the study of single individuals like Christopher Columbus. Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesa saw in his study of the Castilian finances the important role of the Genoese as merchants and financiers. 22 Similarly, the Ligurian role as financiers of the Castilian crown gave them a prominent role in Ramón Carande study of Charles V. 23 David Igual Luis has studied the business operation and social migration between Seville and Valencia. 24 His studies identified clear patron of settlement and integration to the Iberian societies and have provided the bases for present day understanding of the financial operations between Seville and Valencia carried out by the Genoese. This dissertation will follow these two main methodological trends, and will be divided into five chapters. The first three aim to address the merchant’s social network, as mentioned before, to answer what identified them as Genoese? and how they are operating in the Atlantic market? Chapter chapter 1, addresses the first question by approaching the guild-like institution of the Genoese nation. In order to do so, it divides the issue into two problems, the importance of the ‘nation/merchant guild’ institution for the Genoese community in terms of identity and commerce. Secondly, it evaluates the mechanism of election and representation of these merchant communities. It finds that the consulate does not offer a competent answer to the question of ‘who’ was a Genoese, as there were a larger group of self-identified Ligurian merchants 22 M. Ladero Quesada. La hacienda real castellana entre 1480 y 1492. Universidad de Valladolid, Departamento de Historia Medieval, 1967. 23R. Carande. Carlos V y sus banqueros. Crítica, 2004. 24 D. Igual Luis. “Valencia y Sevilla en el sistema económico genovés de finales del siglo XV”. in: Revista D’historia Medieval 3 (1992), pp. 79–116; D. Igual Luis and G. Navarro Espinach. “Los genoveses en España en el tránsito del siglo XV al XVI”. in: Historia. Instituciones. Documentos, 1997,(24): 261-332 (1997); D. Igual Luis. “La emigracón genovesa hacia el Mediterráneo bajomedieval. Algunas reflexiones a partir del caso Español”. In: Genova una “porta” del Mediterraneo. Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea, 2005, pp. 295–328. Introduction xix functioning in these markets and the lack of competence in fulfilling the tasks of protection of long-distance trade. The chapter 2 describes the Genoese merchant network of association in Southern Andalusia. It describes the network’s modus operandi and institutions used to associate in mainland Iberia. The results show that the Ligurians traded consistently and extensible, even if two individuals do not seem to have an evident bond or shared history. Adding to the lack of association contracts in the archives, this practice of constant trade suggests a network effect. This situation of constant exchange is further studied in chapter 3, where the Genoese role in the southern Andalusian financial market is studied. The purpose of this chapter is twofold. It attempts to study a financial market solely through notarial acts and propose a turn in the traditional understanding of a company structured exchange to understand the medieval financial markets. The chapter will show how what sometimes are described as archival realities need to be approached as possible financial realities. Thus, historiography needs to research them as such. The final two chapters are case studies of the commerce of two goods within this Genoese economic network in the face of the opening of the Trans-Atlantic markets – Sugar and Slaves. The time frame of this dissertation presents the overlapping of two phenomena affected by their geographical setting– the Mediterranean and Trans- Atlantic. Slavery and Sugar Cane production in the Mediterranean or the Atlantic constitute stadiums of development in a longue durée phenomenon. Thus, the past affected and set the conditions for the development of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade emergence. Also, the Reconquista and the singular Iberian relationship with slavery constitute fundamental stepping stones, where the Genoese role and function need to be understood. The chapter’s secondary purpose is to contextualize and set the possibilities for future research projects, as Trans-Atlantic phenomena constitute a central area of research for historiography. Their overall importance is paramount for today’s social challenges, especially for North and South America, where the aftermath of centuries of bondage and segregation still affects daily life. Thus, the importance of understanding the origins of an institution that molded continents cannot be underestimated. Furthermore, understand the importance of understanding both the transaction and financial markets impact in plantation and slavery economies. Especially if there is no understanding of where the funding originated? What financial interests drove individuals to partake in these enterprises? How did these economies affect different populations? Methodology This research modeled different commercial interactions through Social Network Analysis in which a series of mathematical and statistical measurements allow the understanding of the network’s functions and operations, visual representation, and structure clarification. 25 The sources from the Andalusian (Seville, Jerez de la Frontera, and Malaga), Canary Islands (La Laguna and Gran Canaria), and central Spanish archives (General Archive of Simancas and General archive of the Indies) compose the test sample. They are sworn declarations in front of a royal official, such as a notary, of commercial interaction, conflict resolution, and association contracts. These records comprehend all different economic and legal interactions incurred by citizens and foreigners. In turn, the notarial act is a public action mediated by a representative of the crown, who grants status and safeguard by the monarchs’ laws and will. Thus, if one of the parties broke the agreements, the affected party was protected and aided, in theory, by the state apparatus.26 An effort has been made to overcome the limitations and biases of previous studies and the Castilian long sixteenth century’s underlying bureaucratic system, such as namesake, different spellings, in order to confirm beyond doubt the identification of individuals. 27 Similarly, information regarding time, space, and currency values are recorded in a standardized way, which allows it to become machine-readable, which in turn allows for easy map construction, the trace of goods, human interactions, and the 25 Wasserman, Faust, and Iacobucci, Social network analysis: Theory and methods; L. C. Freeman. “Centrality in social networks conceptual clarification”. In: Social networks 1.3 (1978), pp. 215–239; J. M. Bolland. “Sorting out centrality: An analysis of the performance of four centrality models in real and simulated networks”. In: Social networks 10.3 (1988), pp. 233–253. 26 D. R. Terrero. “El notariado Español en la Corona de Castilla e Indias en el siglo XVI: Los oficios públicos escribaniles”. In: IV Jornadas Científicas sobre Documentación de Castilla e Indias en el siglo XVI. Departamento de Ciencias y Técnicas Historiográficas. 2005, pp. 243–295; J. Leva Cuevas. “Escribanos y Notarios en la Castilla Bajomedieval. Su ejercicio en la Córdoba de la época”. In: Ambitos: revista de estudios de ciencias sociales y humanidades 21 (2009); M. L. Pardo Rodríguez. “notariado y monarquía: los escribanos públicos de la ciudad de Sevilla en el reinado de los Reyes Católicos”. In: Historia, Instituciones, Documentos, 19, 317-326. (1992). 27 D. C. North. “The rise of the western world”. In: Political competition, innovation and growth. Springer, 1998, pp. 13–28, pp. 13-28. xxi xxii Methodology possibility for this database to be accessible to the public. As said before, namesakes have been, when possible, differentiated or identified as the same individual.28 As the research centers around the Genoese merchants the Atlantic, the sample data also follows that attribute. The reason to focus on the Ligurians comes from their role as merchants, colonizers, and explorers of the Atlantic world, as well as their unique naturalization process into the Iberian territories. Therefore, the network allows the study of the different economic dynamics, particularly the functioning of a foreign community with Seville as a trading hub. It allows the examination of underlined social processes like the diaspora and naturalization of individuals and families, discovering new lands, and war. As mentioned in the introduction, notarial archives are the main primary source of this dissertation. The period examined in these archives corresponds with the establishment and consolidation of Castilian institutions and control over territory - culminating with the conquest of the Kingdom of Granada in 1492. In the case of the Canaries and Malaga, the records begin after their conquest – 1493 and 1487, respectively. However, the volume is small or the condition poor for the documents for said first years after the conquest. In the case of Seville and Jerez, early XV century records exits, but scarcely and disperse. Lopez already stated the importance of notarial archives and their lack of study. 29 Notaries depict the importance and growth of state involvement in business and commerce, because as an institution that aimed to reduce transaction cost by offering public faith and contract enforcement. The nature of the notary is in itself intriguing, as its place in the different branches of government is mixed and unspecific. Notaries labor to bear witness and give faith to individuals’ interactions, whether private or public, would suggest their membership in the judicial system. Nevertheless, they were (and in many countries continue to be) private individuals whose salary is the product of their labor and not a direct rent from the royal arcs. 30 In the case of Genoese merchants’ notaries are of immense importance. Notaries composed the official system for the record and track 28 For example the case of Francesco Sopranis di Rivarolo and his son Bartolome Sopranis di Rivarolo, whom previous studies reference them by their different aliases like Francisco de Riparolo/ Francisco Sopranis/ Francisco Ribarol. Other cases like this have been, when possible, standardised into one name and the aliases recorded in the database. E. Otte. Sevilla, siglo XVI: Materiales para su historia económica. Centro de Estudios Andaluces, 2008; E. Otte. “Los sopranis y los Lugo”. In: II Coloquio de Historia Canario-Americana (1977). Cabildo de Gran Canaria. 1987, pp. 239–259; L. de la Rosa Olivera. “Francisco de Riberol y la colonia genovesa en Canarias”. In: Anuario de estudios atlánticos 18 (1972), pp. 61–198; L. de la Rosa Olivera. “La varia fortuna de los Rivarola”. In: Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos 1.12 (1966), pp. 167–200. 29 R. S. Lopez. “Proxy in medieval trade”. In: Order and innovation in the middle ages. Essays in honor of Joseph R. Strayer. Princeton University Press, 1976, pp. 187–94. 30 Little has been studied the role of the notaries and their economic substance, partly because notarial deeds do not record necessarily the cost of the act. There is evidence of the cost and payment method in the Canary Islands through some documents in which the payment of the service appears in the deed. AHPT, Bernardino Justiniano, Leg. 608, f. 608r. AGS, RGS, Leg.151502. f.86 Primary Sources The core of archives studied and referenced in this study are found across the public system of archives of Adanlusia – Seville, Malaga, and Jerez de la Frontera. Part of the documents were found at Center of Andalusian Studies in Enrique Otte’s Fund. Particularly, the ones concerning to the XV notarial office of Seville, which correspond to the Leg. 9098 to 9138 in Seville’s provincial historical archive (AHPSe), Seville Notarial Protocols (PNS). The database constructed by this research is composed of three thousand notarial deeds, letters, judicial processes, and official records. The Appendix and more detailed graphics, with a sample of the database and the sources collected, can be found at : https://sites.google.com/view/gemena-org Seville Provincial Historical Archive (AHPSe), Notarial Protocols of Seville (PNS) 1 6 8 10 11 13 15 16 23 26 28 29 31 32 33 34 1068 1497 1502 1503 1507 1508 1513 1514 1524 1525 1526 1527 2154 2155 2156 2157 2158 2160 2165 2169 2174 2185 2188 2192 2198 2203 2209 2228 2231 2241 2243 2244 3214 3215 3216 3217 3218 3223 3226 3227 3228 3256 3257 3258 3259 3260 3261 3263 3264 3265 3266 3267 3268 3269 3270 3271 3273 3274 3275 3276 3277 3967 3970 3973 3974 3990 4886 4887 4888 4889 4894 9100 9101 9102 9103 9104 9107 9108 9109 9110 9116 9127 15963 17419 17424 17433 19413 19725 Malaga Provincial Historical Archive (AHPMa), Notarial Protocols of Malaga (PNMa) 1235791035 Jerez de la Frontera Provincial Historical Archive (AHPJe), Notarial Protocols (PN) 134567810 Royal Archive of the Chancellery of Granada (AChGr), Hidalguia Procedures Series (SPH) xxix xxx Primary Sources Royal Archive of the Chancellery of Granada (AChGr), Civil Lawsuits (JC) Box 12052 piece 015 Box 3159 piece 18 Box 3059 piece 18 Box 9113 piece 06 Box 5331 piece 01 Box 5300 piece 04 Box 3044 piece 12 Box 2893 piece 09 Box 2459 piece 07 Box 2197 piece 08 Box 2073 piece 10 Box 1920 piece 02 Box 1516 piece 13 Box 1347 piece 09 Box 1088 piece 08 Box 982 piece 01 Box 950 piece 12 Box 910 piece 02 Box 859 piece 05 Box 764 piece 13 Box 551 piece 07 Box 885 piece 02 Box 4681 piece 117 Santa Cruz de Tenerife Provincial Historical Archive (AHPTe), Notarial Protocols of la Laguna (PNLa) 2/1 5/1 6/1 7/1 8/1 Gran Canary Provincial Historical Archive (AHPGC), Notarial Protocols of Gran Canaria (PNGC) 2316/1 2317/1 2318/3 0733/2 Other supporting documents found at : • General Archive of Simancas (AGS), General Registry of the Seal (RGS). • General Archive of the Indies (AGI), Indiferente General. • State Archive of Genoa (ASGe), Archivio Secreto. Published sources and descriptive indexes: • Protocolos de Hernán Guerra (1510-1511) - ed. Fernando Clavijo Hernández, Fontes Rerum Canarium. • Protocolos de Alonso Gutierrez (1522-25)- eds. Maria I Coello, Margartia Rodriguez, Avelino Parrilla, Fontes Rerum Canarium. • Protocolos del Bernanrdino Justiniano (1526-27) - ed. Delfina Galván Vol. I and IIm Fontes Rerum Canarium. • Protocolos de Hernán Guerra (1508-10) - eds. Emma González e Manuela Marrero, Fontes Rerum Canarium. • Protocolos de Alonso Gutierrez (1520-21) - ed. Manuel Lobo, Fontes Rerum Canarium. • Protocolos de Juan Ruiz de Berlanga (1507-1508) - ed. Manuela Marrero, Fontes Rerum Canarium. Primary Sources xxxi • Extractos de los protocolos de los Realejos (1521-24 y 1529-61) - ed. Manuela Marrero, Fontes Rerum Canarium. • Protocolos de Rodrigo Fernández (1520-26) - ed. Pedro Martínez Vol. I and II, Fontes Rerum Canarium. • Protocolos de Juan Marquez (1518-21) - ed. María Padron Vol. I and II, Fontes Rerum Canarium. Chapter 1 The Nation In this chapter the research focuses in the guild-like institution of the Genoese nation. Here two problems shall be addressed: 1) the importance of the ‘nation/merchant guild’ institution for the Genoese community in southern Castile at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century. 2) identifies and studies the mechanism of election and representation of these merchant communities. The chapter will show that in the Genoese case the southern Castilian markets and institutions adhered to international trends that led to merchant guild-like institutions’ decline. 1 It argues that the institutional wane evidenced, in this case, correlates to the market’s characteristics, the integration and embodying of foreign merchants into Castilian society, the institution’s lack of competence, and a transition towards a corporate form. Furthermore, the evaluation of the nation’s context and functioning allows for the discovery of the principles of association and representation offered by the nation, which one argues follow an intuitive system of popularity and trust. In order to carry out a coherent analysis of the documentation regarding the Genoese nation in southern Andalusia and the Atlantic, one takes two landmarks events in the institution’s history during the eighty years in question. The landmarks are the loan request for the siege of Baza in 1489 (section 1.1), and the order from Genoa’s French governor Ottaviano Fregoso to not use Castilian over consular justice in 1520 (section 1.2). Both cases represent moments in which the Genoese merchants acted, were addressed, and responded as a group. When possible, an analysis of the nation’s functioning and role will be compared to a Social Network Analysis (SNA) of the factual Ligurian presence in the Castilian territories. Therefore, it will be possible to weight the importance of the institution, its efficiency, and the importance of the Genoese identity as a commodity. 1 O. Gelderblom and R. Grafe. “The rise and fall of the merchant guilds: Re-thinking the comparative study of commercial institutions in premodern Europe”. In: Journal of interdisciplinary history 40.4 (2010), pp. 477–511; G. Petti Balbi. “Negoziare fuori patria: nazioni e genovesi in età medievale”. In: Negoziare fuori patria (2005). 1 2CHAPTER 1. THE NATION Many of the issues studied in this chapter are political in nature. As this study faces no surviving evidence, charter or documents, created by the nation or consulate without the mediation of a Castilian notary or authority, the events through which one can approximate the phenomena lack time continuity. Therefore, one major contribution this research aims to deliver is the possibility to approximate political phenomena from economic sources like notarial deeds. In the world, sources like notarial acts are much more abundant than account books or guild records. Therefore, if the methodology followed here can be replicated, historiography will be able to approach similar phenomena in a new way. The methodology followed here to answer the questions regarding the Genoese presence and use of institutions in southern Andalusia is as follows, first, social network analysis for each event at the year in question. In other words, the sample used to carry out the SNA constitutes by documents six months prior to the event and six months after. In order to corroborate the findings, the process and analysis is repeated with multiple samples varying in temporality. Each case will require a different set of samples and approximation. As such, each sampling process will be explained at the beginning of each section. The more comprehensive sample allows the trace of permanence and residence of the Genoese in this markets, both before and after the events studied, and if there were other prominent merchants snubbed or left out from the events examined. Alternatively, it allows the study of the role of different kinds of merchants in the nation and the southern Andalusian market. Thus, the question regarding the flux of information and weather or not the guild-like institution relied upon a stable network can be answered. Furthermore, it allows the examining the structural cohesion of the network and the groups that compose it. Notarial records compose the principal source employed for this study. They consist mostly of business transactions and association agreements. One has taken the natural composition of a notarial deed of two parties (whether individuals or groups) recording a transaction or business in front of a notary and translated it into a map of connections – a network. Thus, the Genoese merchant network’s basic constituting principle in this study is that any two parties (whether individuals or groups) that appear in the same notarial deed are associated. This first principle creates a wide network. The links among individuals are attributes of the pair and not an inherent quality of one individual unit. 2 To give an example, the number of pieces of cloth exported from Castile by merchants to Genoa, or any other market, indicates the relationship between the two markets. It is not an intrinsic characteristic of either Genoa or Castile. Therefore, partnerships, trade, and markets are the product of systems and not determined by one side or one variable. Further classifications can 2Wasserman, Faust, and Iacobucci, Social network analysis: Theory and methods, p. 8. 3 introduce the links to both temporal definitions, the nature of the association, and the different types of contracts: receipts of paid transactions, receipts of pending transactions (debts), contracts of services, and association lawsuits. Most of these contracts are non-directional and binary transactions, others like loans and powers of attorney are directional.3 The difference between directional and non-directions refers to whether a transaction has a source and a receiver. Most goods transactions are non-directional. The exchange of sugar for money implies that there is equal reciprocity between the two exchanging parties. In the case of one individual giving a power of attorney to another individual, there is no equal reciprocity. It only gives the receiver the power to represent the granter, not the other way around. For example, when in 1498 Batista da Rivarolo makes Juan Ortiz his proctor, he becomes Rivarolo’s representative. However, Rivarolo cannot represent Ortiz.4 The Merchant guild in the middle ages and early modern period has received significant attention and interest from many different scholars in recent times. 5 This is because a guild, nation, consulate, hanse, even companies or firms, correspond to an institution of governance in economic studies. Such an institution relates to the ‘playing of the game,’ unlike others which are ‘the rules of the game.’ 6 Thus, governance describes the instruments that achieve order when there is a potential conflict. In the eighteenth century, Adam Smith argued that such order could be 3 D. Zinoviev. Complex network analysis in Python: Recognize-construct-visualize-analyze- interpret. Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2018, pp. 197-203. 4 ‘Hizo su personero Batista de Rivarolo, mercader genovés, vecino de la Gran Canaria, a Juan Ortiz, vecino de Sevilla, general para pleitos.’ AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 3218, 1498, f. 267v. 5 A. Greif. “Self-enforcing political systems and economic growth: late medieval Genoa”. In: Analytic narratives. Ed. by R. H. Bates. Princeton University Press, 1998, pp. 23–63; A. Greif. Institutions and the path to the modern economy: Lessons from medieval trade. Cambridge University Press, 2006; O. Gelderblom. Cities of commerce: the institutional foundations of international trade in the Low Countries, 1250-1650. Vol. 45. Princeton University Press, 2015; Petti Balbi, “Negoziare fuori patria: nazioni e genovesi in età medievale”; J. Wubs-Mrozewicz. Traders, ties and tensions: the interactions of Lübeckers, Overijsslers and Hollanders in Late Medieval Bergen. Uitgeverij Verloren, 2008; T. De Moor. “The silent revolution: A new perspective on the emergence of commons, guilds, and other forms of corporate collective action in Western Europe”. In: International review of social history 53.S16 (2008), pp. 179–212; S. Ogilvie. Institutions and European trade: Merchant guilds, 1000–1800. Cambridge University Press, 2011; F. Trivellato. “Guilds, Technology, and Economic Change in Early Modern Venice”. In: Guilds, Innovation and the European Economy, 1400–1800. Ed. by S. R. Epstein and M. Prak. Cambridge University Press, 2008; S. R. Epstein and M. Prak. Guilds, innovation and the European economy, 1400–1800. Cambridge University Press, 2008; J. Wubs-Mrozewicz. “The late medieval and early modern Hanse as an institution of conflict management”. In: Continuity and Change 32.1 (2017), p. 59; J. Wubs-Mrozewicz. “Interplay of identities: German settlers in late medieval Stockholm”. In: Scandinavian journal of history 29.1 (2004), pp. 53–67; D. Igual Luis. “La confraria dels genovesos de Valencia. una associacion interprofessional a les derreries de l’edat Mitjana”. In: Moviments socials i dinamicas associativa. Actas del primer congres de la coordinadora de centres d’etudis de parla catalana. 1994. 6 O. E. Williamson. “The institutions of governance”. In: The American Economic Review 88.2 (1998), pp. 75–79. 4CHAPTER 1. THE NATION achieved naturally by the market’s forces. 7 Equally important, Ronald Coase, in his essay The Nature of the Firm argued that firms and markets are different ways of doing the same thing. As such, the fundamental difference is how should contracts be managed. 8 Thus, the study of a guild for an economic historian offers entrance to a part of groups’ financial organization, as guilds offered security, storage, and protection from long-distance trade perils.9 Controversies originated from the study of this guild-like institution. A discussion started regarding the problem of efficiency in terms of the birth and endurance of the institution. On the one hand, scholars like Avner Greif argued that institution selection obeyed to whether it provided better results and reduced more effectively transaction-cost than others. 10 This understanding follows Douglass North’s ideas regarding the importance of the different cost’s forms as the economy’s motor and his work on the New Institutional Economy. 11 This method offers the possibility to perform quantifiable analysis as costs, prices, services, and assets are traceable and measurable. On the other hand, other scholars like Sheilagh Ogilvie argue against ‘efficiency.’ 12 She and others argue that other factors, particularly cultural or socio-political ones, offered different kinds of surplus, like social capital, which were also determinant in an institutions’ birth and endurance. 13 Ogilvie makes good arguments in opposition to efficiency, as she points correctly the effects of power structures in coercing wealth distribution and exchanges. 