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The Two Italies

Economic Relations Between the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and the Northern Communes

David Abulafia author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:24th Nov '05

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Two Italies cover

A study of the economic development in twelfth-century Italy of Sicily and the maritime ports.

A study of the economic development of the Norman kingdom of Sicily and the maritime ports of Genoa, Pisa and Venice. Dr Abulafia argues that the kingdom was a major exporter of wheat and raw cotton, and that in the twelfth century the northern merchants gained a substantial hold over these exports.This book is a study of the economic development of different areas of twelfth-century Italy whose commercial interests were closely inter related: the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, famed for the wealth of its rulers, and the maritime ports of Genoa, Pisa and Venice, which were actively extending their trading interests throughout the Mediterranean. On the basis of largely untapped sources in Genoa and other north Italian archives, this book seeks to explain how the north Italian merchants attempted to extend and to protect their interests in the kingdom of Sicily, by agreements with the Norman rulers or with those in Germany and Byzantium who aimed at the conquest of Sicily and southern Italy. Dr Abulafia argues that the kingdom was a major exporter of wheat and raw cotton, and that in the twelfth century the northern merchants gained a substantial hold over these exports. The Norman kings profited greatly from the opportunity to sell the produce of their realm, and in particular of their own estates, to an assured market; the lack of intensive industry in the kingdom left the northerners free to produce textiles out of southern fibres. Thus signs emerge of two Italies, an agrarian and pastoral south, against a north with incipient industrial activity, based partly on the commercial exploitation of the south.

ISBN: 9780521023061

Dimensions: 218mm x 140mm x 20mm

Weight: 435g

332 pages