Experiencing Alterity: Italian Merchants and Local Population in 14th Century Venetian Azov Sea. Changes and Continuity

After the the Fourth Crusade (1204), Western merchants began to regularly frequent the Black Sea basin. Genoa and Venice installed commercial settlements in the region called emporia, which over time became an indispensable reference point for travelers from both Western Europe and from the East. The commercial history of the two Italian cities soon intersected with the rapid formation process of the Mongol Empire which, starting in the 1220s, extended from China to Eastern Europe. The constitution of a homogeneous and vast political entity facilitated communications and partly promoted them, guaranteeing Western merchants a “safer” space within which to move and cover distances previously unimaginable. In the emporia founded on the Black Sea–and in this context–the Western urban mercantile class encountered the local element and other migrants from substantially unknown geographical areas. This paper examines relationships between Venetian citizens and foreigners as well as the local population who lived in Tana on the Azov Sea. Tana was the easternmost settlement of the entire Latin trading system and is studied here from the mid-fourteenth century until the end of the century, a period that was both politically and economically problematic, was characterized by international tensions, economic crises but also extraordinary opportunities for commercial expansion and profit.