14 Nevertheless, her position against ‘efficiency’ addresses empiric and mathematical aspects through an ethical preconception that in all exchange there is a winner and loser, rather than actual problems of efficiency or methodology.15 Thanks to the academic debate, clear progress appears. Today’s knowledge regarding late-medieval and early-modern guild institutions allows scholars to determine a set of general characteristics shared across the European continent. At the same 7Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 8 R. H. Coase. “The nature of the firm”. In: Essential readings in economics. Springer, 1995, pp. 37–54; Williamson, “The institutions of governance”. 9 Gelderblom and Grafe, “The rise and fall of the merchant guilds: Re-thinking the comparative study of commercial institutions in premodern Europe”. 10 Greif, Institutions and the path to the modern economy: Lessons from medieval trade; A. Greif. “History lessons: the birth of impersonal exchange: the community responsibility system and impartial justice”. In: Journal of economic perspectives 20.2 (2006), pp. 221–236. 11 D. C. North. Understanding the Process of Economic Change. The Princenton Economic History of the Western World. Princeton University Press, 2005; D. C. North. Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. Cambridge University Press, 1990; D. C. North. Structure and change in economic history. Norton, 1981. 12 S. Ogilvie. “‘Whatever is, is right’? Economic institutions in pre-industrial Europe”. In: The Economic History Review 60.4 (2007), pp. 649–684. 13Ogilvie, Institutions and European trade: Merchant guilds, 1000–1800. 14Ogilvie, “‘Whatever is, is right’? Economic institutions in pre-industrial Europe”. 15 Ogilvie, Institutions and European trade: Merchant guilds, 1000–1800; S. Ogilvie. The European guilds: An economic analysis. Princeton University Press, 2019. 5 time, identification of substantial differences in their structure and organization allows for classification. Institutions vary depending on their context as well as in their focus, for example, in the tools offered to address contract enforcement and penalties, membership, and relationship with other political bodies or guilds. In The Rise and Fall of Merchant Guilds Gelderblom and Grafe created an empirical system to discern the difference by the ‘delegation of control by merchants,’ as it correlates to merchant guilds enforcement of order. 16 Some examples of guilds have the power to create norms and do enforcement by controlling the entry to the market. For example, the Hanse imposed rules on conduct and relationships and could force exclusion on individuals and even markets as a group. 17 Furthermore, they had strict rules on conflict resolution and individual behavior regarding marriage and even friendship. 18 Other examples show nations that do not rule over their members’ identity, and their economic cohesion is quite loose. The Genoese merchants seem to follow such structure in practice, although they legally had the tools to enforce a very strict guild. For example, in Bruges during the XV century, Ligurians would attend court as individuals aware of the privileges bestowed to them by the city, unlike the Venetians who would arrive in group. 19 Furthermore, at times where conflict between their place of residency and the Genoese commune could affect their business, merchants cited independence and their organization as private individuals first before any bond to their motherland.20 Guilds have a fundamental flaw both in terms of efficiency and social capital. Their control over membership may create an oxymoron depending on it’s strictness. Membership may result in limited access to the market, or loose membership results in a lack of public goods. Furthermore, other institutions provided by local states offered similar benefits for merchants without requiring the merchant’s control delegation. History shows Coase’s theory to be true, as markets and governments offered a different solution to contract enforcement and private property protection, which was more attractive than the one offered by guilds.21 The guild in which this study centers is that of the Genoese merchants in Southern Andalusia, particularly the consulate functioning in Seville. Its history starts in the XIII century, when the Genoese first received a set of privileges (1248) to trade and 16 Gelderblom and Grafe, “The rise and fall of the merchant guilds: Re-thinking the comparative study of commercial institutions in premodern Europe”. 17 U. C. Ewert and S. Selzer. Institutions of Hanseatic Trade. Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, 2016. 18 Wubs-Mrozewicz, “The late medieval and early modern Hanse as an institution of conflict management”; Wubs-Mrozewicz, “Interplay of identities: German settlers in late medieval Stockholm”. 19 B. Lambert. “De Genuese aanwezigheid in laatmiddeleeuws Brugge (1435-1495): een laboratorium voor de studie van instellingen en hun rol in de economische geschiedenis.” PhD thesis. Ghent University, 2011, pp.15-34. 20Ibid., pp.50-55. 21 G. Dari-Mattiacci et al. “The emergence of the corporate form”. In: The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 33.2 (2017), pp. 193–236. 6CHAPTER 1. THE NATION settle in Seville. This event encompassed along a broader migration to all corners of the known world by the Genoese. 22 Already in 1152, the Byzantine emperor awarded them the privilege to hold a fondaco in Galata (Pera). By 1257 in Crimea, their colony of Caffa had replaced the Classic settlement of Theodosia. 23 In the northern Atlantic, they settled in Southampton and Bruges’ markets, receiving consular privileges in Bruges in 1395. 24 For a long time, the Castilian markets offered access to primary goods like grains and dates, but most importantly to olive oil, leather, and cheap cloth. The neighboring kingdoms of Granada and Aragon held a significant amount of Ligurian business too. However, conflicts and political instability made Castile the most prosperous option. 25 This is why in the sixteenth century, a Venetian ambassador recorded that at least one-third of the Ligurian population inhabited these territories, an exaggeration surely but hinting at of their presence and number in the Iberian peninsula.26 By the end of the XV century, southern Andalusia represented one of the most successful Genoese merchant markets. The decline of their eastern colonies, along with the Spanish monarchs’ triumph in Castile and Aragon’s unification, the conquest of the Muslim Kingdom of Granada, and the opening of the broader Atlantic market, made these territories markets of wealth and opportunities. Nevertheless, their success did not come about thanks to long-lasting alliances between the ruling political entities. For most of the XV century, Genoa’s commune sympathized with the French crown more than with the Iberian crowns. 27 Furthermore, Genoa maintained constant tensions with Aragon because of matters of piracy. 28 If anything, the Genoese community in the Castilian Atlantic maintained particular independence from their motherland’s 22 I. González Gallego. “El Libro de los Privilegios de la Nación Genovesa.” In: Historia. Instituciones. Documentos 1 (1974). 23 M. Balard. “The Greeks of Crimea under Genoese Rule in the XIVth and XVth Centuries”. In: Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995), pp. 23–32; N. Burak. “Genoese Traces in the Black Sea Coast of Turkey’s Forts”. In: Defensive Architecture of the Mediterranean XI (2020); M. Balard. “La Massaria génoise de Famagouste”. In: Diplomatics in the Eastern Mediterranean 1000–1500. Brill, 2008, pp. 235–250. 24 O. Gelderblom. “The Resolution of Commercial Conflicts in Bruges, Antwerp, and Amsterdam (1250-1650)”. In: Law and Long-Term Economic Change. Standford University Press, 2011, pp. 244– 276; Lambert, “De Genuese aanwezigheid in laatmiddeleeuws Brugge (1435-1495): een laboratorium voor de studie van instellingen en hun rol in de economische geschiedenis.”; A. A. Ruddock. “Alien merchants in Southampton in the later Middle Ages”. In: The English Historical Review 61.239 (1946), pp. 1–17; R. S. Lopez. “Majorcans and Genoese on the North Sea route in the thirteenth century”. In: Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 29.4 (1951), pp. 1163–1179. 25 Igual Luis, “Valencia y Sevilla en el sistema económico genovés de finales del siglo XV”; Igual Luis and Navarro Espinach, “Los genoveses en España en el tránsito del siglo XV al XVI”. 26 R. S. Lopez. “Market expansion: the case of Genoa”. In: The Journal of Economic History 24.4 (1964), pp. 445–464. 27 Heers, Genova nel Quattrocento: civiltà mediterranea, grande capitalismo e capitalismo popolare, pp. 348–360. 28 Lambert, “De Genuese aanwezigheid in laatmiddeleeuws Brugge (1435-1495): een laboratorium voor de studie van instellingen en hun rol in de economische geschiedenis.”, pp. 15-60. 1.1. 1489: THE SIEGE OF BAZA 13 Figure 1.2 Distribution of the thirty Genoese merchants through ten houses, which took the loan of 1.000.000mrs for the siege of Baza on the 2nd of November 1489. The bigger nodes are the house owners. Nodes in Grey in the periphery, appeared in the reception of the loan request, but are not referenced in the house distribution. Nodes with lighter shade of color were present at the loan request reception. • The new list spoke of thirty-six merchants, twenty-three of those have known dwelling. • From the first loan demand the 2nd of November, fourteen merchants reappear in the distribution of responsibility the 12th of November. • The sum of all money promised does not add to the total requested by the Queen. • Of the ten property owners referenced in the 2nd of November deed, only five appear present in the distribution of the loan the 12th of November. • There is one new merchant mentioned – Luis Tarego. As mentioned before, the crown’s official returned on the 18th of November because the majority of merchants had not paid their share of the loan. Then, the most peculiar procedure took place. Tellez confiscated goods in the equivalent value of the 14 CHAPTER 1. THE NATION Table 1.1 Financial distribution of the loan for the siege of Baza among some Genoese Merchants in Maravedies Francisco de Rivarolo 96.000 Geronimo Doria 54.000 Cosme de Rivarolo Juan Rufo Doria Oberto di Negro 10.000 Juan Lomellini 50.000 Andrea Cassana 14.000 Esteban Spinola 30.000 Luis Spinola 36.000 Termo Tafoia 26.000 Franco di Negro 24.000 Juan Batista Gentile 12.000 Aseline Cattaneo 78.000 Pelegro Genovese 26.000 Bernardo Soprais 16.000 Luis de Rivarolo 24.000 Gregorio Presenda 16.000 Geronimo Medici 18.000 Andrea de Odon 30.000 Carlo Lorlo 20.000 Luis de Odon 7.000 Benito Pineli 31.000 Martin Pineli 20.000 Balian Salvago 18.000 Antonio di Negro 6.000 Jacome da Monte 44.000 Bernabe Aimari 30.000 Luis Tarego 20.000 Bernaldo de Grimaldo 44.000 Pelegro Usodimare 20.000 Andrea de Pomar 30.000 Corredin Spinola 18.000 Benito Cicala 34.000 Juan Spinola 2.000 Juan Doria 56.000 Lefranco Doria Total 960.000 owed amount.63 The uniqueness of the phenomena comes from the chain of sureties made to pay the shares. Thus, merchant ‘a’ relied on another merchant ‘b’ to pay his share, even though, merchant ‘a’ is at the same time paying the share of another merchant ‘c’. It is at this point that the questions which concerns this research arises, why only a subgroup of merchants to finance the loan? Was it a request made by the royal official or was it a deliberate action of the consulate? Did such exchange of sureties and payments occurred thanks to the existence of the Nation and Consulate? Were the merchants taking sureties on each other partners or bound by relationships outside family? What kind of business do the thirty seven known merchants named in the whole Baza loan request carried out? Finally, how big was the wider Genoese community in the southern Andalusia compared to the thirty seven lenders? 1.1.2 So far, the section has described the events that took place in the Autumn of 1489, when the Genoese received the loan request to support the siege on Baza. However, these documents do not really present an accurate preview of the complete Genoese community in Seville nor in southern Andalusia. Thus, in this subsection the wider community will be introduced and compared to the subgroup of thirty-seven individuals that paid the loan request. Furthermore, it will be examined and compared the composition of the relational network among the clique and the total Ligurian community. Finally, it addresses the question of why only thirty-seven merchants 63AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 19725, 1489, f.262r-264r 1.1. 1489: THE SIEGE OF BAZA 15 Figure 1.3 Directional network of sureties distribution among Genoese merchants. The arrow points to the guarantor. cover the loan to the Queen when there were hundreds of merchants present between Cadiz, Jerez, Malaga, and Seville on 1489 (table 1.2). In order to examine and compare the financiers and the wider Ligurian community, this research examines the notarial deeds found in the southern Andalusian archives. Here, the purpose is to map the different business relations as well as the importance of such relationships. At the same time, such mapping allows for the identification of patters of association that may explain the events of 1489. Subsequently, an examination of the five years prior to 1489, in order to examine the growth of the community in the years prior to the loan request and the main players present in the markets. Afterwards, an examination of the five years post 1489, which permits to identify consequences in their business and community. The existence of notarial deeds from early fifteenth century in Andalusia is scarce, the research includes all the contracts and deeds collected since 1480. On the other hand, the later limit is set at 1495. Thus, it is leaving out the financial impact resulting from Columbus’ second trip. The relations are inferred from three types of contracts. First, the normal company or societas constitution. However, not many contracts of this kind survives for between 1450 to 1515 in the sources collected by this research. A reference exist to a companion of Gregorio Pinelli in 1475. The reference appears in a bill of exchange sent from Seville to Toledo, however not much more is known 16 CHAPTER 1. THE NATION than this broad statement. 64 The second type of contracts are bills of exchange. From the bill’s taker and payee are inferred as associates, as well as the deliverer and payer. 65 Finally, the power of attorney is used to presume associations. It is important to highlight that both in the case of bills of exchange and power of attorney, the appearance of two individuals together does not necessarily constitute the existence of any form of shared liability.66 The documents trace reveal two things in principle regarding question of who were the thirty-seven Genoese that financed the loan to the Queen. First, ten were residents owning property at Seville - Francisco de Rivarolo, Bernaldo de Grimaldi, Juan de Monte, Damiano di Negro, Jacome Sopranis, Balian Salvago, Juan Lomellini, Juan Rufo Doria, Aselin Cattaneo, and Andrea de Odon. 67 Second, all the merchants that have their goods ceased, recorded fabrics as payment for their shares to the loan. 68 Thus, the first clues regarding the business nature of these merchants appears: a number of them are permanent residents and had enough fabric surplus to use it as currency and pay the monarch representative. (a) Number of contracts distribution. (b) Value of contracts distribution in mrs. Figure 1.4 Goods and Services contract distribution in 1489. These merchants found in the second half of the fifteenth century that southern Andalusia was a specific market, especially for primarily first-order goods like wheat, edible seeds (Malaga), and raw wool. Goods whose value are intrinsic, but whose value elevates when transformed into second-order goods. In the same way, leather (Jerez and Cadiz), olive oil and soap (Seville), wine (Jerez and Malaga), and low-quality cloth represented the second-order goods produced in the land. At first, Genoese 64AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 2.154, 1475, f. 247. 65 The names of the parts that request and take the loan at a city and of those that pay and receive in the second city, follow the work of: J. Bolton and F. Guidi-Bruscoli. “‘Your flexible friend’: the bill of exchange in theory and practice in the fifteenth century”. In: The Economic History Review (2021), p.4. 66 Lopez, “Proxy in medieval trade”; J. Puttevils. “Tweaking financial instruments: bills obligatory in sixteenth-century Antwerp”. In: Financial history review 22.3 (2015), p. 337; J. Puttevils. Merchants and trading in the sixteenth century: the Golden Age of Antwerp. Routledge, 2015, pp.109–133. 67AHPSe,PNS, Leg. 19.725, 1489, f.227. 68AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 19.725, 1489, ff.186v and 262r-264r. 1.1. 1489: THE SIEGE OF BAZA 17 Table 1.2 Genoese Merchant’s Names across Seville, Malaga, Jerez de la Frontera, Cadiz, and Valencia in 1489. The list also includes some Florentine, Piacentine, Sienese, and Venetian individuals, who carried out business with the Genoese at the time. Leonis Adorno Agustin Adorno Luco Batista Adorno Francisco Adorno Jerónimo Rufaldi Paolo Laudi Bernaldo Aimari Bernaldo Aimari Francesco de Milan Giovanni dell’Agnello Carlo Lorlo Andrea de Cassana Bernabé Cicala Esteban Centurion Manolin de Casyna Esteban Bonora Benito Centurion Gaspar Centurion Martin Centurion Flerigo Centurion Melchor Centurion Bernaldo di Castiglione Perceval Cattaneo Selin Cattaneo Pelegro di Goano Pedro Batista de Domoculta Francisco Cattaneo Francesco di Negro Polo di Negro Oberto di Negro Angelo di Negro Damiano di Negro Teramo di Negro Martin Pinello Juan Rufo Doria Julian Doria Casil Fornari Cesaro Bardi Çelin Vivaldo Juan Batista Gentile Juan Antonio de Franchi Berlado de Franchi Pedro Gentile Agustin Justinian Bernaldo de Grimaldo Margulo de Grimaldo Agustín Grimaldo Perceval de Grimaldo Pedro Guialtedo Bernabé Incali Juan Guialtedo Agustin Ytalian Antonio Ytaliano Gaspar Ytalian Pantaleon Ytalian Mateo Viña Juan Lomellini Cosme Lomellini Jerónimo de Medici Domenego de Moneglia Jacome da Monte Bernardo da Monte Nicoluso di Monardis Juanoto Vivaldo Niculoso de Mar Juan Batista de Marin Andrea de Odone Luis de Odone Juan Perresujin Benito Pinelo Antonio Pinelo Bernaldo Pinelo Batista Pinelo Andrea de Pomar Francisco Pinelo Jacome de Rivarolo Francisco Pomar Gregorio Presenda Francisco de Rivarolo Cosme de Rivarolo Luis de Rivarolo Jacome de Sopranis Balian Salvago Alarame Salvago Cosme Salvago Antonio Salvago Cristóbal Salvago Niculoso Sopranis Bernaldo Sopranis Jeronimo Sopranis Lucián de Spinola Ambrossio Spinola Juan de Spinola Lefranco de Spinola Bernaldino de Spinola Corredin de Spinola Cristóbal Spinola Gotrisco Spinola Esteban Spinola Tomas Sauli Pedro de Spinola Nocoloso Spinola Luis Tarigo Termo Tafoia Batista Curlo Guido de Labezaris Pelegro de Usodimare traded and exchanged such commodities for high-quality fabrics like linen, cloth, and silk from the northern Atlantic (Bruges or London) and Italy. They also imported paper in great quantities, many times in partnership with the German bookmakers settled in Seville.69 Genoese trade was not limited to the exchange of goods and their transportation from one city to another. The Ligurians also participated in the inter Iberian trade, not 69 AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.100, 1495, f. 286v-287. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 2.156, 1496, f. 86. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 2.157 1500, f. 391v. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 2157, 1500, f. 449. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 1497, 1498, f. 34. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 17.419, 1493, f. 110. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.100, 1494, f. 130v. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.127, 1520, f. 212. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.102, 1504, f. 796. 18 CHAPTER 1. THE NATION limiting to long-distance trade. The Genoese moved and facilitated the transfer of goods and money between the different markets. 70 They did so by letters of exchange and service contracts. These types of contracts constitute 14,22% and 10,8% of the surviving contracts of the sampled sources in the archives (fig. 1.5). Commercial Figure 1.5 Total number of different kinds of contracts. hubs like Seville were crossroads for goods thanks to its strategical geographical location. Nevertheless, the Catholic Monarchs developed politics of securing Seville’s commercial preeminence granting trading monopoly over port cities like Cadiz, San Lucar de Barrameda, or Puerto de Santa Maria, securing taxation and revenues for the royal arcs and away form local nobles like the Duke of Medina Sidonia or the Count of Arcos, and after the death of the last Duke of Medinaceli (1501), incorporating the port under direct royal control. 71 Still, the market had established as capable of 70 Letters of exchange between Genoa and Granada: AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.127, 1520, f. 747. Between Valencia and Lisbon AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 4.887, 1506, f. 313v. Between Valencia and Canary Islands AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 4.887, 1506, f. 355v. Between Valencia and Leon AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 4887, 1506, ff. 390-390v. Between Genoa and Oran AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.127, 1520, f. 287. Movement of sugar from the Canary Islands to Flanders: AHPTe, Juan Ruiz de Berlana, 1508, ff. 258v. Wheat from Malaga to Genoa: AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.101, 1501, f. 681. Between Barcelona and Bruges, a loan of 27000 ducats was paid through the power to collect from the gold and pearls arriving from the indies. The document shows the gold’s waiting to be minted into coins, AHPSe, PNS, 9.127, 1520, f. 703. 71 J. M. Bello León. “Las rentas derivadas de la venta y distribución de pescado en Sevilla y Jerez de la Frontera a finales de la Edad Media. Una aproximación”. In: En la España Medieval 40 (2017), p. 35; M. Ladero Quesada. “Política económica, restauración de la hacienda y gastos de la monarquía”. In: Las Instituciones castellano-leonesas y portuguesas antes del Tratado de Tordesillas. Sociedad V Centenario del Tratado de Tordesillas. 1995, pp. 79–92. 1.1. 1489: THE SIEGE OF BAZA 19 handling the growth brought about the economic spring out of the Canary Islands’ sugar trade, and the southerner Andalusian soap, grain, and olive oil production. The Atlantic trade of precious metals, jewels, slaves, spices, and the expansion of the Spanish kingdoms limited to the Iberian peninsula to an Empire across two continents. Figure 1.6 Complete network of business transactions carried out by Genoese merchants in southern Andalusia in 1489. Color defined by modularity and size defined by degree centrality. The sources for this figure constitute 350 notarial deeds found in the southern Andalusian archives. A problem that arises from this event, comes from two contradictions, which were coherent at a the deeper level regarding the principles of association between individuals. First, why is the loan distributed against 37 individuals when first it had been distributed around 11 households? Why do this 37 individuals accept all the loan when there is a wider community of around 100 merchants? Here one has to keep in mind that in Late Medieval and Early Modern economic moral terms, the household was the center. Hence, Clavero speaks of ’Oikonomia’ over economy. 72 Law and order recognized family bodies, and found it rare to recognize the individual as the social subject. Thus, the two inconsistencies mentioned before come from the same moral conundrum, not because the individual replaces the household at the time of distribution of responsibilities. Nor because a subgroup of individuals take the representation of the whole merchant nation. It is because although in the macro, the cultural and moral principles are recognized and recorded as understood by historiography and the canon, in the micro and the actual business and transactions, 72B. Clavero. Antidora: Antropología católica de la economía moderna. Giuffrè, 1991, p.170. 20 CHAPTER 1. THE NATION the understanding of guild, corporation, societas, or even some family the theory crumbles. In the following two graphics represents the network of associations before and after 1489 (fig. 1.7). They show two things regarding the association between Genoese merchants in southern Andalusia. First, formal association flows beyond family or territory of origin for the majority of the individuals. As evidenced in fig. 1.7b, the map product of the analysis of inferred associations is incomplete. In other words, individuals that are in fact associated do not appear associated. For example, the Rivarolo brothers as seen in fig. 1.7b are not connected, which means that the have different modiularity score. 73 Therefore, one cannot draw a conclusion regarding the nature of the sureties’ exchange nor the selection of only thirty-seven merchants to pay the loan. The inadequate results from examining social network of Genoese merchants associations between 1450-1495 obey the following reasons. First, economic institutions like bills of exchange or power of attorney were not an absolute indicator of shared liability; however, it may indicate a credit relationship (section 3.2). Consequently, their existence does not secure the precondition associations. 74 Moreover, the reason one can identify the incomplete results from the previous analysis comes from the trade examination, rather than sampling of the material by particular economic institutions (fig. 1.6). However, the comparison of all three levels of examination: the loan’s request records, the wider commercial exchange network, and the association networks, deliver the following conclusions. The eleven house owners were the merchants carrying out the most amount of business (fig. 1.6). The twenty merchants that had goods confiscated as payment for their share of the loan were among the most active merchants the financial market at the time (fig. 1.7). All the merchants mentioned in any of the loan’s request records, appear present in commercial records through the sample data. