Connectivity and sea power–entangled maritime dimensions in the medieval Mediterranean

Summary

ABSTRACT. Using the connectivity concept developed by Horden and Purcell, the author examines the ties between naval power, based on a war fleet, and the rise of a commercial network. Venice, Genoa, and the Aragon Crown demonstrated that the network of commercial connectivity extended well beyond the areas where these powers intervened politically and militarily. The examples of ninth-century Arabic, thirteenth-century Venetian and fifteenth-century Byzantine conquests proved the importance of maritime connectivity.

RÉSUMÉ. Partant du concept de connectivité, développé par Horden et Purcell, l'auteur s'efforce de comprendre les liens entre la puissance navale, reposant sur une flotte de guerre, et l'essor d'un réseau commercial. Venise, Gênes et la Couronne d'Aragon démontrent que le réseau de connectivité commerciale s'étend bien au-delà des espaces où ces puissances interviennent politiquement et militairement. La puissance navale implique le contrôle des détroits et des îles jalonnant les grandes routes maritimes. Les exemples des conquêtes arabes du IX^e siècle, de Venise au XIII^e siècle et même de Byzance au XV^e siècle démontrent l'importance de la connectivité maritime.

According to Alfred Thayer Mahan's classical concept, the wielding of sea power depends above all on strong military fleets able to defeat enemies in decisive battles, while its main objective consists in the maintenance and defence of maritime trading interests, to the detriment of competitors. This view, which assumes a very close relationship between the exercise of naval power and the spatial frames of the commercial policy of nations, is of course basically modern and cannot easily be transferred to Medieval realities, as Richard W. Unger has argued. Nevertheless, the search for a more appropriate understanding of medieval ‘sea power’ or thalassocracy might not only profit from the study of war fleets, maritime battles and naval administration, but also from attention to aspects of spatial connectivity.

Thus, Archibald Lewis has attempted to correlate the changing distribution of naval strength and the dynamics of Mediterranean commercial seafaring in the earlier Middle Ages. However, maritime connectivity is not just identical to trade.