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that the loan’s share division was decided by the nation and not by the royal officers. Merchants could benefit the most from extending a loan to the monarchs, because of their involvement in the financial market, possessed the liquidity to make the transactions. If the loan request can be understood as a limit event, as something unforeseen for the merchants – which was not. Then the answer to the question, why did the 73 Modularity is a system property which measures the degree to which densely connected compartments within a system can be decoupled into separate communities or clusters which interact more among themselves rather than other communities A. Kharrazi. “Resilience”. In: Encyclopedia of Ecology (Second Edition). Ed. by B. Fath. Second Edition. Oxford: Elsevier, 2019, pp. 414–418. ISBN: 978-0-444-64130-4. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.10751-1.URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780124095489107511. 74 Gelderblom and Grafe, “The rise and fall of the merchant guilds: Re-thinking the comparative study of commercial institutions in premodern Europe”. 1.1. 1489: THE SIEGE OF BAZA 21 (a) 1450-1489. (b) 1489-1495 Figure 1.7 Social network of Genoese merchants in southern Andalusia and Valencia between 1450-1495. Color code corresponds to a modularity qualification. Size of the nodes is determined by their degree centrality. The sources for this figure constitute 180 notarial deeds found in the southern Andalusian archives. 22 CHAPTER 1. THE NATION responsibility of the loan appears recorded among a few individuals, and why the subsequent amortization between individuals does not coincide with family or business partners? must be that the institution and theory fall short of the reality of the market. 1.2 Governor Fregoso Letter to the Genoese Nation 1520 At the end of the fifteenth century Genoa was under official French Signoria (1499- 1506), similarly to the previous ones between 1396 to 1409 and 1458 to 1461. 75 After the revolts in 1506 Genoa’s political situation was tense and in constant influence from the wider Italian politics, nevertheless the Commune continued to side with the French monarchy until 1522 (1499-1506, 1507-1512, and 1515-1522) when the Impirial troops besieged the city, and ending completely in 1528 when Andrea Doria swore allegiance to Charles V. The letter by the governor of Genoa to the Genoese Nation in Seville in 1520 represents an exceptional document in legal, political, and economic terms. Legally, it raises the question about the jurisdiction and controls the Ligurian Republic exercised over the foreign people and the institutions that constituted themselves in the mother Patria’s image or imaginary. Politically, it connects the Castilian Atlantic market to the future wars and conflicts in the Low countries (French invasion), the annexation of the kingdom of Navarre to the Spanish Crown under Emperor Charles V, and the Four-Year War (1521-1526), part of the ongoing Italian Wars. Economically it provides a list of the recipients of said letter. All recognized and significant Genoese merchants carried business in the Spanish Crown’s southern Andalusian and Atlantic markets. Such a list represents a supposed snapshot Ligurian community in Seville, who enjoyed privileges in Castile since 1248, awarded after the conquest of the valley of the river Guadalquivir reached completion.76 This section shall center on the economic aspects of this document. Here, the purpose is to study ‘who’ are the letter recipients, and what was their business. Furthermore, the investigation questions the group’s cohesion and compares it with the broader market of foreign and Genoese merchants that do not appear referenced in the letter. The association patterns and business ventures of these recipients and other different merchants from the non-referenced will be studied too. 1.2.1 75 F. Levy. “Gênes, ville de France? Aspects juridiques de la domination française à Gênes”. In: Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria 47/1 (2007); C. Shaw. “The French Signoria over Genoa, 1458-1461”. In: Libertà e Dominio: Il Sistema Politico Genovese: Le Relazioni Esterne e il Controllo del Territorio, edited by Matthias Schenettger and Carlo Taviani (2011), pp. 39–54. 76González Gallego, “El Libro de los Privilegios de la Nación Genovesa.” 1.2. GOVERNOR FREGOSO LETTER TO THE GENOESE NATION 1520 29 their sisters to Francisco and Cosme, owners of Sevillian soap’s monopoly, the orchil of the Canary Islands, and significant portions of land in the Canary Islands where they produced sugar. 110 They integrated into that business, adding the trade of cloth and fabrics – typical of Italian Merchants on the Iberian Peninsula. Jacome de Sopranis had two other brothers Antonio and Bernabé. Antonio was the most prominent and influential, thanks to a hostile take over of Francisco Rivarolo’s business in the second decade of the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, Jacome carried out business ever since the early 1490s. 111 During the sixteenth century, he integrates into the network of his brother Antonio. He helped to handle the soap fabrics and sugar plantations in the Canary Islands (fig. 1.10). 112 The success of sugar, oil, and soap generated wealth for the Sopranis to handle loans and banking exchanges. Jacome also partakes in the movement of bills of exchange from Leon and the fairs of Medina del Campo, and the trade of securities in Valencia. 113 Thus, the securities trade meant for these Genoese the integration to a market well beyond their familial ties. For Jacome, there is evidence of purchasing debts from Brine and Leardo, who had purchased them from a Giustiniani resident in America, who had debts in Valencia.114 Figure 1.10 Distribution of Sopranis (left) and Spinola (right) number of contracts by type of good (1515-1525). The Spinola is one of the noblest families in Genoa. The problem regarding the study of the Spinola family anywhere is the large number of namesake individuals. The Spinola elude prosopography and traditional historiographical methodology that help the identification of different individuals. The reason is twofold. First, their last name gets vulgarized into Castilian (Espinola or Espindola) in most documents. The second reason is that they were neighbours. A significant part of their business happened with Castilians over other Genoese. Thus, some practices common between Genoese in 110Rosa Olivera, “La varia fortuna de los Rivarola”; Otte, “Los sopranis y los Lugo”. 111AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 2.155, 1495, f. 518. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 2.154, 1494, f. 498v. 112 Sugar and plantations business: AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.121, 1517, f.46. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.123, 1518, f.61. Soap: AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.123, 1518, f. 64. 113AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.123, 1518, f. 106 and 107. 114AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.123, 1518, f. 180. 30 CHAPTER 1. THE NATION the identification of patronymics were not standard. Of the two Spinola recipients of the governor’s letter, Francisco was the most popular, and Tomas participates in a few significant deals. Like most other merchants, these two Spinola carried out regular trade in fabrics, oil, and banking services. 115 The most exciting part of their business comes from the trade of soap. Both Spinolas, Jacome and Niculoso Giustiniani, and Pero Benito Basignana have a company to sell soap in Antwerp’s and Bruges’s markets. In 1516 the company was set to send twenty thousand quintals of soap, over four years, each year five thousand quintals. 116 The soap came from Santiponce factories. The owners of said factories were the Sopranis and Castiglione heirs of Francisco di Rivarolo’s properties. 117 Thus, they did not produce any of the soap themselves, but they bought it and transported it to the northern Atlantic for trade there. The company also included Andrea and Juan Spinola in Seville; Pascual, Estefano, and Ambrosio Spinola and Polo di Negro neighbours of Antwerp; Vincencio Sauli, neighbour of Genoa. The company constituted in forty-nine stocks, three owned by Sauli, twenty-four by the Antwerp merchants, and the other twenty-two belongs to the Sevillian merchants. 118 However, the boss of the whole business seems to have been Benito di Negro, although apparently as an invisible partner, since the contract does not reveal how many shares (if any), he held. One assumes di Negro as the boss because, on Saturday, December 10th, 1519, the Spinola received a letter asking them to include into the business Jacome Grimaldi and Niculao Doria. The Spinola refused because the terms suggested the new members’ shares should come out of their 22/49 shares. The contract states that Grimaldi and Doria would not be accepted if Benito di Negro said no. 119 Nevertheless, Spinola did not accept, and the next deed regarding this trading company is a lawsuit between them.120 Jacome Grimaldi, as shown before, tried to enter the Spinola soap business. He is present in the market as an intermediate figure alongside high-profile Grimaldi in Seville, like Bernaldo, Juan Francisco, and Juan Batista. However, during the decade this study, his work concentrated on the movement of bills of exchange. 121 A significant part of his business centered around collecting the debts and finishing the businesses started by Jeronimo Grimaldi in America (who died around 1517). 122 In 115AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.120, 1516, f.57. 116AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.120, 1516, f. 34 (between sheets). 117AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.123, 1518, f. 64. 118AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.126, 1519, f. 69. 119 Salvo si otra cosa en contrario tuvieseis de Benito de Negro. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.126, 1519, f. 69v. 120AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.126, 1519, f. 70. 121AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.127, 1520, f. 287. 122AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.130, 1522, f.159. 1.2. GOVERNOR FREGOSO LETTER TO THE GENOESE NATION 1520 31 order to do so, he partnered with Agustin Vivaldi. The latter resided in Santo Domingo and carried out business for several other Genoese.123 Figure 1.11 Distribution of Jacome Grimaldi (left) and Constantin Gentile (right) number of contracts by type of good (1515-1525). Constantin Gentile is one of the Genoese consuls between 1519 and 1521, his name is found consistently in the sources from 1510 onward. His business centered around banking and money movement through bills of exchange. The exchanges most common come from Valencia, León, and Medina del Campo. 124 He traded and connected with all the major and mid-tier merchants, giving him a privileged position within the merchants’ network despite not being the trader with the most significant number of contracts for the decadefig. 1.12a. Among the business partners, one finds Maria Centurion (only heir of Esteban) and his uncle Benito, who were taking up loans to send America shipments. 125 Similar partners of Gentiles were Esteban and Batista Salvago. 126 Another connection that Gentile made with the Centurion comes through Juan Bautista Grimaldi, partner of Gaspar in the movement of bills of exchange. Regarding the rest of the merchants signing the response: Benito Doria, Nicolao Fornari, Jacome Merlasin, Jeronimo Moneglia, Bartolomeo di Negro, Antonio Pineli, Pero Juan Rivarolo, Jeronimo and Pero Salvago, and Juan Agustin Ytalian. Although essential, they do not appear among the thirty most important traders during the decade (1515-1525) at any level or time sample. By importance, one means average measurements of the number of connections with other merchants, number of contracts, or the contracts’ average value. They were merchants of an important tradition. Some like Doria and Pinello were among the older merchants. Their trade in olive oil, cloth, leather, and grain connects to main characters like the Centurion or the Grimaldi. 127 Yet not in volume or value as the rest of the market. As shown in 123 AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 23, 1523, f.322. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 23, 1523, f.362. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.121, 1517, f.5. 124 Medina del Campo and Leon: AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.127, 1520, f.435. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.127, 1520, f.698. Valencia: AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.123, 1518, f. 897. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.122, 1522, f. 766. 125AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 26, 1525, f.722. 126AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.124, 1524, f.279. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.124, 1524, f.51. 127For example, bills of exchange: AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9121, 1517, f. 103. 32 CHAPTER 1. THE NATION the following section, the Genoese market is much more extensive than these twenty individuals, and their functioning much more intricate. The role and importance of the merchant may change, but they were frequently present and active. 1.2.3 In this subsection of the chapter, the objective is to carry out a social network analysis of the Genoese market in southern Andalusia at the time of the governor’s letter (1520) and in the decade encompassing that date. For this, 550 notarial deeds have been systematized from the notarial archives in Seville, Malaga, Jerez, and the Canary Islands, alongside some supportive documents from the General Archive of Simancas, and the Archive of the Chancellery in Granada. The primary objective is to question whether the merchants named in response to Fregoso’s letter were the most important Genoese merchants at the time. In order to do so, the data has been sampled in six different ways. The first corresponds to all the notarial deeds corresponding to the year 1520. The second and third samples correspond to three (1519-1521) and seven (1517-1523) years, and a fourth of the complete decade (1515-1525). Two other samples of five years excluding 1520 have also been analyzed (01-01-1515 to 31-12-1519 and 01-01-1521 to 31-12-1525) in order to avoid biases. The market’s network for the year 1520 shows that trade happened extensively. There were some small communities (small-worlds) at this level as groups like the surrounding Franco di Negro (fig. 1.12a). 128 This is ought to the fact that di Negro traded mostly within the Canary Islands. Constantin Gentile appears at the center with the highest degree of centrality, represented with an intense green color. The contrary is found with the the second consul, Merlasin, in the middle of the network halfway between other letter recipients like Brine and Leardo, Francisco Spinola, Leonardo Cattaneo, and Gaspar Centurion. A different picture appears when the nodes’ ranking is determined by the capacity to function as a bridge (fig. 1.12b). Then two are at the top, Jacome di Sopranis (5.890,93) and Franco di Negro (4.929). This measure shows that to have the most connections does not mean that it is also the node that integrates the network the most. Nevertheless, almost all the nodes have a very similar Closeness-centrality score. This measurement is simply the average farness to all other individuals in a network. Urbanists mostly use these measurements to identify roads and points in a city ’close to all the other [...] along the shortest paths of the network.’ 129 In this case, 128 ‘small-world networks’ result from the existence of links (edges). Although part of the network, connect extremes (vertices) at a broader distance if they had happened randomly. D. J. Watts and S. H. Strogatz. “Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’networks”. In: nature 393.6684 (1998), p. 440. 129 S. Porta et al. “Street centrality and densities of retail and services in Bologna, Italy”. In: Environment and Planning B: Planning and design 36.3 (2009), pp. 450–465; S. Porta et al. “Street centrality and the location of economic activities in Barcelona”. In: Urban Studies 49.7 (2012), pp. 1471–1488. 1.2. GOVERNOR FREGOSO LETTER TO THE GENOESE NATION 1520 33 (a) Degree centrality. . (b) Betweenesscentrality. Figure 1.12 Genoese market network for 1520. The ranking of the nodes, both in color as in size, is defined in figure a) by degree centrality and b) by betweenesscentrality. Closeness-centrality shows us that any of the twenty individuals in table 1.4 would have been equally successful and fast in transmitting the information to the rest of the network. Thus, was that the reason why these twenty merchants received the letter from the governor? Did a natural system of popularity and trust inform the Genoese Nation in 1520 as to whom to choose? The only way to confirm these two premises is 34 CHAPTER 1. THE NATION to examine both the market’s nature both before and after 1520. Because, the flux of information relies upon a stable network and will continue without dramatic changes. Table 1.4 Top twenty merchants in the Genoese market in Seville in 1520, by means of their score in network statistical analysis. Blue coloured names were among the addressees of Governor Fregoso’s letter. Indexes of the columns are: Centrality, Eccentricity, Closnesscentrality, and Betweenesscentrality. Name Deg. Ecc. Clos. Betw. Constantin Gentil 37 5 0.405 3357.06 Nicolao Forne 28 5 0.376 1010.39 Jacome de Sopranis 23 4 0.413 5890.93 Franco di Negro 22 6 0.283 4929.00 Jacome Grimaldo 20 5 0.384 877.56 Franco Leardo 28 5 0.380 1025.92 Gaspar Centurion 18 6 0.306 1444.84 Silvestre Pinello 11 7 0.226 1276.00 Juan Batista de Grimaldo 19 6 0.315 1156.68 Jacome Merlasyn 18 5 0.367 326.00 Jeronimo Salvago 17 5 0.368 541.10 Lucas Marin 19 6 0.304 53.60 Jeronimo de Gentile 17 6 0.304 69.25 Juan Ytaliano 24 5 0.372 378.33 Leonardo Cattaneo 23 5 0.371 440.31 Esteban Centurion 13 6 0.316 529.76 Pero Benito de Bassignana 11 5 0.326 999.63 Pedro de Lugo (SP) 5 5 0.337 4644.00 From 1519 to 1521, the network grows, and thus, new players enter affecting the top twenty individuals in the tables. The distribution between the top remains half and half between signers and non-signers (table 1.5). Names like Leonardo Cattaneo fall out of the top twenty, whereas Francisco Spinola takes over as the best connected and most central merchant(fig. 1.13). One possible explanation for both cases is the expansion of the market, and another is the perspective. In the same way, it can be that the business was slow in that period or not recorded. One can state that the network changes in the following way: • The graphs’ structure shows that as the data increases, there is a coincidence between the measurements like betweenness-centrality and degree centrality. In this case, the individual (Francisco Spinola) with the most connection is also the individual that connects the most vertices. • The groups that tend to be formed in the peripheries form around individuals like Benito Pomar (Valencia), Luco Batista Adorno (Jerez), Francisco di Negro (Canary Islands). Satellite markets like the Canary Islands and Jerez hold their niche while connected to the metropolis through a well-established channel. 130 130 AHPJe, PN, Leg. 0080bis, 1525, ff. 28 and 148. Valencia: AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.120, 1516, f. 320. Canary Islands AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.123, 1518, f. 64. 1.2. GOVERNOR FREGOSO LETTER TO THE GENOESE NATION 1520 35 • Simultaneously, the body of the graph thickens and tangles, depicting constant and expanding trade. In social network analysis, this type of association is defined as ’preferential attachment.’ It means that individuals tend to attach themselves with someone that may connect them with many others. • Since the sample expands, towards the future and the past, the comparison of statistical measures’ shows that individuals do not hoard connections. They maintain similar scores over time in terms of closeness and betweenness-centralities. They tend to decrease slowly. It can be because the most prominent individuals maintain their status but outsource some business to grow and expand within the market, or simply because the expansion of the sample adjusts the proportion. Once the sample grows to include seven and ten years, the trends continue as in the previous example. Average scores continue to slightly decree (tables 1.5 and 1.7), which is coherent with a bigger network. The periphery continues to present small clusters of nodes surrounding the individual that connects the Sevillian market with each space (figs. 1.15 and 1.16). The top twenty merchants maintain a consistent group in its majority. A new phenomenon presents, no individual holds a considerable led as a connector within the market. It means that the top-scoring nodes occupy a similar central location within the network, possibly thanks to a highly integrated market resulting from shared connections and intersecting business. Up to this point, the Genoese merchants’ network in southern Andalusia was highly interconnected, consistent, organized, and close-knit. The individuals’ constant presence and SNA scores throughout the different scopes show that these merchants maintained a constant presence in Seville and the Castilian Atlantic. In turn, it suggests independence and autonomy from Genoa. The election of the eighteen signers for the letter was coherent, aiming at a quick and uniform distribution of the information across the market. Nevertheless, this is not without a doubt. The data from 1520 contains the prelude to a series of events, in both local and international spheres, as the wars in Italy and Netherlands, and the Indies Council’s creation as a separate and autonomous institution to govern over America. Furthermore, documents like the election of consuls and auction of the tomín, which congregates merchants, can vice the depiction of the network and the ties between individuals, bringing them closer than they could be otherwise. Therefore, the analysis of the periods of 1515- 1519 and 1521-1525 is necessary to corroborate and compare the findings. After analysing those two lustrums, one finds that the network changes – mainly the second (1521-1525). The presence of the ’addressees’ shortens by one member on them both (table 1.7). Likewise, the network appears to loosen compared to the previous analysis. Before, the Network diameter oscillated between 6 and 8, compared 36 CHAPTER 1. THE NATION (a) Betweenesscentrality. (b) Closnesscentrality. (c) Degree centrality. Figure 1.13 Genoese market network for 1519-1521. The ranking of the nodes, both in colour as in size, is defined by their betweenesscentrality (top), closnesscentrality (midle), degree centrality (bottom). The graphics are displaying 65% of the recorded contracts, with a filter to display nodes with degree centrality higher than 5. to the present 10 and 12 (figs. 1.14 and 1.16). Thus, to connect one extreme of the 1.2. GOVERNOR FREGOSO LETTER TO THE GENOESE NATION 1520 37 Table 1.5 Top 20 merchants in the Genoese market in Seville between 1519-1521 and 1517- 1523, by their score in network statistical analysis Centrality, Eccentricity, Closnesscentrality, and Betweenesscentrality (degrees are scaled by the number year in the sample). Name Deg. Ecc. Clos. Betw. Francisco Espindola 13.33 4 0.5 0.181 Constantin Gentil 12.33 5 0.48 0.177 Juan Francisco de Grimaldo 4 5 0.31 0.174 Juan Batista de Grimaldo 9.33 4 0.48 0.132 Silvestre de Brine 3.67 4 0.39 0.125 Franco Leardo 13.33 5 0.45 0.117 Jacome Grimaldo 11 5 0.45 0.109 Jacome de Sopranis 8 5 0.4 0.104 Nicolao Forne 4.67 5 0.37 0.08 Nicolao Doria 9.67 4 0.46 0.055 Gaspar Centurion 11 5 0.45 0.049 Juan Italiano 11 5 0.45 0.049 Jacome Merlasyn 2.33 6 0.24 0.043 Juan Tomas Spinola 9.33 5 0.41 0.042 Andrea Spinola 8.33 4 0.39 0.037 Lucas Marin 1.33 6 0.24 0.032 Pero Benito Bassignana 6.33 4 0.39 0.027 Franco di Negro 8 5 0.4 0.016 Benito di Negro 7.33 5 0.43 0.004 Silvestre Pinello 7.33 5 0.43 0.004 Domenigo Ricio 6.33 5 0.35 0.003 Name Deg. Ecc. Clos. Betw. Gaspar Centurion 11.57 5 0.42 0.09 Juan Francisco de Grimaldo 11 5 0.45 0.11 Francisco Espindola 9 4 0.45 0.07 Franco Leardo 7.14 6 0.29 0.11 Silvestre de Brine 7.14 5 0.35 0.08 Constantin Gentil 7 5 0.4 0.02 Jacome Grimaldo 6.29 5 0.42 0.03 Juan Tomas Spinola 6.14 5 0.39 0.06 Juan de Spinola 6 5 0.43 0.05 Leonardo Cattaneo 5.57 5 0.44 0.05 Andrea Spinola 5.43 5 0.43 0.05 Juan Batista de Grimaldo 5.14 5 0.41 0.05 Adan Bivaldo 5.14 5 0.41 0.03 Nicolao Doria 4.29 5 0.36 0.03 Pero Benito de Bassignana 3.86 5 0.36 0.02 Benito de Pomar 3.71 5 0.36 0.02 Esteban Centurion 3.29 5 0.42 0.02 Franco di Negro 3.14 5 0.38 0.01 Benito di Negro 2 5 0.39 0.02 network to another, it can be double the distance, without it being a bigger network in terms of members. Furthermore, for the period between 1521-1525, there are groups of nodes disconnected from the principal network. They correspond to merchants settled in Malaga (Stella group), America (Cattaneo and Colombus), and an association between Doria 38 CHAPTER 1. THE NATION (a) Degree centrality. (b) Closnesscentrality. Figure 1.14 Genoese market network for 1517-1523. The ranking of the nodes, both in colour as in size, is defined by their respective centrality measure, degree centrality and betweenesscentrality have imperceptible differences.The graphics are displaying 45% of the recorded contracts, with a filter to display nodes with degree centrality higher than 8. Figure 1.15 Genoese market network for 1515-1525. The ranking of the nodes, both in colour as in size, is defined by their degree centrality. its dfference with closnesscentrality and betweenesscentrality are imperceptible. The graphics are displaying 40% of the recorded contracts, with a filter to display nodes with degree centrality higher than 8. and the Bardi from Florence. These separated clusters of nodes affect the statistical scores like closeness-centrality. It creates nodes with a perfect score of 1, meaning that they connect every node in a group. For the first lustrum, the changes appear in 1.3. CONCLUSIONS 45 territories. The treaty dealt primarily with piracy, the embargo of merchandise, and taxes in the principalities of Catalonia, Mallorca, Sardinia, and Sicily.137 This peace treaty was constantly challenged or suspended throughout the first decades of the sixteenth century. It produced renegotiation and constant contact between Ferdinand II of Aragon and the Commune, which was unusual during the second half of the fifteenth century. 138 Furthermore, commercial evidence argues in favour of economic independence and trade concentration in the Iberian peninsula (fig. 1.20). Thus, from in this seemingly independence from Genoa the second half of the fifteenth century, the Ligurian business in southern Andalusia was a specific market of primarily first-order goods. Specifically, leather (Jerez and Cadiz), olive oil and soap (Seville), wine (Jerez and Malaga), and edible seeds (Malaga). Low-quality cloth represented the second-order good produced and traded in the land for high-quality fabrics like linen, cloth, and silk from the northern Atlantic (Bruges or London) and Italy. They also imported paper in great quantities, many times in partnership with the German bookmakers settled in Seville. 139 By the XVI century Seville had become an essential financial seat. With America rise to prominence and the constant need of the sugar trade in the European Atlantic, 140 most of these merchants centered around banking enterprises. Individuals like the Centurion and Grimaldi ensured the shipments and ships in their trips to America. 141 Furthermore, the success of sugar, oil, and soap generated great wealth, which merchants redirected into the handling of loans and banking exchanges. The movement of bills of exchange from Leon and the fairs of Medina del Campo and the trade of securities in Valencia, constituted the local exchange and capital movement network dominated by the Genoese. 142 Likewise, the securities trade meant for these financiers the integration to a market well beyond their familial ties. For some, this trade not only extended their association well beyond Castilian or Genoese merchants. It meant connecting to British, Portuguese, and German merchants (fig. 2.10). So far, the Genoese merchant nation’s characteristics in Castile and its consulate in Seville are the following. The associating imaginary centres around the idea of 137Spain’s National Historical Archive (AHN), State (ES), 2876, file 1. 138Lisciandrelli, “Trattati e negoziazioni politiche della Repubblica di Genova (938-1797)”. 139 AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.100, 1495, f. 286v-287. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 2.156, 1496, f. 86. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 2.157, 1500, f. 391v. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 2.157, 1500, f. 449. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 1.497, 1498, f. 34. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 17.419, 1493, f. 110. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.100, 1494, f. 130v. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.127, 1520, f. 212. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.102, 1504, f. 796. 140 J. W. Moore. “Madeira, Sugar, and the Conquest of Nature in the" First" Sixteenth Century, Part II: From Regional Crisis to Commodity Frontier, 1506—1530”. In: Review (Fernand Braudel Center) (2010), pp. 1–24. 141 Loans for a trip to Santo Domingo AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.123, 1518, f. 210. Loan for a trip to Cuba made by Centruione and Grimaldi AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.123, 1518, f. 87. Loan for a trip to Cuba at risk of Centurion AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.120, 1516, f. 134. 142AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.123, 1518, f. 106 and 107. 46 CHAPTER 1. THE NATION Figure 1.20 Business’ destination map by decade, from top to bottom 1490s to 1520s. The size of the circle determines the number of contracts directed to each place. Includes a detailed map of the Iberian Peninsula. Table of the top places referenced in contracts by the percentage of each decade’s total number of contracts. 1.3. CONCLUSIONS 47 common Ligurian origin. Nevertheless, they do not pursue other Italians or individuals from enjoying their privileges in this kingdom. Their trade is not a branch operation (fig. 1.20). 143 The Genoese operated a parallel institution of a religious character, the confraternity, but its effects on the market are imperceptible. Two consuls precede over the responsibilities of conflict resolution and administration of the fondaco. However, as demonstrated before, merchants opted for local judges and as residents owned private property. Hence, the use of said public good was optional (fig. 1.1). The nation’s cohesion was strong, and exchange constantly happened between Genoese regardless of family origin (fig. 1.12b). Thus, the nature of the market exchange network is a very tightly knitted one. Nonetheless, the merchants associate and trade extensible, if not more, with Castilian and many other nations. To the point where those other nations trade almost equally to Genoese as to Castilian. (fig. 2.10). Figure 1.21 Number of contracts made between different foreign nations and Castilian or Genoese 1450-1530. Two are the contributions to the field aimed in this chapter. First, a method of approaching guild-like institutions when absent of direct primary sources produced by the ‘guild.’ As primary sources regarding guild, nations, and confraternities are scarce for most cases. The employment of Social Network Analysis on wider existing sources like notarial deeds allows scholars to analyze groups of individuals through the evidence of a type of interaction (in this case, business). Furthermore, Social Network Analysis allows the comparison of the institution’s rules with the actual economic dynamics. Thus, exists the possibility to measure and corroborate the importance of the institutions, or lack thereof. Second, contribute to demonstrate through quantitative analysis that guild-like institutions waned in importance, in this case as early as the end of the fifteenth century. Although there is no doubt regarding the importance of guild-like institutions, the case of the Genoese merchant nation in southern Castile shows that an institution signifies its universal adoption by the world. The history of merchant nations in Genoa is also confirmed. The Commune intervention renders them obsolete by the XIV century. 144 Merchants found that 143 Catalans presenting themselves as Genoese: AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.107, 1508, f. 732. AChGr, JC, Box 885 piece 02. 144Petti Balbi, “Negoziare fuori patria: nazioni e genovesi in età medievale”. 48 CHAPTER 1. THE NATION control and family networks’ delegation limited their maneuverability and business possibilities. 145 Furthermore, the individuals at the head of this guild lacked incentives to carry out a proper job. As their task as consuls could only take them away from their commercial interest. Finally, the question remains why was the Nation there? Especially when one considers the parallel existence of the confraternity. Furthermore, what would change if the sources preserved at St. Francisco’s Monastery in Seville’s Aljarafe become available? For this last question, the notarial evidence is strong enough to the point that in the Genoese case, the Nation or confraternity was not a determinant cohesive or coercive institution. If anything, more sources would probably confirm this research’s findings and show an unknown cultural side to these merchants’ lives. As for the existence of this institution, it was a remnant of an old system. As an institution, it offered an alternative to the perils of long-distance trade. However, its importance and usage diminished. 145 Gelderblom, Cities of commerce: the institutional foundations of international trade in the Low Countries, 1250-1650. Chapter 2 Association and Partnership This chapter studies the Genoese merchant network of association in Southern Andalusia. It will center around the merchant network’s modus operandi in mainland Iberia. The first issue that confronts this study is the definition of what constitutes a Genoese merchant network. It is not a minor conceptual definition, as it refers to how individuals associate and how long economic institutions survived and changed. Association mediates trade and, most of the time, is the constitutive factor that allows it to occur. To coherently study and understand the Genoese merchants’ commercial and association practices in the Castilian Atlantic, this research aims to answer questions such as: to whom did they associate? How did they do it? Also, for how long did the connections last? The question for why did association happen? It is explored throughout the whole chapter. It functions as the hinging point between the different phenomena embodied by the aforementioned questions. To carry out this study, one carries out social network analysis of Genoese through the study of notarial records of Andalusia and the Canary Islands. The notarial records are the medium by which businesses are recorded and transmitted. The research focus is on the function as a medium for streaming and communicating the recorded relations. Thus, a notarial deed can be understood as a medium of recording human interactions and associations. Association happened and endured by chance, need, and social context of the commercial enterprises in themselves. Results show that between the many Ligurians present in the eighty year lapse that concerns this study, transactions happened frequently and regardless of family or business history. Contrary to traditional economic history that argues favoring familiar led companies focused on dominating the economic world through wide and extensive monopolies, there is no evidence of separate groups that associate only with each other. 1 This lack of segregation in association raises the question, does this unchecked constant exchange limit competition’s role as a motor of capitalistic endeavours? It will be 1North, “The rise of the western world”, p. 93. 49 50 CHAPTER 2. ASSOCIATION AND PARTNERSHIP shown that on the contrary, cooperation in trade appears to be a crucial characteristic for emerging and consolidating markets, such as the Genoese in Seville and the Atlantic. 2 Furthermore, economists have argued that evidence of Pareto optimal frontier in society is evidenced by the cooperation among members of said society. 3 Thus, the nature of these associations seems to be a characteristic of the market, brought about by the Genoese presence in Southern Andalusia, as they transitioned from previous positions in Valencia and Granada into Southern Andalusia, particularly in Malaga and Seville, later to the Canary Islands and America.4 The examined notarial and commercial records from Andalusia and the Canary Islands (fig. 2.1) show that the Ligurians traded consistently and extensible, even if two individuals do not seem to have an evident bond or history. The fig. 2.1 simply shows that if one takes all the individual connections in a period of eighty years, the result is a intricate web where everyone is connected in one way or another. From that point, the research can focus on specific times and situations in order to understand the actual dynamics over time. It is important to highlight that the study of the shared commercial endeavors allows the understanding of the individual interactions in the market within a specific cultural context. As discussed in the introduction, studies of economic history that focus on particular individuals or firms are of immense value. However, because of the current state of Genoese historiography, this research proposes a different approach to studying commercial association: it considers complex data sets of many individual cases, so as to answer questions that address the commercial network structure in the Castilian Atlantic market. In turn, it will serve as a stepping stone for future, more specific, and focused studies, as they can rely on an agreed market’s structure. This research contends that Genoese’s evidence of cooperation and constant trade system suggests two consequences. First, foreign merchants used the strict recordkeeping to track commercial operations, as shown later by the examples and further discussed in chapter 3. In turn, it might explain why there are not many surviving ledgers from Genoese companies or trading banks, unlike the case of Florentine trading firms. Thus, sources consist mostly of some extracts from individual records and notarial deeds, allowing for a question that if a merchant could rely, as historians today, on governmental notaries to keep a record of transactions. The individual merchants’ need to have multiple up to date copies of ledgers was significantly lessened, additionally, as business enterprises do not seem to be part of large branch 2Greif, Institutions and the path to the modern economy: Lessons from medieval trade. 3 G. Tullock. “Competing for Aid”. In: The Political Economy of Rent-Seeking. Springer, 1988, pp. 299–311. 4 Igual Luis, “Valencia y Sevilla en el sistema económico genovés de finales del siglo XV”; E. S. Mesa. “El negocio del siglo. Los judeoconversos y la renta de la seda del Reino de Granada (siglo XVI)”. in: Hispania 76.253 (2016), pp. 415–444. 51 Figure 2.1 Genoese Merchant Network in the Atlantic between 1450-1530. With Colour-code Modularity, identifying five communities. operations, but of a highly dynamic business oriented towards rapid exchange. Then the need for redundancy in records offers no surplus.5 Furthermore, no conclusive study exists that supports the idea that the business carried out in Seville at this time was the result of a branch operation, directed from Genoa, as a general rule. There are cases where scholars could argue that a family or some individuals handled the business interest from Italy in Castile. Even then, such enterprises need to be put in context of the wider market and the diversified world of Ligurian businesses. Furthermore, unlike other Florentine, Sienese, or Venetian merchants, Genoese in general aimed to integrate into foreign territories outside of their commune’s domain - even if those were not colonial territories (chapter 1). Therefore, economic trends can be identified by the market’s evolution and not 5Ewert and Selzer, Institutions of Hanseatic Trade, pp. 29-28. 52 CHAPTER 2. ASSOCIATION AND PARTNERSHIP assumed by political preconceptions. Furthermore, scholars like Lambert in his research of the Genoese in Bruges during the fifteenth century found similar results, even showing the Genoese going against Genoa’s interest when political conflict surged, as its the case of the Lomellini and their involvement in Portuguese economy or piracy in the Mediterranean.6 Additionally, more and more studies of international trade and new institutional economy linked to the southern Andalusia and Seville show that different association dynamic happened in these markets. Germán Jiménez argues that the wood trade with the northern Atlantic, particularly with Antwerp, followed very similar association institutions as that of the Genoese merchants in this study. 7 Most importantly, he states that an extensive trail of powers of attorney helped to facilitate the commercial network, without it establishing an employer-employee relationship, adding that ‘family relations did not play a necessary role in the organization of the commercial networks between the north and south of Europe.’ 8 Also, it is important to mention the work done by Rafael Girón Pascual, who in recent years carried a systematic study of the Genoese merchants in Granada (1550-1700). 9 His arguments are opposite to the ones here exposed. He centered on business where Genoa’s influence in Granada could be interpreted in terms of coordination. 10 Although puzzling to find opposite phenomena in such brief periods. It seems a coherent situation for the kingdom of Granada, as they after the conquest and even after the war with the moriscos, followed dynamics closer to the old ways than to the world and the endless economic wealth of the Atlantic.11 2.1 The Market: price economy or network economy A crucial issue faced by economic historians is to differentiate between evolution, change, and progress. The accumulative and mutable nature of knowledge and society 6 Lambert, “De Genuese aanwezigheid in laatmiddeleeuws Brugge (1435-1495): een laboratorium voor de studie van instellingen en hun rol in de economische geschiedenis.”, pp.133-139. 7 Jiménez Montes, “Sepan quantos esta carta vieren: poderes notariales y comercio transnacional en Sevilla, 1570-1600”. 8 ‘Las redes familiares no jugaron un papel necesario en la organizaión de las redes comerciales entre norte y sur de Europa.’ ibid., p.58-59. 9 R. M. Girón Pascual. Comercio y poder. Mercaderes genoveses en el sureste de Castilla durante los siglos XVI y XVII. Valladolid, Universidad de Valladolid-Cátedra Simón Ruiz, 2018. 10Ibid., pp. 96-101. 11 M. F. Fernández Chaves. “La súplica al Rey y la supervivencia de las élites moriscas del Reino de Granada después de 1570: el caso de doña Brianda de Venegas”. In: Chronica nova (2016); R. M. Pérez García and M. F. Fernández Chaves. “La gestión de la fiscalidad como medio de ascenso social en el seno de la comunidad morisca granadina, 1502-1610”. In: Historia. Instituciones. Documentos, 42, 297-340 (2015). 2.1. THE MARKET 53 is misinterpreted as a process of teleological betterment. 12 Markets and institutions change over time, without it granting any judgment of value to the different stadiums. Thus, one of the most important elements in this research is the confrontation of late medieval market systems’ understanding as price economies. In neoclassical economic terms, companies tend to grow toward monopolies, which (in such a system) are the best and most profitable ways of carrying out business. This is because the cost of opportunity is measure solely in the cost an operation had – provided by the goods’ or services’ prices. 13 The approach provided by complex network analysis and new institutional economics followed here, allows the test of those assumptions and to construct a better understanding of the economic reality of late medieval times. The objective here is to test whether in deed the market structure reveals monopolies. This chapter will show how the market affected institutions and individuals. Markets possess agency over individuals, in the same way individuals over markets. Thus, the section will examine the transfer and movement of wealth, in terms of goods and services; were there changes in the association principles of Genoese and foreign merchants in response to profitable or disruptive events, and the social impact of the market institutions on the life of the merchants? De Roover and Grass defined pre-modern trade organizations as coordinating access to goods, organizing the supply and services needed to transport said goods to the destined market to trade goods finally. 14 The association of individuals alongside this chain of events allows the success of any commercial venture. The market, in this case, fifteenth-century Southern Andalusia, is as important as the institutions in defining the possibility for associations to happen. Like many other monarchies, the Castilian crown had institutions in place that awarded privileges and monopolies over particular goods trade. Such polices aimed to guarantee the distribution of wealth to a specific individual or sector of society. Over the eighty years encompassed in this study, the markets frequently changed, responding to each time’s different political and economic demands. The two most significant stadiums are differentiated in political terms, first under the Catholic Kings (1475-1516) and second under the rule of Charles V Holy Roman Emperor (1516-1558). The politics and institutions developed under these two regimes affected the southern Castilian markets, the migration of Genoese merchants, the process of association, and trade. From 1450 to 1530 ‘constant change’ defines the different phenomena experienced by humans, whether in technological or political terms. Under the reign of Isabel 12 J. F. Padgett and W. W. Powell. The emergence of organizations and markets. Princeton University Press, 2012, p. 1. 13North, Structure and change in economic history, pp. 143-154. 14 R. De Roover. “The organization of trade”. In: The Cambridge economic history of Europe 3 (1963), pp. 42–118; N. S. B. Gras. Business and capitalism: An introduction to business history. Beard Books, 2003. 54 CHAPTER 2. ASSOCIATION AND PARTNERSHIP and Ferdinand: the Portuguese claim to Castile’s kingdom ended in 1479 with the Treaty of Alcaçobas, which also settled frontiers disputes over the West coast of Africa and Castilian dominion over the Canary archipelago. The union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon, plus the peace with Portugal, combined with the end of the War of the Roses and the death of Richard III Plantagenet (a traditionally Portuguese ally), allowed the Spanish monarchy to attempt the establishment of new alliances with the Tudor rulers. 15 In roughly a decade, the conquest of Gran Canaria (1483), Malaga (1487), Granada (1492), Tenerife (1496) finished. Columbus’s arrival to the Antilles (1492), forced in less than a decade the transformation of the trade governing institutions in Seville and the creation of the Casa de Contratación de Indias. The Casa was again reformed in the 1520s where it became the Consejo de Indias an independent branch of government, separate from the Consejo de Castilla. From the twelfth-century the relationship between the Iberian peninsula and Genoa grows. By the fifteenth-century the Ligurians held permanent communities in around twenty locations between Castile and Aragon. 16 They occupied most port-sites between Barcelona and Seville, later expanding to the Canary Islands and with important settlements in the fair towns like Medina del Campo and Valladolid. However, the most important concentration of merchants functioned around Seville and Valencia. 17 The important and numerous connections established between Genoese merchants and the Iberian peninsula ought to be approached beyond diplomatic and commercial treaties, since the importance of individual and family histories seems more determinant than macro political phenomena – especially before the sixteenth century. The surviving image identified from the sources shows a connecting web of relationships between spaces where business supersedes simple trade. Thus, from the Middle Ages southern Andalusia constituted as site of permanent Ligurian attention, ruled by the relationships and hierarchies between settlements in Seville, Cadiz, Jerez, and Malaga (1487). Their presence is evidenced in the exploitation of the land, participation in administrative functions, their naturalization in Castile, and their marriage into the local nobility.18 It is important to highlight that the nature, composition, and time spam varies between different merchant communities depending of social or economical origin. When one analyses the macro community and the market, there is an homogenization 15 A. R. Disney. A history of Portugal and the Portuguese empire: Volume 1, Portugal: From beginnings to 1807. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 131-140. 16 Igual Luis, “La emigracón genovesa hacia el Mediterráneo bajomedieval. Algunas reflexiones a partir del caso Español”. 17 Igual Luis and Navarro Espinach, “Los genoveses en España en el tránsito del siglo XV al XVI”. 18 M. Ladero Quesada. “Los genoveses en Sevilla y su región (siglos XIII-XVI): elementos de permanencia y arraigo”. In: Los mudéjares de Castilla y otros estudios de Historia Medieval andaluza. 1989, pp. 283–312. 2.2. THE ECONOMIC INSTITUTIONS 61 how did Genoese manage to ensure that their wealth was not questioned. 31 Then, how did they attract so much business. The first answer is the market in itself, which they had developed over centuries. The political privileges and reputation created a situation profitable for them as has been proven over the past pages. Undoubtedly, another reason comes from the apparent piety and austerity which drove them to participate and lead in many crusades during the middle ages. As mentioned before, Genoese financed military campaigns in Iberia and the Atlantic, following the methods that worked in the middle-east crusades of the XII and XIII century. All of these reasons counted, the cultural aspects are impossible to quantify. On the other hand, the market’s social network analysis allows this research to conclude that one part of the Genoese success came from their capacity to operate in a market that privileged dynamism and cooperation. In the next section shall be dedicated to the economic institutions that allowed the Genoese to operate in this market. 2.2 The Economic Institutions The problem to understand the functioning of a merchant network comes from understanding its association and agency services. 32 Ligurian traders were the majority of foreign traders in Seville (fig. 2.9), an overwhelming majority both in individuals and in contracts dealt. Other nations like the Florentine, English, Sienese, and even Figure 2.9 Percentage of foreign nation merchants in commercial transaction, southern Andalucia 1450-1530. Portuguese traders, start to grow rapidly after 1492. Nevertheless, these other nations found a functioning market and a welcoming environment because of Seville’s Genoese presence. Also, other foreigners traded frequently with the Ligurians, almost in 31 R. Goldthwaite. Private wealth in renaissance Florence. Princeton University Press, 2015; M. Hollingsworth. Patronage in Renaissance Italy: from 1400 to the early sixteenth century. John Murray London, 1994; G. F. Lytle and S. Orgel. Patronage in the Renaissance. Princeton University Press, 2014. 32Greif, Institutions and the path to the modern economy: Lessons from medieval trade, p. 62. 62 CHAPTER 2. ASSOCIATION AND PARTNERSHIP the same volume as with Castilian nationals (fig. 2.10), an important reason in favour of approaching this Atlantic market in terms of cooperation and network economy. Figure 2.10 Number of contracts made between different foreign nations and Castilian or Genoese 1450-1530. This research combined the archival work with social network analysis to identify the Ligurians’ names and families settled in the Atlantic territories. It finds 91 different Genoese families and 625 individuals linked in commercial operations. 33 The majority of trade involved sugar, soap, paper, olive oil, cloth, leather, dyes, and steel (fig. 2.11). Figure 2.11 Goods traded more than ten times over 1450-1530, the figure records the amount of contracts recording the trade of the different goods. Over time their commercial operations shifted towards lending and banking in the 33 A number significantly bigger than the ones proposed by previous studies estimated the number of Genoese merchants in one hundred and fifty. Igual Luis and Navarro Espinach, “Los genoveses en España en el tránsito del siglo XV al XVI”; Bello León, “Mercaderes extranjeros en Sevilla en tiempos de los Reyes Católicos”. 2.2. THE ECONOMIC INSTITUTIONS 63 sixteenth century, which is coherent with their social settling in Seville and the opening of transAtlantic trade, becoming bankers, thus avoiding maritime trade risks.34 Notarial deeds indicate that the commerce between 1450-1530 was private, integrated, and dynamic. The first decades of the sixteenth century saw protectionist measures affecting sugar and American trade, both directed related to the Genoese merchants. 35 On placing an artificial price cap on the price of Canarian sugar and the prohibition of Genoese trade in America followed by the handing of the trade monopoly to Burgales’ merchants. 36 Nevertheless, the constant growth of commercial operations and the similar population growth, defined the conditions for an already hybrid community to continue to profit through factors or capital investment. The first institution at the Genoese disposal was the consulate, to which the first chapter is dedicated. In this section, it will be studied the other institutions that were open to all other individuals at the Castilian market. In general, it is agreed that long-distance commerce required a ship to carry goods through the sea to arrive at a destination, trade for different goods, and return to its place of origin. The problem is that this statement is quite homogenizing to the incredible volume of trade that was, in fact, long-distance but was not carried from point ‘a’ to point ‘b’ by one unique merchant crew. Neoclassical economics argue that the first and most intuitive principle in economics is the cost of opportunity.37 It states that every activity carries a cost. In some cases, the cost of doing something is that one cannot do something else. For example, if a merchant is selling silk only, the cost of opportunity is that he cannot trade in wheat or steel. By this same logic, to contract one ship to carry goods from Alexandria to London is cheaper than to contract ‘n’ number of ships. Each time it stops ‘n’ times in between the two cities. Thus, it is true that if the price alone governed the market economy, a reduced number of transportation contracts would be the most profitable option. Reality is different, and the fact that one thing is the most profitable does not mean it is the easiest nor the safest. This also applies to the the association institutions. Epstein argued that institutions tend towards centralized and collectively managed business 34 R. S. Lopez. Su e giù per la storia di Genova. Vol. 20. Università di Genova. Istituto di paleografia e storia medievale, 1975; Braudel, Civilization and capitalism, 15th-18th century, vol. III: The perspective of the world. 35 Governor of Gran Canary to prevent Genoese from buying estates in an amount exceeding 200,000 maravedis: Archivo General de Simancas (AGS), Registro General del Sello (RGS), LEG. 149910, f.57. Subsequent reform to the distribution of land in Tenerife in 1506: Reformación del Repartimiento de Tenerife 1506, Instituto de Estudios Canarios de la Universidad de la Laguna 1953, pp. 15-25. 36 M. Ladero Quesada. “El Banco de Valencia, los genoveses y la saca de oro castellana (1500-1503)”. In: Anuario de estudios medievales 17 (1987), pp. 571–594; G. Camacho and P. Galdós. “Cultivos de cereales, viña y huerta en Gran Canaria (1510-1537)”. In: Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos 12 (1966), pp. 223–279. 37North, Structure and change in economic history, pp. 33-45. 64 CHAPTER 2. ASSOCIATION AND PARTNERSHIP as it is the case with the state. 38 Thus, when a decentralized system takes place, the likelihood of coordination lessens, which as exposed in the previous section is false. Some institutions allow for the market to develop privileging dynamism and exchange without the need of centralized coordination. Business between merchants happened both through partnerships and particular transactions. The juridical forms in place in Castille by Alfonso X of Castile’s (1252–1284) Partidas continued to rule in the fifteen and sixteen centuries. 39 The formation of companies (compañías) meant the union of people towards a similar end. Although the institution existed and was similar to the Genoese commenda, such contracts are not statistically significant in the surviving archives, only surviving one in between hundreds of contracts or sometimes references appearing in the juridical process (fig. 1.5 & fig. 2.11). Furthermore, a different institution, the encomienda, will govern the business of the colonial enterprise in America. 40 In her studies, Agatha Ortega argues that although the contracts do not survive, the contracts surely have existed since other contracts, like ‘promises of payment,’ recorded the relationship between individuals as compañeros (partners). 41 Nevertheless, there are no juridical records where shared liability appears as part of the constitutional elements of the company contract.42 A different institution seemed to rule the liability issues in the Castilian markets - the mancomun. Nevertheless, this contract is mostly used by Castilians in order to pay debts post facto. 43 Few Genoese partake in such contracts, as these contracts depict the deferral of payment and responsibility to a co-signer of debts, who was not part of the original transaction. Thus, coherent with Dari-Mattiacci’s argument that the contracts in the late Middle Ages were between ‘individuals (societas ) to 38Epstein, Freedom and growth: the rise of states and markets in Europe, 1300-1750, p.8. 39 A. Ortega Cera. “Estrategias, dinero y poder. Compañías financieras castellanas a finales de la Edad Media: una primera propuesta metodológica”. In: Los negocios del hombre: comercio y rentas en Castilla. Siglos XV y XVI. Castilla Ediciones, 2012, pp. 261–286, pp. 261-286. 40 R. G. Keith. “Encomienda, hacienda and corregimiento in Spanish America: a structural analysis”. In: Hispanic American Historical Review 51.3 (1971), pp. 431–446; S. A. Zavala. “La encomienda indiana”. In: El trimestre económico 2.8 (1935), pp. 423–451. 41 Ortega Cera, “Estrategias, dinero y poder. Compañías financieras castellanas a finales de la Edad Media: una primera propuesta metodológica”, p.272. 42 ‘Although notarial deeds as a whole in the earlier centuries have been studied, there are no comprehensive studies of fifteenth-century Genoese notarial deeds. Not all commercial activities were recorded or appear in documents written in front of a notary during this period, while it seems probable that private writings were extensive. It is possible to hypothesize that – among the commercial deeds – what has been recorded by notaries refers to conflicts or phenomena which could not be resolved in private.’ C. Taviani. “In the Shadow of Other Empires: Genoese Merchant Networks and Their Conflicts across the Atlantic Ocean,ca. 1450–1530”. In: Conflict Management in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, 1000–1800 Actors, Institutions and Strategies of Dispute Settlement. Ed. by L. e. a. Sicking. 2020, pp. 217–236. 43 AHPSe, PNS, Leg.19725, 1497, f. 309. AHPSe, PNS, Leg.19725, 1489, f. 11. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 2156, 1498, f. 291r-291v. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 2156, 1498 f. 373. 2.2. THE ECONOMIC INSTITUTIONS 65 Figure 2.12 Network of all the power of attorney signed between 1450-1530. The bigger the node the more contracts singed by the merchant, and the thicker the edge the more times the same contract was signed. share losses and gains.’ 44 One contract depicts Francisco di Rivarolo as co-signer of Bartolome de Fontana, lessor and collector of the taxes in Gran Canaria in the year 1501 for an amount of eighty thousand maravedis. 45 Fontana failed to pay the Spanish Monarchs, so they granted Pedro Rondinelli (Florentine) the task to collect from the warrantor of Fontana’s debt. The document records the proclamation of Rivarolo’s responsibility to pay according to the order from the King and Queen. Afterwards, the document records Rivarolo’s request of time to answer the order. This is followed by a subsequent testimony of Rondinelli, which stated that Rivarolo had not answered and had left Seville. The exact order from the monarchs is lost from Seville’s provincial archive. There is no evidence of what happened after regarding this matter. The most probable situation is that eventually, the debt was paid, as Rivarolo continue to carry out business, as well as Fontana. In contrast to contracts of compañia and mancomun , the power of attorney (poder) appears abundantly in the archives (fig. 1.5). In it merchant’s commissioned the task of collecting owed money or goods, and could also delegate legal representation. In principle, this would happen to save the commission agent of transferring and traveling unnecessarily. Evidence is conclusive that these contracts were not exclusively between family members or long-lasting partners (fig. 2.12). Additionally, this particular institution allowed the southern Castilian market the commerce of securities. 44Dari-Mattiacci et al., “The emergence of the corporate form”. 45AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 4886, 1504, f. 149v 66 CHAPTER 2. ASSOCIATION AND PARTNERSHIP Merchants would grant each other contracts with specific conditions, like collecting a particular debt or the collection of goods owed in the same value to a previous debt. 46 This form of trade, not self-evident in itself and would be impossible to distinguish in a non quantitative study. One possible explanation for the amount of business and joint operations, without the evidence of commenda or company institutions, depicted in fig. 2.2 through fig. 2.8, is the existence of non written agreement of association. Stewart Macaulay already theorized that business seldomly can plan exchange relationships long term. 47 Also, scholars from the Northern Atlantic and the Baltic have identified such trade forms for the Hansen traders. 48 The principle behind such forms of business is that contracts and the use of a governmental legal system to enforce such contracts offered more costs than benefits for the Genoese in general. These ideas seem to account for the missing contracts or the possible randomness visible from the constant exchange. Nevertheless, it still does not fit with Genoese history or their economic practices.49 As mentioned before, the opening of the Trans-Atlantic routes had a major impact on Genoese business, as such, the new market and the uncertainty of a much longer trips seems to have driven some enterprises to return to a company format. An example of this is the slavers companies created for the movement of enslaved Africans. The purchase of the priviledge of four thousand souls to be taken from West Africa to America to the Gover of Bressa, was done by a company constituted by three Ligurians and a Spaniard. 50 Similarly, the purcahse of fractions of the Welser Asiento were done by entrepreneurs organized and associated. 51 However, this trends in business association seem to correspond with a practice dedicated for Atlantic commerce, which is further studied in section 5.2. As previously mentioned, merchants settled in Seville employed notaries’ services to keep track of their business and enjoy the Castilian legal system’s benefits. Among the types of contracts employed to legalize association and agency relationships appears the power of attorney - poder. It was used widely and represented more than 46 AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 4886, 1504, f. 69. Marte s 2 de Abril de 1504. Fernando Ruiz de Porras, escribano, da fe que a pedimiento de Bernaldo de Grimaldo, mercader genovés estante en Sevilla e hizo saber a Cristóbal Ferro, trapero, estante en Sevilla genovés, como Jaime Bodinan, mercader inglés, cedió y traspasó en el dicho Bernaldo de Grimaldo 101.841 mrs. que el dicho Cristóbal Ferro debe por contrato público al dicho Jayme Bodinan, cuyo contrato pasó ante este escribano público en 10 de febrero de este año. Firmada esta fe en la tienda de trapería de Cristóbal Ferro. 47 S. Macaulay. “Non-contractual relations in business: A preliminary study”. In: American sociological review (1963), pp. 55–67. 48 Ewert and Selzer, Institutions of Hanseatic Trade; S. Gustafsson. “Sale of Goods around the Baltic Sea in the Middle Ages”. In: The Hanse in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Brill, 2013, pp. 129–148. 49Taviani, “Companies, Commerce, and Credit”. 50 AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9130, 1522, f. 40. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9127, 1520, f. 91v. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9123, 1518, f. 853. 51AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 33, 1528, ff. 214v 2.2. THE ECONOMIC INSTITUTIONS 67 just a legal instrument for a relative, partner, or employee to carry out business in the name of another individual. Also, data shows that the power of attorney embodied a valid payment instrument. A merchant could transfer a debt in exchange for goods. A simple example shows Francisco and Sebastian Doria receiving the power to collect 40 tons of oil from Francisco di Grimaldi, in order to pay a debt of two hundred thousand maravedis Grimaldi owes to Pedro Vincencio Doria. 52 In a previous study, one argued this sort of contract revealed a broader legal framework of the association. 53 Powers of attorney and exchange contract similar to the aforementioned ones, evidence trade and commerce but one cannot argue the existence of joint venture and connection in the light of this document’s existence. This power of attorney exemplifies one possibility of an association between traders allowed and accepted by the Castilian market. A more complex and interesting example starts with a similar document to the contract mentioned in the previous paragraph. On the 2nd of April of 1504, James Bodinan an English merchant, transfers to Bernaldo di Grimaldi a debt for 101.841 mrs., owed by Cristobal Ferro, a Genoese tailor settled in Seville. 54 Shortly afterwards, new powers appear between two other English merchants - Richard Forte and Thomas Far (maybe Par) on the thirtieth of the same month. 55 In these contracts, Forte grants power of attorney to Far for the collect a series of debts. Among the debtors appear Bernaldo Grimaldi and Duardo Scaglia owing 201,337 mrs. There is power transferring a series of debts to Bernaldo Grimaldo at the back of the paper, adding up to 151,040 mrs.56 The power was granted to pay for an unspecified quantity of olive oil, which Grimaldi had traded with the Englishmen. Also, two more contracts of the same nature and same date follow one from Far in an amount of 30,360 mrs, another by John Grue 5,195 mrs (out of a larger debt of 39,100 mrs), almost balancing the debts between them. 57 Thus, the question becomes, whether these English merchants are part of a company together with the Genoese merchant in Seville? The answer is no. Castilian markets allowed through its institutions for merchants to carryout efficient 52 Jueves 2 de julio de 1500, Otorgan los dichos Francisco Doria y Sebastián Doria, mercaderes genoveses al dicho Francisco de Grimaldo, mercader genovés, que por cuanto este ha hecho cesión de los 400 quintal es de aceite para pagar 200.000 mrs. que debe a Pedro Vicencio Doria, que si ellos cobraren los dichos 400 quintales o cual quier quintal del dicho aceite, que ellos se harán pago de los 200.000 mrs. y más que si algunos maravedíes sobraren se los pagarán y darán aquí en Sevilla cada y cuando se los reclamare. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 2157, 1500, f. 128. 53 A. Mesa. “The Diaspora of a Diaspora, The Cassana and Rivarolo Family Network in the Atlantic (1450-1530)”. In: Economic History Society Annual Conference Booklet. 2020. 54AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 4886, 1504, f. 69. 55AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 4886, 1504, f. 1 (between pages). 56AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 4886, 1504, f. 154. 57AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 4886, 1504, f. 154v. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 4886, 1504, f. 155. 68 CHAPTER 2. ASSOCIATION AND PARTNERSHIP exchanges. The Genoese in Seville had access to both Northern and Mediterranean markets by exchanging goods. This is understood as a network economy.58 58 E. Ustyuzhanina, S. Evsukov, and I. Komarova. “Network economy as a new economic system”. In: European Research Studies Journal XXI.3 (2018), pp.77-89. Chapter 3 The Financial Market ‘... è necessario ch’e mercanti non aspectino lo stentare del vendere le cose ad una ad una, ma è de bisogno le vendano in grosso...’1 It is undeniable the prominent, almost dominant, role taken by Genoa in the world economy after 1528, as Andrea Doria ascends to power and the Genoese Commune, traditionally sympathetic to the French crown, aligns with the Holy Roman Emperor and Spain. For some Ligurians, it encompassed the Genoese merchants’ history in the Iberian peninsula for centuries, thus cementing a long partnership and processes of commercial expansion, which led up to the Spanish bankruptcy in 1557. Since the thirteenth century the Genoese carried out trade and integration practices in Castile, being an intrinsic part of Castilian commercial and financial connection with the rest of European markets. As shown in the introduction, the history of Castile’s relationship with the Atlantic and Africa from the thirteenth century onward is one constructed hand in hand with the Ligurian merchants, same applied to the development of financial markets. Thus, this chapter deals with the Genoese experience of the eighty years of financial transformation brought about by the union of the crowns by the Catholic Monarchs and Charles V, and the conquest and colonial enterprises in the Muslim Kingdom of Granada, the Canary Islands, and America. This chapter approximates to the Genoese role in the southern Andalusian financial market. It does so by analyzing the exchange and trade records, which survive through notarial deeds. This chapter constitutes the most ambitious enterprise of the whole dissertation, as it concentrates on the surviving economic institutions in notarial archives, opposed to relying on commercial firms’ records and ledgers. The selection of deeds over account books is ought to the absence of this type of source for the Genoese merchants for the period and geography in question. Therefore, this research confronts from the start a partial reality regarding the financial market. However, the 1 B. Cotrugli. Libro de l’arte de la mercatura. Edizioni Ca’Foscari-Digital Publishing, 2016, pp. 59–60. 69 70 CHAPTER 3. THE FINANCIAL MARKET partiality of the observed reality will be discussed in section section 3.1, when the study contextualizes the Genoese financial and accounting world against previous studies and other commercial nations at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth century. On the other hand, this chapter puts to the test the possibility of using the exchange market sources without cross-examination with typical accounting sources. This approach is in a way contrary to the one done by previous studies in which accounting sources were used to study both the exchange market and the financial market. As will be shown throughout the chapter, the surviving evidence permits access to the tracing of factual exchange, some business partnerships, existent accounts, and its commodity trade. Nevertheless, the nature of exchange, the time spam of partnerships or accounts, and the tracing of partners’ equity and profit-loss are impossible without association contracts or ledgers. These problems will be explored more in section 3.1, as the difficulties that confront this research are not unique for the study of the financial markets, even with the employment of ledgers. The chapter is composed of an introduction to the theory and historiography of the financial market in late Medieval and Early Modern times. Afterward, the research will present the discernible Genoese characteristics of the trade of financial securities and derivatives at the Castilian markets. Therefore, the currency and money of account and its connection to credit and exchange will be examined. Then an analysis of the credit and financial operations carried out by the Ligurians in Southern Andalusia, keeping in mind the circulation and exchange of financial instruments and other institutions that made possible the existence of the financial market. A special case will be made to exemplify the complexity of the Genoese financial network, the difficulties they faced, and possible reasons for their existence. 3.1 Context The financial market is the place where securities are traded. Nowadays, securities refer to a series of instruments used by countries, companies, and individuals to negotiate and raise capital. They exist in three different subgroups: equity, debt, and hybrid. 2 In Late Medieval and Early Modern times, the most common example of equity securities are ‘stocks’ and for debt securities are ‘I owe you’ contracts (IOU). Although these instruments have continued to exist from the past until today, it is important to highlight that they were not the same. They were precursors of today’s institutions and reality, and as such, sometimes they can be foreign to presentday definitions. Furthermore, as currently these commercial instruments are highly regulated by countries and trade agencies, one cannot draw an exact connection 2P. Howells and K. Bain. Financial markets and institutions. Pearson Education, 2007, pp. 1–29. 3.1. CONTEXT 77 The history of the bill of exchange is a very developed one. 25 As an economic institution, its function was similar to that of account money – minimize the use of coin. It provided a way to move money or lines of credit to other places, at long or short distances. The institution has been studied in its majority regarding large financial firms. 26 Scholars trace its origin to the cambium and movement of funds from financiers to their agents. 27 It will be shown in this research that the financial market in Andalucia allowed for the use of bills of exchange between different individuals beyond family or a corporate relationship. The movement of funds obeyed the apparent movement of goods or payment for services, which could be covered by the use and transaction of other financial instruments. Bills of exchange increase in number in the sixteenth century owing to the opening of Trans-Atlantic commerce. Seville’s financial market concentrated the arrival of funds from all over the Peninsula. It functioned alongside other institutions like insurance or ship-furnishing loan. In all cases, a sum of money was transferred in paper and bound to goods destined to the newly conquered territories. The desirable payment for Genoese merchants corresponded to bullion and precious goods from the new world – gold, pearls, brazilwood, and jewels. The influx of gold and silver from America and the Genoese movement to Italy and the Netherlands allowed for the expansion of Europe’s financial interests in Asia, although, the records of this system can only be traced to the late Sixteenth century. 28 The ‘Genoese system’ consisted of lending funds to the Spanish crowns. The bills were paid in the northern Atlantic in bullion after the flota (fleet) arrived. The silver was destined for the Portuguese and Venetians who needed it to trade with the East.29 25 Lopez, “Market expansion: the case of Genoa”; V. A. Santarosa. “Financing long-distance trade: the joint liability rule and bills of exchange in eighteenth-century France”. In: The Journal of Economic History (2015), pp. 690–719; F. Bettarini. “The new frontier: Letters and merchants between Florence and Poland in the fifteenth century”. In: Mélanges de l’école française de Rome-Moyen Âge 127-2 (2015); F. Trivellato. The familiarity of strangers: the Sephardic diaspora, Livorno, and cross-cultural trade in the early modern period. Yale University Press, 2009; Puttevils, Merchants and trading in the sixteenth century: the Golden Age of Antwerp; Gelderblom, Cities of commerce: the institutional foundations of international trade in the Low Countries, 1250-1650; M. Kohn. “Business management in pre-industrial Europe”. In: Available at SSRN 427760 (2003); Bolton and Guidi-Bruscoli, “‘Your flexible friend’: the bill of exchange in theory and practice in the fifteenth century”. 26 G. Biscaro. Il banco: Filippo Borromei e compagni di Londra:(1436-1439). Casa editrice LF Cogliati, 1913; F. Melis. La banca pisana e le origini della banca moderna. Vol. 5. Mondadori Education, 1987; R. De Roover. L’évolution de la lettre de change, XIVe-XVIIIe siècles. Vol. 4. A. Colin, 1953; Goldthwaite, The economy of renaissance Florence. 27Kohn, “Business management in pre-industrial Europe”, p. 2. 28 J. N. Ball. Merchants and merchandise: the Expansion of Trade in Europe 1500–1630. Saint Martin’s Press, 1977; R. Harris. Going the Distance: Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation, 1400-1700. Princeton University Press, 2020, p.30. 29 E. J. Hamilton. American treasure and the price revolution in Spain, 1501–1650. Harvard University Press, 2013; J. H. Munro. “Money, prices, wages, and ‘profit inflation’in Spain, the Southern Netherlands, and England during the Price Revolution era, ca. 1520-ca. 1650”. In: História e Economia Revista Interdisciplinar 4.1.1 (2008), pp. 14–71. 78 CHAPTER 3. THE FINANCIAL MARKET Figure 3.1 The number of Genoese business transactions recorded in notarial deeds from 1450-1530, differentiated by the type of transaction and trend line for the most numerous types of contracts. 3.2 Money and Credit in Castile As discussed in the previous section, the access to money constituted the first problem faced by individuals and companies dealing in any financial market. In Castile, like in many other places at the end of the Middle Ages, coin was a determinate factor in market and exchange relationships. 30 The crown itself based its finances on the forms of credit. A common practice like the auction of the privileges of alcabalas to nobles or merchants allowed the Kings to receive the money in advance and defer the problem of collection and evasion to third parties. 31 The fig. 3.1 depicts in very general terms the different notarial deeds examined in this research. One can make two assertions out of the previous graphic: first, an incredible amount of credit and debts functioning in Southern Andalusia (1450-1530). The need of merchants and private individuals to cancel or report completed business at the notary was very small, compared to the actual trade volume. Second, the currency employed in the records is overwhelmingly account money – maravedies. In other words, of three thousand notarial deeds examined, only 7,4% record other currencies like ducats, castellanos, pesos, or florins. Of those records, the majority were bills of exchange (7% out of the total deeds examined). As said before, the use of maravedies by the Genoese is almost absolute. Ninetyseven percent of the contracts and transactions drawn by them were accorded in the 30Carande, Carlos V y sus banqueros, pp. 147–180. 31 Ladero Quesada, La hacienda real castellana entre 1480 y 1492; M. Ladero Quesada. “Fiscalidad regia y génesis del Estado en la Corona de Castilla (1252-1504)”. In: Espacio Tiempo y Forma. Serie III, Historia Medieval 4 (1991). 3.2. MONEY AND CREDIT IN CASTILE 79 money of account. It offered a reference value for transactions and exchange rates, as accounts could be kept in a constant currency. Scholars argue that the use of ‘ghost’ currency allowed for exchange and payment to be carried out at will and for coins to remain saved for times of actual need. 32 Merchants, bankers, and money changers relied on this financial instrument to extend credit and settle accounts in a sort of theoretical manner. Thus, the first financial instrument in the toolbox of any Genoese merchant needed to be money. Different forms and situations extend the use and existence of other more sophisticated instruments like the bill of exchange and the power of attorney. The abundance in notarial records of transactions in ghost money points towards two realities: one, credit represented a vital part of life for all levels of society (figs. 3.2a and 3.2b); two, a network needed to exist that supported the exchange in such currencies beyond the legality or protection offered by any monarchy. As said before, credit, like other commodities, offered the possibility of completing business transactions. The choices made by merchants took into consideration the future, the facilities offered by each market, and social relationships. In the case of the Genoese, there were some significant instruments and commodities that allow the exchange and the use of credit to facilitate transactions: bills of exchange, powers of attorney, ‘I owe you’ contracts (IOU), and sugar (see section 4.3.3). The following sections explore the nature and principal characteristics of these instruments in the Andalusian market (fig. 3.2). The power of attorney, like any notarial deeds, follows a common juridical form. The norm and repetitive nature of deeds allowed for easy compression and use for anyone in business. After the date and place where the document was written, followed the parties’ description. The information recorded consisted of their place of domicile, their residency status, nationality. In the case of a Genoese merchant with namesakes, the use of the Ligurian patronymic was added (exp. Angelo Cattaneo di Cattaneo). 33 Afterwards, a description of the nature of the task bestowed on the recipient, and then the territories where it could be carried out. However, the majority followed a broad and unspecific description of the task and no territorial restriction. The unspecific nature of the contract created incredible flexibility. As seen in the previous chapter, the existence of powers of attorney cannot be taken to assume partnership as a sort of corporation bond (section 1.1 and section 2.1). Also, its flexibility explains the abundance of the contract in the archives. The contract conferred the possibility to collect and exchange debts. Thus, setting the base for what can only be described as a securities market. 32 Gelderblom and Jonker, “Enter the ghost: Cashless payments in the early modern Low Countries, 1500–1800 1”, p. 230. 33AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9107, 1508, f. 787 80 CHAPTER 3. THE FINANCIAL MARKET (a) Total value of Genoese debts per year in maravedis. (b) Total value of debts to Genoese per year in maravedis. (c) Total values of legal disputes per year in maravedis. (d) Total Value of contracts per years in maravedis. (e) Total values of recorded completed transactions (receipts) per year in maravedis. Figure 3.2 Contract’s General Value and amount statistics 3.2. MONEY AND CREDIT IN CASTILE 81 In the previous chapter (chapter 2), an example of the Genoese use of powers of attorney and IOUs allowed to question whether these contract served to identify association bonds between merchants. The example of Francisco and Sebastian Doria receiving the power to collect 40 tons of oil from Francisco di Grimaldi in order to pay a debt of two hundred thousand maravedis Grimaldi owed to Pedro Vincencio Doria allows the examination of credit in a basic exchange (table 3.1).34 Table 3.1 Exchange diagram between Dorias and Grimaldi Pero Vincenzo −−−→ power Franceso Doria −−−−−−−→ 200.000mrs Francesco Doria of attorney di Andre ←− 40tGrimaldi Sebastiano doria of Olive Oil However, the market allowed for more complex operations, with multiple parties’ exchanging and multiple debts being settled without actual coin exchange. Transactions could be only partly monetized, depending on the need or interest of the merchants. In a way, monetary restrictions affected merchants differently than ordinary people. When a merchant wrote a bill of exchange or a loan contract, he was not obliged to possess all or part of the value in some form of coin. In theory, financial maneuvers could be made to benefit everyone; in the sixteenth century, for instance, the Salviati at Lyon would automatically create loans or exchanges on unbalance money at the end of the different fairs. 35 This simple operation allowed for the money to increase in value in the exchange market or by regular interest. The difficulty found in this research is estimating the amount of times a merchant could do this manuever, or if Genoese merchants had any similar practices regarding unsettled accounts. Taking Bernaldo Grimaldi, one of the most prominent Genoese merchants at the end of the fifteenth century in Seville. He appeared in 14% (of 1745) of the notarial deeds during his time in Castile (1470s to 1510s), averaging a contract value of 94.640mrs. His operations extended from trade to financial maneuvers, and his fame and reputation allowed him to carry out operations with international merchants and locals alike. Evidence of his olive oil trade with English merchant (table 3.2) show that Grimaldi took debts well beyond his inner circle or need for immediate repayment. It is possible to trace the transactions up to certain point, and question how necessary an association contract between these merchants was, when there clearly was a system based on reputation and institutions designed for quick exchange? 34 Jueves 2 de julio de 1500, Otorgan los dichos Francisco Doria y Sebastián Doria, mercaderes genoveses al dicho Francisco de Grimaldo, mercader genovés, que por cuanto este ha hecho cesión de los 400 quintal es de aceite para pagar 200.000 mrs. que debe a Pedro Vicencio Doria, que si ellos cobraren los dichos 400 quintales o cual quier quintal del dicho aceite, que ellos se harán pago de los 200.000 mrs. y más que si algunos maravedíes sobraren se los pagarán y darán aquí en Sevilla cada y cuando se los reclamare. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 2157, 1500, f. 128. 35 Matringe, “The fair deposit: credit reallocation and trade finance in the early modern period”, pp. 289–290. 82 CHAPTER 3. THE FINANCIAL MARKET Table 3.2 Exchange diagram between Grimaldi and English merchants. Balance calculated as if Bernaldo di Grimaldi business. James Badoyn power to Bernaldo di collect Cristobal Ferre −−−−−−−→ 101.841mrs Grimaldi −−→ debt James Badoyn power to Richar Forte collect Bernaldo di Grimaldi −−−−−−−→ 201.337mrs Thomas Par −−→ debt Duardo Scaglia Richar Forte power to Bernaldo collect Bartolomé de Carmona Thomas Par −−−−−−→ 66.303mrs di Grimaldi −−→ debt Rodrigo de Baeza Thomas Par power to Bernaldo collect Alfonso Rodriguez −−−−−−→ 30.366mrs di Grimaldi −−→ debt Thomas Par power to Bernaldo collect Alfonso Rodriguez −−−−−−→ 88.756mrs di Grimaldi −−→ debt Owed: 201.337 mrs Granted: 287.266 mrs Balance: 85.929 mrs Accounts maybe related Juan Grue (Hmoy) power to Bernaldo collect Bartol omé de Carmona −−−−−−→ 39.000mrs di Grimaldi −−→ debt Francisco Badoyn power to Bernaldo collect Bartolomé de Carmona −−−−−−→ 26.950mrs di Grimaldi −−→ debt Transactions in 1506 Guillen Dorman power to Bernaldo collect Juan de la Torre −−−−−−−→ 900.000mrs di Grimaldi −−→ debt Duardo Scaglia Thomas Par power to Bernaldo collect Polo Battista di Negro −−−−−−−→ 510.340mrs di Grimaldi −−→ debt As shown in table 3.2, the accounts end up in favour of Grimaldi in the year 1504, extending for two months from the 2nd of April to the 22nd of May. First, Grimaldi receives a power of attorney to collect a debt between James Badoyn and Cristobal Ferro for some clothes. 36 Then, he and Duardo Scaglia appear referenced as debtors in a contract granted to Forte and Par to collect debts in the name of the previous Badoyn. 37 The exchange evolved with the English using IOUs, revealing account up to two years old. 38 Likewise, in the years that followed, Grimaldi and 36AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 4886, 1504, ff. 63 & 69. 37AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 4886, 1504, ff. 1 (between folios) 38AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 4886, 1504, ff. 1 (between folios), 69, and 154–155. 3.2. MONEY AND CREDIT IN CASTILE 83 other Genoese appear collecting other debts through power of attorney. 39 However, the nature of those accounts seem to correspond to a different business as they are for twice even four times the value of the debts recorded in 1504. The only reference to why Grimaldi was receiving these powers to collect from third parties appears in one of the April contracts, in which the transfer of debt was justified on the debt of some olive oil.40 The previous example of trade depicted in table 3.2, is identified here as exchange of securities. This classification obeys to the fact that these IOU contracts were being exchanged as commodities. Basically, Grimaldi negotiated in the credit of the English merchants to actively achieve profit. In other words, by accepting debts that were probably easier to collect, or had do date closer in time, the Genoese could change long or mid term accounts for short term ones. Thus, the employing commercer gives way to the problem of the actual existence of money. 41 In reality, merchants created credit, as many times coin or goods were promised to be exchanged. Said credit created money if which the value depended on the eventual exchange of a good. The process combined the parties’ accord for the goods’ value and the knowledge of prices and availability of goods. However, once the notarial deed was drawn, money came into existence without the real and tangible need for metal coins or goods to back it up at that particular moment. More exchange and wealth could rise on top of the first credit transaction and so on until a giant house of cards remained. Recently, scholars like Safley, Puttevils, Drelichman and Voth, and Gelderblom and Jonker have approached the problems of bankruptcy and the financial system, how this house of cards could remain standing for as long as they did, and the circumstances that brought them down?42 Notarial deeds do not offer a clue as to whether the Genoese inquired into the credit history of the individuals in order to carry out business; in general notaries recorded names, professions, spouses, and place of residency. Protested bills of exchange sometimes argued no knowledge of the drawer of the bill: ‘he did not know 39AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 4888, 1506, f. 310v & 425. 40 [Grimaldi] lo reciba en si por ciertos aceites que le ha comprado. AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 4886, 1504, f. 155. 41 Gelderblom and Jonker, “Enter the ghost: Cashless payments in the early modern Low Countries, 1500–1800 1”, p. 230–231. 42 M. Drelichman and H. - J. Voth. “Lending to the Borrower from Hell: Debt and Default in the Age of Philip II”. in: The Economic Journal 121.557 (2011), pp. 1205–1227; T. M. Safley. Family Firms and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe: The Business, Bankruptcy and Resilience of the Höchstetters of Augsburg. Routledge, 2019; J. Puttevils et al. “Thomas Max Safley, Family Firms and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe. The Business, Bankruptcy and Resilience of the Höchstetters of Augsburg”. In: TSEG-The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 18.1 (2021), pp. 183–185; Gelderblom and Jonker, “Enter the ghost: Cashless payments in the early modern Low Countries, 1500–1800 1”. 84 CHAPTER 3. THE FINANCIAL MARKET said individual’ or ‘he did not owe anything to...’ 43 In the case of IOU’s operations, the value of these corresponded with the value of either the goods or services. Thus, the collateral existed in the intrinsic nature of the transaction. Thus, under the law, individuals were subject to the embargo of goods for the unfulfillment of contracts. Genoese also suffered from such punishment. In 1495, Nairone paid for Juan and Pedro Fernández de la Alcoba’s debts to free the seized goods. 44 Loans in the form of IOU’s operate on the reliance on a tangible form of security, whether goods, services, or contracts explicitly stating the financial transaction conditions. However, Bills do depict the existence of credit networks, which extend beyond family relationships. The regular employment of a bill of exchange appears in the movement of funding between cities (table 3.3). The bill functioned for most Genoese businesses of significant volume, corresponding with the movement of grain, sugar, slaves, olive oil, dyes, gold, silver, wine, and fabrics. However, there was a movement of funds that seems purely financial or impossible to identify without account books. The difficulty is owed to the Genoese merchants who primarily dealt individually, holding many different accounts through many years, which the individual merchant could balance in as many ways as business permitted. At the end of the fifteenth century, the movement of bills operated around the most prominent merchants. This research contends that for the Genoese merchant’s reputation represented a more important characteristic to attract business than any form of family bond. From 1495 survives in the notarial archives of Seville a balancing of accounts between Bernaldo Pineli, in the name of Tadeo and Clerigo di Negro neighbours of Genoa and Francisco di Negro. 45 The latter was the brother of the absent Genoese. Nevertheless, the legal representative of both Tadeo and Clerigo’s interests in Seville was Bernaldo Pineli. It was thus by a power of attorney – ‘ y por virtud de una carta de poder, escrita en latín de letra genovesca y declarada en romance.’ However, this did not mean that dealings between Francisco and his brothers did not exist. The document depicts a world of exchange where the balancing of accounts operates around many merchants and businesses. The family bond gets diluted if needed to pay debts. Furthermore, the accounts are not joint between Tadeo and Clerigo – each had their own business. Francisco paid his brother Tadeo 87700mrs from a bill of exchange sent to Genoa, paid to Niculoso and Alberto Spinola. 46 However, the taker of the bill in Seville is Bernaldo Grimaldi, mentioned before. Thus, the payer of the bill is Tadeo di Negro. Francisco’s payment corresponded to only a bill’s fraction, as its cost was 43 ‘Jerónimo Bonensene dijo que no debe cantidad alguna al dicho Tomas Colon, ni lo conoce, ni sabe quien es...’ AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 4888, 1506, ff. 169. 44AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.100, 1495, f. 224. 45AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9.100, 1495 f. 288–289. 46ibid. 3.2. MONEY AND CREDIT IN CASTILE 85 Table 3.3 Selected Bills of Exchange by decades (mean and standard deviation in maravedies, and coefficient of variation) Period Goods Coins Number Mean Std. Dev. Co. Va. Services of Bonds 1460-1470 Loans Ducados 2 1.532.260 - - 1470-1480 Loans Doblas 9 150.827 97.943 0,65 Florins 1480-1490 Loans Doblas 57 268.498 245.621 0,91 Castellanos Maravedies Florins 1490-1500 Blades Sterling 73 282.666 258.773 0,92 Slaves Cruzados Loans Bulls 1500-1510 Sugar Florins 73 361.680 622.083 1,72 Loans Scudi Clothes Ducados Wine Cruzados Silk Maravedies Spoils Castellanos Doblas 1510-1520 Loans 18 498.201 1.152.449 2,31 Ships MaravediesOrchil DucadosSugar Wheat 1520-1530 Loans Ducados 30 1.157.251 2.946.961 2,55 Pearls MaravediesOrchil Gold PesoYeast Wheat Gold Average 607.340 760.547 1,29 of a thousand doblas to be paid in Castellano, each one at 420mrs. The rest of the exchange’s value was paid before, as Pineli states that all debts had been cleared this time. From the previous example it is seen the flexibility and variability possible by this financial instruments (fig. 3.3). 47 However, the nature of business between 47 Bolton and Guidi-Bruscoli, “‘Your flexible friend’: the bill of exchange in theory and practice in the fifteenth century”; M. Kohn. “Bills of Exchange and the Money Market to 1600”. In: Dartmouth College, Department of Economics Working Paper (1999). URL:http://www.dartmouth.edu/ ~mkohn, p.2. 86 CHAPTER 3. THE FINANCIAL MARKET Grimaldi and Di Negro, or with Spinola, remains unknown, though, it is clear that the market constituted itself with great complexity and dynamism. (a) Kohn’s bill of exchange diagram. (b) Bill of exchange between Seville and Genoa. Figure 3.3 The use of bills of exchange diagram. The previous example allows the illustration of funds’ movement, regardless of bullion or goods. It does not mean that there were no connections and tangible goods. In this case, it means that the notarial evidence allows for tracing the financial operation beyond a theoretical exercise. However, the goods or remittance operation escape the evidence without the surviving account books. In this case, a minimum of three parties’ records would be necessary to understand all possible business relationships. In other words, this example allows for understanding the monetization of goods and services and their exchange in credit terms. Furthermore, it shows that Genoese merchants accepted the costs of credit operations. It allowed them to enjoy social and economic surplus in the form of rapid exchange and market dynamism. The record of Francisco’s and his brother Clerigo’s business offers a contrast from the previous example. Clerigo’s business can be divided into two parts. First, seems to be a previous commenda contract in which Francisco received 1.514 blades, three bristle spools, and eight steel balls. In total, Francisco sent back to his brother 132,095mrs from selling these goods. 48 Plus another shipment of 2.073 blades, arriving at Seville via Cadiz and Francisco Cattaneo, costing 358.938mrs. 49 The second part speaks of a bill of exchange from Seville to Genoa, again of a thousand 48 The commenda contract does not survive, one is simply hypothesizing.‘...de resto del procedido neto de 1.514 hojas de espadas que le hubo enviado en la carraca de Vosor para que se las vendiese, que montaron 95.907 maravedíes; y del procedido neto de tres balones de hilo de cerdas que dicho Clérigo di Negro le hubo enviado al dicho Francesco di Negro en la dicha carraca de Bozor, que montaron 25.889 mrs.; y más del procedido neto de ocho balones de acero que el dicho Clérigo di Negro le hubo enviado en la dicha carraca al dicho Francesco di Negro para que le vendiese, que montaron 10.299 mrs.’ Ibid. 49 ‘asimismo del procedido neto de 12 balones de espadas, que fueron 2.073 hojas, las cuales recibió el dicho Francesco di Negro, que le envió Francisco Cattaneo, mercader genovés estante en la ciudad de Cádiz, en nombre del dicho Clérigo di Negro que son por todas, y montan las dichas partidas que el dicho Francesco di Negro debía, y era obligado a pagar al dicho Clérigo di Negro, su hermano, 358.938 mrs.’ Ibid 4.1. EXPLORERS, CONQUERORS, AND FIRST SETTLERS 93 As such, the Genoese Atlantic experiment connects to a broader and longer process that needs to be presented to study the particularities that interest this study. 4.1 Explorers, Conquerors, and First Settlers The Atlantic, whether the Macaronesia or West Africa, already in pre-conquest time a site of commerce. Merchants went to the islands and along the African coast to capture slaves and trade dyes and pelts with the natives. Different accounts by the Medieval explorers in the Atlantic talk about the landscape, people, and general understanding. They make part of a broader genre of Travel Literature. It takes from the medieval Chanson de geste in many ways, however, it differs in its clear roots in curiosity, exploration, and mercantile mindset. For example, Boccaccio De Canaria et insulis reliquis ultra Ispanian in Occeano noviter repertis and Bontier’s de Canarian describe the daily value in the minds of the fourteenth and fifteenth century. 10 At this time, although sugar was not in the minds of the settlers, slavery was. The descriptions and chronicles speak of fertile land and gentle weather; of the possibility to grow with ease and more volume, everything that grows back in Spain. From the first men that occupied the main islands of the Canaries, the Genoese differentiate from the rest because of their wealth and involvement in the conquering enterprise. The Genoese were financiers of the conquest, arranged loans and partnerships with the men in charge of the military campaign and then collected their share in land, slaves, and money. 11 Not all lands were distributed equally, to those settling the islands, the condition to remain and live there for at least five years and to dedicate most of the land to grow sugar cane. The Genoese experience on the archipelago varies depending on the family. It was not a colonial enterprise but more of a bet taken by some families with the monetary capacity and right connections. This strategy was coherent with the market and general Ligurian history. One major difference that can be drawn appears from those that arrive with the Adelantado Antonio de Lugo, even taking a role in the conquest of the land. Other Ligurians arrived later as merchants and settlers. From the first group of Genoese who arrived at the earliest time alongside with the Adelantado appears the figure of Mateo Viña. 12 From the start, Viña forms part of the government, being regidor from 1500-1506. Because of his connection to the 10 A chronicle of first colonial enterprise carry out by Frenchmen in the name of the Castilian king in the Canary Islands in the early fifteenth century. P. Bontier and J. Le Verrier. The Canarian: Or, Book of the Conquest and Conversion of the Canarians in the Year 1402. Vol. 46. Hakluyt Society, 2010. 11 M. Marrero Rodríguez. “Los genoveses en la colonización de Tenerife: 1496-1509”. In: Revista de Historia 89 (1950), pp. 52–65. 12 APNT, 8. Páez, 1506-1508, fol. 440r de 16-VII-1506, fol. 399r de 17.VII-1606, y fol. 97r de 22 X-1506. 94 CHAPTER 4. SUGAR Governor he became part of the public life of the island. 13 He accompanied Lugo’s second campaign for the conquest of Tenerife in 1494. It is said that he participated in battles, and as such received land in the distribution alongside other Castilians. 14 This Genoese received land which could be described as difficult or not the best, at Daute, far from the two main ports of Tenerife – Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Puerto de la Cruz (fig. 4.2). The enterprise required a larger investment for adaptation of the land to create the conditions to succeed in the exploitation of sugar. The commitment is evident in the records of the reformation to the land distribution of Tenerife: ’this witness saw the arrival at Dabte[Daute] of a caravan with tools, goods, and slaves. Everything brought by said Mateo Viña to extract water in Dabte and make the irrigation ditch.’15 The conquering enterprise was more than just the bodies and money to carryout the military expedition. From the mainland at Seville, the race to secure the papal bull befallen in the hands of Diego de Soria and Francesco Pineli. 16 The security of the bull, meant a parallel financial instrument used to secure the money for the conquest, evangelism, and the war against Islam. Pinelli, and others of his family, resided in Seville. Furthermore, in Gran Canaria there is a certain Luis Pineli who receives land in the distribution of land after the conquest. 17 It is known that alongside Pineli were also Manfredo Camila, Domenico Centurione, Jerónimo y Cipriano Gentile, collection of the Bull of the Crusade, annatas, subsidies and jubilees belonging to the Apostolic Chamber in 1475.18 Contemporaneously with the opening of sugar production in the Atlantic, in the Mediterranean sugar markets already existed and some of them were exploited by the Genoese. The main sites of sugar production can be found at Sicily, Muslim Andalusia, Valencia, Cyprus, Crete, and Egypt. 19 Nevertheless, sugar cane grew across the Mediterranean world as a fairly common crop. However, it never grew 13Marrero Rodríguez, “Los genoveses en la colonización de Tenerife: 1496-1509”. 14 Serra. Las datas de Tenerife (1978): libros I a IV de datas originales. Fontes Rerum Canariarum, 1978, p. 11. 15 Translation made by the author: ’este testigo vió descargar en la caleta de Dabte una caravana con mantenimientos e herramientas y esclavos, lo qual todo traía el dicho Mateo Viña para sacar el agua de Dabte e hacer el acequia.’ L. de la Rosa Olivera and E. Sierra, eds. Reformación del Repartimiento de Tenerife en 1506. Fontes Rerum Canrium. Instituto de Estudios Canarios de la Universidad de la Laguna, 1953, p.78. 16 J. M. Bello León et al. “Los negocios de los mercaderes Francesco Pinelli y Diego de Soria en el Atlántico Medio a finales del siglo XV”. in: Revista de Historia Canaria 200 (2018), pp. 59–72; A. Rumeu de Armas. “La nunciatura castellana de Guinea”. In: Revista de Indias 27 (1967), p. 109; E. Aznar Vallejo. “Los inicios de la Bula de Cruzada en Canarias”. In: Revista española de derecho canónico 44.122 (1987), pp. 205–219. 17AGS. Cámara de Castilla, CED, 7,133 (18-12-1505). AGS. Registro del Sello, 18-12-1505. 18 Bello León et al., “Los negocios de los mercaderes Francesco Pinelli y Diego de Soria en el Atlántico Medio a finales del siglo XV”, p.63. 19Ouerfelli, Le sucre: production, commercialisation et usages dans la Méditerranée médiévale. 4.2. THE MARKET AND COMMODITY FRONTIERS 95 in the volume and intensity that received in the Atlantic from the fifteenth century onwards. 20 Sicily represented a Genoese stronghold in terms of sugar. From Sicily a set of very important sources survive, which describe the functioning of a Sugar cane mill and production under Genoese direction at the end of the sixteenth century. From the plantation at Ficarazzi, near Palermo, property of Francesco di Negro, survive at the Istituto di storia economica dell’Università di Genova the documents relative to it’s cultivation, functioning, production of sugar. 21 Rebora in his study of this plantation makes three main points: First, for generations free individuals composed the plantation’s workforce. The technology used in the processing of sugar cane came from the olive oil industry. Finally, the sugar cane industry in Sicily was one among other productive enterprises of equal relevance and importance – wheat, vines, and olive trees. 22 Sugar cane was important, but not the main source of revenue for them. Thus, it never received intensive and extensive exploitation. 4.2 The Market and Commodity Frontiers It is impossible to study the Castilian Atlantic without taking into account their Portuguese neighbors. After all, the Portuguese crown started the exploration and occupation of Madeira and the Canary Islands in the fifteenth century. The first permanent settlement was in Madeira. In the south between Machico and Calheta, a warmer landscape protected from the trade winds than the other side of the island. Here the political jurisdiction was under the Funchal Captaincy. 23 Sugar expanded quickly on the island. In 1450 the accounts of Cadamosto noted its success. ‘ At his command they came to our galleys with samples of sugar from the Isola de Medera, dragon’s blood, and other products of his domains and islands.’ ‘the Infante had many sugar canes planted, to his great profit. They have produced sugar to the amount of 400 cantara at one refining, and from what I understand they will in time produce more...’24 20 D. Harreld. “Atlantic sugar and Antwerp’s trade with Germany in the sixteenth century”. In: Journal of Early Modern History 7.1 (2003), pp. 148–163; J. W. Moore. “Madeira, Sugar, and the Conquest of Nature in the" First" Sixteenth Century: Part I: From" Island of Timber" to Sugar Revolution, 1420–1506”. In: Review (Fernand Braudel Center) (2009), pp. 345–390; S. W. Mintz. Sweetness and power: The place of sugar in modern history. Penguin, 1986; Ouerfelli, Le sucre: production, commercialisation et usages dans la Méditerranée médiévale, pp.475–493. 21 G. Rebora. Un’impresa zuccheriera del Cinquecento. Vol. 14. Biblioteca degli Annali di storia economica e sociale, 1968. 22Ibid., pp. 15–30 & 51–56. 23 A. Vieira. “A Ilha da Madeira e o tráfico negreiro no Século XVI”. in: Revista de Indias 55.204 (1995), p. 333. 24 G. R. Crone. The voyages of Cadamosto and other documents on Western Africa in the second half of the fifteenth century. Routledge, 2017, p.4 & 9. 96 CHAPTER 4. SUGAR The Portuguese sugar production rapidly grows after Cadamosto’s accounts. Alberto Vieira argues that between the 1450s to 1470s, sugar production grew at 13% and from 1470s to 1490s 68% per year. 25 However, this history is one of the faster phases as frontier expansion and soil exhaustion moved the production sites quickly across the globe. The next step was the successful conquest of the main islands in the Canaries archipelago. Then the production frontier moves to Morocco and Sao Tome, and finally to Brazil in the first half of the sixteenth century. In less than half a century, Madeira and the Canaries were left behind as the primary producers of sugar cane for more profitable sites – especially compared to Brazil. 26 By 1530, the sugar economy arrived at the point of change. In both archipelagos, settlers turn to cattle, wheat, and vineyards. The turn corresponded with the integration of the archipelagos to the Carrera de Indias. 27 The Islands’ strategic location en route to America had made for a perfect port for the furnishing of goods in continuation to the western Continent.28 This section will explore the characteristics of these plantations: what were the socio-political circumstances that allowed the establishment of a plantation economy in the Canaries by the Genoese? What were the characteristics of the plantation economy? Furthermore, what was the impact? 4.2.1 Sugar and Land Holding In order to understand the commercialization and success of sugar, it is important to address the problems of land-holding, water access, and slavery. These three phenomena coexisted and determined the productive cycles of sugar cane exploitation. As said before, the history of the Canaries is intrinsically connected to the history of Madeira. In the smaller archipelago, the Portuguese occupation started early in the fifteenth century. In contrast, in the main islands of the Canaries, formal occupation starts in the 1480s with the conquest of Gran Canaria. 25 A. Vieira. “Sugar islands. The sugar economy of Madeira and the Canaries, 1450-1650”. In: Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450–1680. University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill, 2004, pp. 42–84, p.48. 26 Moore, “Madeira, Sugar, and the Conquest of Nature in the" First" Sixteenth Century, Part II: From Regional Crisis to Commodity Frontier, 1506—1530”. 27 P. L. D. Cruz. “El agua en Canarias: una aproximación historiográfica”. In: Vegueta: Anuario de la Facultad de Geografía e Historia (2013); J. Hernández Ramos. Las heredades de aguas de Gran Canaria. Idea, 2004; G. C. y Pérez Galdós. “El cultivo de la caña de azúcar y la industria azucarera en Gran Canaria (1510-1535)”. In: Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos 1.7 (1961), pp. 11–70; L. E. López, J. L. del Río Moreno, et al. “La ganadería vacuna en la isla Española (1508-1587)”. In: Revista complutense de historia de América 25 (1999), pp. 11–49. 28 J. M. Madurell Marimón. “El antiguo comercio con las islas Canarias y las Indias de Nueva España o del mar Océano (1498-1638). Más documentos para su historia”. In: Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos 1.7 (1961), pp. 71–130; B. Bonnet. “Descripción de las Canarias en el año 1526, hecha por Tomás Nichols, factor ingles”. In: Revista de Historia Canaria 5 (1933); Camacho and Galdós, “Cultivos de cereales, viña y huerta en Gran Canaria (1510-1537)”. 4.2. THE MARKET AND COMMODITY FRONTIERS 97 From 1439 to 1497, the Order of Christ holds a senhorio over the two islands of Madeira’s archipelago. 29 In turn, these were divided into three Captaincies: Funchal, Porto Santo, and Machico. Porto Santo was given to Bartholomeu Perestello (1446), an Italian merchant father-in-law to Christopher Columbus. Perestello’s origin has raised as much discussion as that of his son in law, some identifying him as Portuguese or Genoese. 30 Recent studies have traced back his origin to Piacenza. 31 It was up to men like Perestello to attract settlers and make it profitable. In doing so, they brought sugar cane and slaves from the Canaries to work the lands. 32 The Canaries, of much bigger land extension, started under seigniorial control in 1402: Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, la Gomera, and el Hierro. The main islands were under royal control from 1478: Gran Canaria, Tenerife, and La Palma. The smaller islands were conquered quickly early in the century, but little profit could spring from them. The men who carried out those early expeditions were unable to continue the conquest of the main islands because of the large aborigine population, the presence of the first inhabitants represents a crucial difference in the process of settlement of Madeira. As in the Canry, the indigenous people confronted colonists with rival land claims, both in defending their land from conquest and later as royal subjects.33 The Portuguese crown gave their captains the authority to distribute the lands. The process in itself followed the re-population politics carried out after the Reconquista in the Iberian peninsula. 34 However, these politics led to the enrichment of the captains and their families. Alverto Vieira studied the case of Jo ¯ ao Gonrçalves Zarco, captain of Funchal (1450). 35 Zarco granted himself and his family a considerable extension of land in Funchal and Ribeira Brava, which led to the enrichment of the family. The rest of the population followed an initial policy that granted land to colonists for five 29 Moore, “Madeira, Sugar, and the Conquest of Nature in the" First" Sixteenth Century: Part I: From" Island of Timber" to Sugar Revolution, 1420–1506”. 30 M. Barreto and R. A. Brown. The Portuguese Columbus: Secret Agent of King John II. Springer, 1992. 31 N. Alessandrini. “Os Perestrello: uma família de prazentinos no Império Português (séc. XVI)”. in: Lisboa: Palestra na Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, em 17.05 (2011), p. 2011. 32 L. D’Arienzo. “La Famiglia di Bartolomeo Perestrello,Suocero di Colombo”. In: Bollettino della Società Geografica Italiana XII.XII (2007), pp. 649–670; A. Vieira. “O Açúcar na Madeira: Produção e comercio nos séculos-XV a XVII”. in: Producción y comercio del azúcar de caña en época preindustrial 7 (1993). 33 J. M. Bello León. “El reparto de tierras en Tenerife tras la conquista: el modelo del valle de la Orotava”. In: Historia. Instituciones. Documentos 17 (1990), pp. 1–30; J. M. Bello León. “Contribución al estudio de la conquista de Gran Canaria. Documentos del Archivo Municipal de Carmona y del General de Simancas/A contribution to the study of the conquest of Gran Canaria. Documents from the Carmona Municipal Archive and the...” In: Vegueta: Anuario de la Facultad de Geografía e Historia (2015); M. Ladero Quesada. “Las cuentas de la conquista de Gran Canaria”. In: Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos 12 (1966), pp. 11–104. 34Vieira, “Sugar islands. The sugar economy of Madeira and the Canaries, 1450-1650”, p.47. 35Vieira, “O Açúcar na Madeira: Produção e comercio nos séculos-XV a XVII”. 98 CHAPTER 4. SUGAR Figure 4.1 In Red islands product of the Conquista Realenga, in Blue Islands conquered by private noblemen enterprises years, requiring the colonist to build a house and reside there. 36 The idea was to attract permanent colonist that would develop the island. (a) Gran Canaria (b) Tenerife Figure 4.2 Possible distribution of Land of Genoese ownership at the end of 1530s, highlighted in yellow. Water sources like river or creeks highlighted in blue. On the other hand, in the Canary Islands, on the 31st of October 1499 an order from the Spanish monarchs to the Governor of Gran Canaria states: prevent Genoese from buying estates in an amount exceeding 200,000 maravedis, even if they have been granted a naturalization letter on that island, so that those who have bought them sell them before one year, under penalty of losing them, given that these Genoese possess more than half of the lands suitable for sugar cane, the island’s only resource. 37 It was inconceivable to claim that by 1499 the Genoese possessed more than half of the island’s territory proper for the growth of sugar. The records of lands granted as 36 S. M. Greenfield. “Madeira and the Beginnings of New World Sugar Cane Cultivation and Plantation Slavery: A Study in Institution Building”. In: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 292.1 (1977), pp. 536–552; V. Rau and J. B. de Macedo. O açúcar da Madeira nos fins do século XV: Problemas de produção e comércio. Junta-geral do distrito autónomo de Funchal, 1962. 37AGS. RGS. Leg. 149910, f. 57. 4.2. THE MARKET AND COMMODITY FRONTIERS 99 privileges after the conquest of both Tenerife and Gran Canaria show only one Genoese as a recipient - Mateo Viña. 38 Nevertheless, this document showcases symptoms and sentiments regarding the distribution of wealth and land in the islands and the role of Genoese merchants in the Canaries and the Atlantic. As it has been said before, the Castilian Crown decided after the success on conquering the main islands in the archipelago to deploy politics for attracting settlers through land distribution as well as juridical and institutional reorganization. These policies mirror those employed two centuries before in Guadalquivir valley, where the Genoese merits and actions won them a set of mercantile privileges. 39 The aim was to incentivize population growth and ratify control over the land. The Crown was not prepared for an economic leap brought up by sugar production. Also, local governmental structure required monarchs to negotiate with local powers and an evergrowing international market. The local powers, in turn, had a tremendous amount of control over local situations, which the Genoese knew how to maneuver and profit. The evidence of partnership or trade between the local governing officers, contadores mayores, and judges is overwhelming (section 5.1). 40 They governed and organized the rents of the royal house as well as the whole kingdom. Also, they were the final judicial instance of all matters concerning treasury or state. By 1506, the crown sends officials to re-draw the distribution of land in Tenerife. The constant complaints from the Island’s neighbours stated that Adelantado Antonio de Lugo had privileged Genoese and foreigners in the distribution of lands. 41 Thus, adding to the previous order from 1499 against the supposed monopoly of land in the archipelago. However, the ownership of land was not the problem. Genoese, in particular, Francisco de Rivarolo and Francisco Palomar, had in their hands the most profitable ingenios. They did own considerable land, in particular, land at Orotava, Galdar, Agaete, and Realejos. Nevertheless, this does not reach half of the available land (fig. 4.2). The research shows that the complaints from the neighbors and the subsequent reactionary policies from the Crown come from an impotent sentiment to control the production and manufacture of sugar. As Commerce was the Castilian Crown’s primary source of revenue, they always aimed to favor a good balance and maintain a secure supply within the kingdom through basic empiric mercantile principles. Nevertheless, the intense use of land and the success of this Genoese set in motion 38 Bello León, “El reparto de tierras en Tenerife tras la conquista: el modelo del valle de la Orotava”. 39 Ladero Quesada, “Política económica, restauración de la hacienda y gastos de la monarquía”; F. Fernández-Armesto. Before Columbus: Exploration and colonization from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229-1492. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987; González Gallego, “El Libro de los Privilegios de la Nación Genovesa.” 40Carande, Carlos V y sus banqueros, pp. 191–230. 41 Bello León, “El reparto de tierras en Tenerife tras la conquista: el modelo del valle de la Orotava”. 100 CHAPTER 4. SUGAR the plantation economic model in the islands. In turn, the Canaries become a place where goods such as sugar seem to spring out of nature at a relatively low cost. The consolidation of a ’commodity frontier’ defined the destiny of sugar production in the island to leave the moment land started to become exhausted. 42 However, in the Canaries, the problem came from before the Genoese presence, as the difference between the land concession affected Castilians equally. Thus, the social distinction between the grantees was apparent at the beginning. The land was not only given to conquistadors but also to regular individuals. The important difference consisted many times in the access to water at the property.43 4.2.2 Atlantic Commerce The Canary archipelago, and eventually America, became sites depending on the desires and demands of European markets. They started as peripheral regions of business, as seen before in section 4.1. The growth of these peripheral markets adjusted to the need for either high-value or luxury goods – dyes, pelts, slaves. After the consolidation of Iberian control over the territory and the formation of a permanent population, these peripheries become dependent on goods and services from Europe. Once the integration reaches an equilibrium, these territories became intermediaries between Africa, Europe, and America. Francisco de Rivarolo represents the compelling example to illustrate the Genoese operation in the Canaries. 44 The opportunity to combine production and distribution is not necessarily the most profitable decision. Furthermore, if the distribution was subject to the risk of maritime transport, the exposure seems unnecessary. For the Rivarolo family, particularly for Francisco de Rivarolo and his brother Cosme, the risk paid high dividends at first. Thanks to the loans for the conquest of the Canaries, unpayable for Alonso Fernández de Lugo, they obtained access to important extensions of land in the islands. Lands put to produce Sugar cane. Parallel to this enterprise, in Tenerife, la Gomera, and El Hierro, a stroke of different luck benefited Francisco. Ines Herrera, the widow of Guillen de Peraza, lord and conqueror of the minor islands mentioned earlier, gave Rivarolo a ten-year monopoly over the trade of Orchil. Finally, for almost twenty years, they held alone the soap almonas of Triana, and for another ten, they shared them with others. 45 Alongside this enterprises, regular trade in silk, 42 Moore, “Madeira, Sugar, and the Conquest of Nature in the" First" Sixteenth Century, Part II: From Regional Crisis to Commodity Frontier, 1506—1530”, p.4. 43 Cedula regia of 4 February 1480. P. Cullen del Castillo. Libro Rojo de Gran Canaria o Gran Libro de Provisiones y Reales Cédulas). Tipografía Alzola, 1947. 44Extensively studied in the past: Otte, “Los sopranis y los Lugo”; Rosa Olivera, “La varia fortuna de los Rivarola”; Pérez, “Francisco de Riberol. Un genovés sevillano canario en el sistema europeo de relaciones”; Bello León, “La Torre: homenaje a Emilio Alfaro Hardisson”. 45APS,Leg.1508-1, 1508, ff.348-349v. 4.2. THE MARKET AND COMMODITY FRONTIERS 101 olive oil and other goods completed the portfolio of investment and production carried out by the Rivarolo. For this merchant, the Canaries represented the land of success and failure. First, the Genoese operated in a system of relationships (chapter 2), and Rivarolo was not the exception. From the stable community in Souther Andalusia, the Canaries represented a new market of opportunities. For this Ligurian, described by Beatriz Perez as a Genoese ‘Sevillian.’ 46 At the end of the fifteenth century his business network extended in the Castilian territories through two main families. First, the Sánchez from the treasury, a very wealthy Valencian family connected to the Genoese in General. 47 Second, the Fernández de Lugo who owned lands near Jerez de la Frontera and were the forerunners of the Canarian conquest. Thanks to the Lugo the Genoese accessed the trade of Orchil from the Canaries. 48 Moreover, when Antonio de Lugo needed funding for the conquest of Tenerife, Rivarolo lent him the funds to pursue the camping. 49 The Sánchez and the Rivarolo funded the fourth voyage of Columbus and participated together in the movement of bills of exchange between Seville and Valencia. 50 In addition to these enterprises, in the 1500’s Juan Sánchez and Francisco Rivarolo faced the justice together for the malversation of 200.000 mrs. 51 Eventually, all of this relationships went sour, because of a family tragedy or bad business. The same success that created the fame and wealth of the Rivarolo, also condemned them. Their success in the Canaries with the trade of sugar and orchil caught the jealousy of others. Complains were raised to the Spanish monarchs about the monopoly of the Canaries commerce and lands by the Genovese. In turn, the monarchs created a ban for foreigners possessing land in the Canaries. 52 Ines Herrera de Peraza and her son realized that their business with the Rivarolo left them with the short end of an incredibly profitable commerce. They tried to breach the contract or finish their agreement. Both cases grew into long and tedious legal battles that lasted for years, and one could argue resulted in the dead of Francisco Rivarolo’s only son Batista. 46 Pérez, “Francisco de Riberol. Un genovés sevillano canario en el sistema europeo de relaciones”, p. 196. 47 M. Ladero Quesada. “La esclavitud por guerra a fines del siglo XV: el caso de Málaga”. In: Hispania 27.105 (1967), p. 63. 48 Pérez, “Francisco de Riberol. Un genovés sevillano canario en el sistema europeo de relaciones”, p. 201. 49 AGS, RGS, Leg. 1101, f. 90. AGS, Camara de Castilla (cc), Pueblos, 5, 1, 100, Islas Canarias, 1514. 50 Igual Luis, “Valencia y Sevilla en el sistema económico genovés de finales del siglo XV”; Pérez, “Francisco de Riberol. Un genovés sevillano canario en el sistema europeo de relaciones”. 51AHPSe, PNS, Leg. 9101, 1501 ff. 133v-135v. 52 E. Aznar Vallejo. Documentos canarios en el Registro del Sello (1476-1517). Instituto de Estudios Canarios, 1981, p. 96. 102 CHAPTER 4. SUGAR The Rivarolo saw their bonds with the Sopranis grow into enmity and the loss of their soap factories, lands, and dominion over the Andalusian commerce.53 In this process of market evolution and constant change that the Genoese merchants were determinant. Their interest did not end with the conquest of the Canaries. They were present in the Portuguese expeditions to Western Africa. Their network of interest connected both the Iberian Peninsula with the Atlantic possessions and all foreign markets, whether northern Atlantic or the Mediterranean. This bourgeois process developed and consolidated these new societies. As private merchants and investors, free from political pretensions, the Genoese gained a position and privileges that cost other European powers centuries to establish because of their colonial and territorial needs. Their investment of capital and labour was fundamental to the initial enterprises. Most importantly, commerce allowed the flux of good and the survival of colonial society. The Genoese from Andalusia established their production of sugar in the Atlantic Islands. On top of that, they possessed the mills to transform the cane into sugar and controlled a critical trade size. Although later in the sixteenth century, English and Flemish merchants entered to take part in the production and control the northern trading routs, their presence is later than the time frame of this research and beyond the most prosperous sugar cycle in Macaronesia. Nevertheless, it is important to highlight that foreigners’ presence in these territories was not without troubles, whether because of land possession (section 4.2.1 or access to the market. Both the Portuguese and Castilian monarchs knew the importance of these merchants and their connection to the broader European market. All the complaints and requests of their subjects against the foreign merchants were half-answered. The Cortes the Coimbra (1472-73) and Evora (1481) never successfully removed the privileges of foreign merchants. There the complaints were directed plainly against Genoese and Jewish people. 54 The prohibition of landholding in the Canaries by the Catholic monarch was impossible to enforce, as the Ligurian were subjects of the monarch by privilege (naturalizados) and residence. Thus, subject to the same rights and privileges as regular Castilians. 53AGS, RGS, LEG, 149005, ff. 148; 210; 249; 252; 257. 54Vieira, “Sugar islands. The sugar economy of Madeira and the Canaries, 1450-1650”. 4.4. RESULTS AND CONSEQUENCES 109 commercial networks and their success in joining the production aspects of sugar cane growth and their transformation into sugar. Their plantation and mills operated with an imported workforce in terms of slaves and Portuguese sugar masters (Maestros de Azúcar). Nevertheless, their success found its end by the same status quo that the plantation economy created. Castile answered the economic reality in the canaries with measures that treated social symptoms and not the underlining cause of the social unrest against the Genoese success. Chapter 5 Slave Trade ‘Slavery caused the slave trade; just as relentlessly, the slave trade brought new slavery ’1 Trade as a part of the wider phenomena of slavery, constitutes a central factor of this phenomena history and of the Late Medieval and Early Modern history. The study of human bondage concentrates mainly on the traumatic experiences of humans under the yoke of slavery, its reasons, origins, and characteristics. Nevertheless, over the last decades scholars found the agency of other African men in the slavery of others by Europeans. 2 The expansion of premodern capitalism, meant for individuals to become monetizable objects, and traded in the market. The racial bias that slavery will display in later years was lost before and at the start of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. As Nathan Huggins puts it ‘African merchants [...] saw themselves as selling people other than their own. The distinctions of tribe were more real to them than race, a concept that was yet to be refined by nineteenth and twentieth century western rationalism.’3 This chapter concentrates in the case study of the Genoese role on the slave trade between 1450-1530, with an emphasis on the opening of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The chapter will be divided into two sections. The sections hold a seemingly temporal division, although the defining characteristic for the separation comes from the nature and context affecting all slavers enterprises. Thus, the first section studies the importance of the Atlantic as it becomes more and more important to the Mediterranean world (section 5.1). It studies the opening of Oceanic enterprises by the Portuguese crown and Italian explorers, at the same time that aims at describing 1P. Manning. Slave trades, 1500–1800: Globalization of forced labour. Routledge, 2016, p. xv. 2 T. Green. The rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in Western Africa, 1300–1589. Vol. 118. Cambridge University Press, 2011; N. I. Huggins. Black Odyssey: The Afro-American Ordeal In Slavery. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011; D. Wheat. Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640. UNC Press, 2016; A. Luttrell. “Slavery and Slaving in the Portuguese Atlantic (to about 1500)”. In: Centre 374 (1965), pp. 61–79; B. L. Solow. Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press, 1993. 3Huggins, Black Odyssey: The Afro-American Ordeal In Slavery, p. 20. 111 112 CHAPTER 5. SLAVE TRADE the financial market that made fifteenth century business enterprises in West Africa possible. Finally, a section dedicated to the first years of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Genoese involvement (section 5.2), which discusses the different institutional circumstances that made the movement of humans between continents in the sixteenth century possible. It shows the different groups involved in the early trade and how merchants in Castile aimed to procure enslaved individuals to take to America. The dissertation looks into the conquest and siege of Malaga, where Genoese as merchants and functionaries of the Catholic Monarchs took a very important role in the distribution and commercialization of slaves at that time. The following section moves to the Atlantic and the role of Genoese slave trade on the Canaries and the opening of the trans-Atlantic routes. Therefore, the research deals with the implementation of enslaved workforce in order to bypass social process like migration and settlement of conquered territories, and consolidate colonization processes. As it was the case with the sugar cane plantations own by some Genoese in the Canary Islands, already showcased in the previous chapter (section 4.3.2). Subsequently, the research takes on the opening of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, centering on the Genoese actors and studying their actions in the purchasing of licenses and slaves to be taken and commercialized in Santo Domingo. The Genoese had well established expertise on slave trade previous to the opening of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Like the other main ports in the Mediterranean, Genoa accommodated slaves from different geographies throughout the Middle Ages.4The provenances of these individuals vary because of trade, war, and piracy being the primary sources for captives. In the early years of the Reconquista, merchants would take their Muslim captives from Valencia (1238), Murcia (1266), and Minorca (1287) to Genoa to trade them. Balard argues that piracy was of less importance for the origins of slavery in the Genoese case. He states that the ‘development [of piracy] in the last centuries of the Middle Ages brought a growing number of Turks on the market, while the Christian prisoners of Christian pirates were mainly returned for ransom to their mother country.’ 5 Thus, the importance of piracy remains secondary, as the market and other institutions dominated the supply. The Iberian Crowns were the powers responsible for the territorial expansion of Christendom in the West. The campaigns against the western Caliphates in the Middle Ages left a vast captured population, which at time was traded for rescue other subject to enslavement. This suggest that religion was an important characteristic to keep in mind. Slavery represented an institution used for the control of conquest territories 4 D. Gioffrè. Il Mercato degli schiavi a Genova nel secolo XV. Collana Storica di Fonti e Studi, 1971. 5 M. Balard. “Slavery in the Latin Mediterranean (Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries): The Case of Genoa”. In: Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean (c. 1000-1500 ce). Brepols, 2017, pp. 235–254, p.235. 113 and belief. Seemingly to the East, the Ancient practices influenced the understanding and characteristics of the enslavement forced in the conquered populations. Furthermore, this frontier territories were confronted with violent processes of conquest, colonization, and mobilization of the free population to affirm royal sovereignty. The study of the slave trade occupies a very prominent place in historiography, from classical studies in the nineteenth century like Arthur Helps The Conquerors of the New World and The Spanish Conquest in America and the more moral oriented writings like those of William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, and Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa). 6 To the work of Philip Curtin, Eric Williams, John Thornton, and Walter Roohney. 7 The time frame of this dissertation presents the overlapping of two phenomena: the Mediterranean and Trans-Atlantic slavery. Much like with sugar cane production (chapter 4), the Mediterranean and Atlantic processes constitute stadiums of development in a longue durée phenomenon. Thus, the past affected and set the conditions for the development of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade emergence. Also, the Reconquista and the singular Iberian relationship with slavery constitute fundamental stepping stones, where the Genoese role and function needs to be understood. 8 Therefore, it is essential to point out that this dissertation approaches, for the most part, already known primary sources and studied phenomena. It attempts to present a more comprehensive view of the process by focusing on the Genoese merchants subject to the forces of the market that go beyond national frontiers. Foremost, the main objective for this chapter is to set the bases for future studies, as the study of institutional migrations, like slavery, remains unexplored for significant periods in human history. Much like it was mentioned the previous chapter on sugar (chapter 4), historiography has also a very important academic production in Spanish language. The 6 A. Helps. The Conquerors of the New World and Their Bondsmen. Vol. 2. W. Pickering, 1852; A. Helps. The Spanish Conquest in America. Parker Son and Bourn West Strand, 1861; W. Wilberforce. An appeal to the religion, justice, and humanity of the inhabitants of the British Empire: in behalf of the Negro slaves in the West Indies. Vol. 27. J. Hatchard and son, 1823; T. Clarkson. History of the rise, progress, and accomplishment of the abolition of the African slave trade by the British parliament. IndyPublish. com, 1839; O. Equiano. Le prince esclave. Rageot, 2002; O. Equiano. Sold as a Slave. Penguin Great Journeys, 2007. 7 E. Williams. Capitalism and slavery. UNC Press Books, 2014; W. Rodney. History of the Upper Guinea Coast: 1545–1800. Vol. 25. NYU Press, 1982; J. Thornton. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800. Cambridge University Press, 1998; P. D. Curtin. The Atlantic slave trade: a census. Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1972; P. D. Curtin. “Slavery and empire”. In: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 292.1 (1977), pp. 3–11; Bennett, African Kings and Black Slaves: Sovereignty and Dispossession in the Early Modern Atlantic. 8 Fernández Chaves and Pérez García, “Las redes de la trata negrera. Mercaderes portugueses y tráfico de esclavos en Sevilla (c. 1560-1580)”; Ladero Quesada, “La esclavitud por guerra a fines del siglo XV: el caso de Málaga”; García Fuentes, “Licencias para la introducción de esclavos en Indias y envíos desde Sevilla en el siglo XVI”; I. Armenteros-Martínez. “Los orígenes de un nuevo modelo: cómo la llegada del Islam transformó las prácticas esclavistas en la Europa de los siglos VIII-XIII”. in: Archivio Storico Italiano 174.1 (647 (2016), pp. 3–30. 114 CHAPTER 5. SLAVE TRADE classical work of Jose Antonio Saco about slavery in the new world, represents a point of reference for contemporary studies. 9 Saco an important representative of an encyclopedic spirit of the nineteenth century takes on the titanic task of studying slavery in the new world, with a contextualization of the phenomena which goes as far back as Herodotus. Charles Verlinden’s L’esclavage dans le monde ibérique médiéval and L’esclavage dans l’Europe médiévale, constitutes the most comprehensive study of slavery in the Iberian world in Medieval times. 10 However, contemporary studies focus on the transition of this institutions from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. The work of Gonzáles Arébalo connects Italian and Iberian markets. It deals greatly with the financial aspects of slavery, and the enslavement of Moorish Andalusians. 11 Recently, González took on the task of studying the difference between ‘captive’ and ‘slave’, while studying the case of the Malaga’s slaves, and proves that there is enough juridical and historiographical evidence to find differences regarding both bondage conditions. 12 One of the main academics that have researched the impact of slavery in the Canary Islands is Lobo Cabrera. His work deals with both the impact of slavery over the local native population and that of the imported African slaves. 13 The important role of slavery in the Iberian economic have been well identified by social and economic historians, from Ladero Quesada to Vicenta Cortes, and continues to produce valuable studies as this phenomena keeps being studied.14 9 J. A. Saco. Historia de la esclavitud de la raza africana en el Nuevo Mundo y en especial en los países américo-hispanos. Vol. 1. J. Jepús, 1879. 10 C. Verlinden. L’esclavage dans l’Europe médiévale. Vol. 119. De Tempel, 1955; C. Verlinden. “L’esclavage dans le monde ibérique médiéval”. In: Anuario de historia del derecho español 12 (1935), pp. 361–424. 11 R. G. Arévalo. “Florentinos entre Cádiz y Sevilla en los siglos XIV y XV”. in: De mar a mar: los puertos castellanos en la Baja Edad Media. 2015, pp. 273–308; R. González Arévalo. “Cautiverio y esclavitud en el Reino de Granada (siglos XIII-XVI)”. in: Vínculos de Historia 3 (2014), pp. 232–257. 12 R. González Arévalo. “Differentiated conditions nevertheless, slavery and captivity in the Iberian Mediterranean context of the 15th century”. In: Forms of unfreedom in the Medieval Mediterranean. Publicações do Cidehus, 2021. 13 M. Lobo Cabrera. “La población esclava de Las Palmas en la primera mitad del siglo XVI”. in: XXI Coloquio de Historia Canario-Americana, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria (2016), p. 10; M. Lobo Cabrera. “Las partidas y la esclavitud: aplicación en el sistema esclavista canario”. In: Vegueta: Anuario de la Facultad de Geografía e Historia (1993); M. L. Cabrera. “Relaciones entre Gran Canaria, Africa y América a través de la trata de negros”. In: II Coloquio de Historia Canario-Americana:(1977). Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria. 1987, pp. 75–98. 14 V. Cortés. La esclavitud en Valencia durante el reinado de los Reyes Católicos:(1479 – 1516). Ayuntamiento de Valencia, 1964; Ladero Quesada, “La esclavitud por guerra a fines del siglo XV: el caso de Málaga”. 5.1. CONQUERORS AND MERCHANTS 115 5.1 Conquerors and Merchants By the mid-fifteenth century, the Reconquista used slavery as a power enforcing institution. 15 After a Christian victory, events could proceed in two possible ways: either, Muslim communities were accepted and subsequently they owed a special tribute, and were offered a forced conversion; or, the process of conquest could have been so costly that the enslaved were distributed among the nobles and participants and subsequently sold across the peninsula and European markets. 16 It was in such situations that the Genoese entered the scene. Here, two situations allowed the Genoese to profit and function around the Reconquista, as military campaigns were not constant absolute pursuits. Small quarrels and cabalgadas constituted the most common way to procure captives, who then were taken and subsequently exchanged, sold, or charged for the rescued. Both sides carried out such strategies and were not limited to the frontier territories in Granada – in the fifteenth century. Campaigns of this nature were carried out from ports in Andalusia and the Canaries to North Africa.17 Hence, the presence of Christian slaves in Northern Africa and Muslims in Andalusia was permanent. The razzias or raiding resulted in a request for rescue and ransoming. Such operation were left to neutral parties like Genoese merchants, known in both sites and trusted in the individual and the movement of money. 18 For example, in 1494, Bartolomé Barça, Martín Centurion, and Agustin Italian requested permission in Malaga’s council to travel with certain banned goods to Muslim territories and negotiate the rescue of Christian prisoners. 19 Similarly, Nicolas Cattaneo holding the position of Consul of the Catholic Monarch in Oran, was in charge of helping the Castilian Alhaqueques in their jobs to negotiate for captives. 20 Cattaneo’s case illustrates the importance Genoese held mediating, as the official arriving from Malaga did not have money to negotiate or pay the taxes 15 R. González Arévalo. “Cautivos moros y judíos en Málaga en tiempo de los Reyes Católicos”. In: BAETICA. Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea 27 (2005), pp. 345–361; González Arévalo, “Cautiverio y esclavitud en el Reino de Granada (siglos XIII-XVI)”. 16Gioffrè, Il Mercato degli schiavi a Genova nel secolo XV, pp. 5–7. 17 Provincial Historical Archive of Tenerife (AHPTe), Juan Marquez, Leg. 594, ff. 860r. Also, see: J. E. López de Coca Castañer. “Orán y el comercio genovés en la transición a los tiempos modernos”. In: Anuario de estudios medievales 24 (1994), p. 275. 18 M. T. R. Barrera. “Redención de cautivos: una especial obra de misericordia de la Orden de la Merced”. In: La Iglesia española y las instituciones de caridad. Real Centro Universitario Escorial- María Cristina. 2006, pp. 841–862; Coca Castañer, “Orán y el comercio genovés en la transición a los tiempos modernos”; F. D. Gazulla. “La redención de cautivos entre los musulmanes”. In: Butlletí de la Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona (1928), pp. 321–342. 19 Among the goods banned for trade with any Muslim territories were grains, fabrics, and metals. Municipal Archive of Malaga (AMMa), Capitual Acts (AC), Book 1, ff. 302. 20 General Archive of Simancas (AGS), Casas y Sitios Reales, leg. 5, fol. 5. in Coca Castañer, “Orán y el comercio genovés en la transición a los tiempos modernos”, p. 296. 116 CHAPTER 5. SLAVE TRADE required of him in the Kingdom of Oran. 21 In the end, Cattaneo lent 1.590 doblas for the rescue of twelve captives, five of them under fifteen years old, another seven of unspecified characteristics. Black African slaves also found their way to the Andalusian markets before the opening of the Atlantic trade. Some of them arrived ought to the military conquest. Others came through North African merchants and their ta’ifas. The history of the conquest of Malaga appears perhaps as the most remarkable event both in the history of slavery and for the Genoese involvement before the sixteenth century. 22 Armies dreaded having to submit a city to a blockade. Sieges were expensive, and soldiers grew in unrest and violence the longer they waited. 23 In 1487, as King Ferdinand lay siege Malaga, thousands of African soldiers took control of the city’s defense. They resisted against the desires of residents to surrender and capitulate. The aftermath proved dire as everyone was captured and enslaved. A hundred of the surviving African soldiers were sent to the Pope as a present. The rest were distributed among the conquerors to defray the cost of the siege.24 One Genoese in particular affected the fate of the enslaved population in Malaga above all – Francisco Pineli. Malaga’s conquest was supposed to be relatively easy. The King received Velez-Malaga’s rendition months before without significant issues. However, while negotiating with the mayor, the city fell into the control of north African soldiers, volunteers in defense of the city. Despite several attempts to reach an accord, the defenders refused, which led the Christian side to fall with all their fire-power on the city. No exact number exists, stating the number of inhabitants apprehended in August 1487 after the siege ended. The records speak of between eleven-thousand and fifteen-thousand. The aftermath generated a ransom problem. King Ferdinand appointed the his scribe Luís de Santángel, the treasurer Gabriel Sánchez, and the Sevillian jury Francisco Pineli as the money receptors for all those rescued, and the ones for the distribution of those that were not.25 Organizing and collecting the money for the ransom for a great majority of the captured at Malaga proved an arduous task. The payment came from goods and clothes owned by the captives in the site and organized by two wealthy inhabitants 21 In 1505 February 14th. Oran.lo rogamos de parte de su altesa oviese por bien de prestar la suma que abaxo se dirá para sacar dose ánimas [...] E más le pedimos prestados para acabar de pagar nuestra limosna, que nos faltava, ciento e ochenta e cinco doblas e cinco tomines. Ibid. 22 R. González Arévalo. “Esclavitud y cautiverio en el reino de granada a fines de la Edad Media. Málaga (1487-1538)”. PhD thesis. Universidad de Málaga, 2004. 23 For more regarding the consequences of sieges in late Medieval and Early Modern history see: J. Hook. “The Sack of Rome”. In: The Sack of Rome. Springer, 2004, pp. 156–180; I. Sherer. “The Experience of the Sack”. In: Warriors for a Living. Brill, 2017, pp. 144–174; S. Bowd. Renaissance Mass Murder: Civilians and Soldiers During the Italian Wars. Oxford University Press, 2018. 24Ladero Quesada, “La esclavitud por guerra a fines del siglo XV: el caso de Málaga”. 25Ibid., p.73. 5.1. CONQUERORS AND MERCHANTS 117 of Malaga, Omar Abenamar and Ali Dordux. At this point, the role of the Genoese divides into two. First, Pinelo acts as a collector and settler of the accounts owed to the Monarchs. However, the accorded money for the rescue was too much to be settled by two men, so were the goods of the Malagueños. After eight months the captives start to be moved and sold. It is then that the second role of the Genoese takes part – slavers. The records do not survive, and few later notarial deeds recorded the transaction of Malaga’s former inhabitants in Jerez, Seville, or Valencia. 26 However, there are records of three thousand captives sent from Malaga to Seville to be sold. 27 Likewise, the copy of a power of attorney, in central treasury archive, permitting Andrea de Odon, Juan Antonio Calvo, Bernaldo Pineli, and Cristobal Salvago to collect money regarding the slaves from Malaga in the name of Luis de Santángel. 28 From the 1440s, Portuguese voyages down the coast of Africa led to the arrival of a stream of captives sold as slaves on the peninsula. By 1500, about a tenth of the population of Lisbon and Seville were slaves. 29 These individuals worked as servants and craft workers, taking jobs unfulfilled by Europeans, usually by lack of workforce. Thus, the Iberian peninsula’s population held an important percentage of West African and Berber captives bought at the Portuguese ports. Robin Blackburn shows how in the late sixteenth century at Malaga could be found ‘Christian Black Berber, Moorish Berber, Black from the Nation of Moors, Berber Mulatta, Black from Portuguese Nation, Christian from Moorish Caste, Black from Guinea, and Black from India from Portugal.’ 30 In Valencia, at the end of the fifteenth century, a total of 493 slaves, 185 were described as Moras and 78 as Christians; one was described as a Jew and one a Turk. 31 Many Genoese were part of the machinery that made the human trade possible. As seen in this section, they took on public administrators handling the finances and fates of subjugated humans. In the next section, a different side will be explored, that of financiers, explorers, and conquerors. The first investor in exploration was the Portuguese Crown. It claimed sovereignty over the Atlantic isles and the West coast of Africa, flying the evangelist flag in the southern Atlantic. In the Chronicle of the discovery and conquest of Guinea, Eanes de Zurara affirms that the Portuguese sought to 1) establish trade ties, 2) inquiry about the 26 Igual Luis and Navarro Espinach, “Los genoveses en España en el tránsito del siglo XV al XVI”. 27 AGS. Diversos de Castilla. Number 308, 1487 September 12. In: Ladero Quesada, “La esclavitud por guerra a fines del siglo XV: el caso de Málaga”, p. 86. 28AGS. Contaduría Mayor de Cuentas. Leg. 97. f. 20. Ref in: ibid., p. 79. 29 R. Blackburn. “The old world background to European colonial slavery”. In: The William and Mary Quarterly 54.1 (1997), pp. 65–102. 30 ... berberisco negro cristiano, berberisco moro, negro de la nacion de moros, berberisco mulatta, negro de nacion portuguesa, cristiana de casta de moros, negro de guinea, and negro de la India de Portugal. ibid., p. 81. 31 B. Vincent. Minorías y marginados en la España del siglo XVI. vol. 14. Diputación Provincial de Granada, 1987, p.243-44. 118 CHAPTER 5. SLAVE TRADE expansion and influence of the Muslims in the African continent, 3) look for Christian populations ready to help in the fight against the infidel, 4) expand Christianity. 32 The arguments made by the Portuguese chroniclers, hint a Reconquista imaginary. Although the inhabitants of west Africa and the Atlantic Islands were not Muslim, it is necessary to bear in mind this imaginary in the day-to-day mind of the fifteenth century. At the time, such religious ideals legitimized the expansion of enterprises for both Portugal and Castile 33 . Therefore, in 1455 Don Afonso V receives from Pope Nicholas V the privilege to conquer, occupy, and appropriated all the lands, ports, islands, and seas of Africa, from the Cape da Nau and Bojador to Guinea, including the entire southern coast. 34 Later in 1456, Calisto III adds to the privileges and grants the Order of Christ all the power and spiritual jurisdiction already conquered in West Africa. From the fourteenth century onward, the Portuguese focused their attention on the gold trade in the Gulf of Guinea. 35 The trade consolidated after the settlement of Elmina (1482) and the port of Axim, West of the coast of Guinea. For these early enterprises, cultural exchange was essential. Merchants and explorers received and absorbed new ideas and material culture from the Africans, as much as the Africans did from Europeans. 36 The fifteenth and sixteenth century record numerous individuals establishing into local communities and living alongside the West African peoples. 37 They were named Tangomao or lançados, and in a way started the Atlantic Creole culture. Documental evidence shows that these individuals impacted the rise of the slave trade tremendously. Both David Wheat and Toby Green use them as an example to argue in favor of the undeniable Euro-African creolization. 38 The problem 32 G. E. De Zurara and C. R. Beazley. The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea. 100. Cambridge University Press, Hakluyt society, 1899, p.172–173. 33 A. de Almeida Mendes. “The Foundations of the System: A Reassessment of the Slave Trade to the Spanish Americas in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, António de Almeida Mendes”. In: Extending the Frontiers. Yale University Press, 2008, pp. 63–94; A. de Almeida Mendes. “Le Portugal et l’Atlantique. Expansion, esclavage et race en perspective (xive-xvie siècles)”. In: Rives méditerranéennes 53 (2016), pp. 139–157. 34 Nicholas V bull Romanus Pontifex reads:ipsamque conquestam quam a capitibus de Bojador et de Nam usque per totam Guineam et ultra versus illam merdionalm plagam extendi harum serie declaramys etiam ad ipsos Alfonsum regem et successores suos ac Infantem et non ad alquos alios spectasse et pretinuisse ac impertum spectare et pertinere de jure... 35 Almeida Mendes, “The Foundations of the System: A Reassessment of the Slave Trade to the Spanish Americas in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, António de Almeida Mendes”. 36 Almeida Mendes, “The Foundations of the System: A Reassessment of the Slave Trade to the Spanish Americas in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, António de Almeida Mendes”; Almeida Mendes, “Le Portugal et l’Atlantique. Expansion, esclavage et race en perspective (xive-xvie siècles)”. 37 H. L. Bennett. “Prelude to the Prince: Africa Sovereign Power in the Fifteenth Century”. In: Crossroads Africa: Africa Engagement in the making of Early Modernity an international conference. I Tatti - The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. 2019. 38 Wheat, Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640; Green, The rise of the trans- Atlantic slave trade in Western Africa, 1300–1589.