Venetian Trading Networks in the Medieval Mediterranean

Posted Online August 5, 2013.Network analysis can identify the crucial role that such social outcasts as Jews, Greeks, colonial subjects, and uprooted individuals played within the exclusive commercial networks of the Republic of Venice. These lower-rank merchants and brokers were able not only to manipulate legal, cultural, and religious categories to integrate themselves into the Venetian networks but also to abandon those networks when better economic opportunities arose

CHAPTER 5: FORMATION AND EVOLUTION OF GALAXIES AND LARGE STRUCTURES

Peer reviewe

The Gaia-ESO Public Spectroscopic Survey: Implementation, data products, open cluster survey, science, and legacy

Context. In the last 15 years different ground-based spectroscopic surveys have been started (and completed) with the general aim of delivering stellar parameters and elemental abundances for large samples of Galactic stars, complementing Gaia astrometry. Among those surveys, the Gaia-ESO Public Spectroscopic Survey, the only one performed on a 8m class telescope, was designed to target 100 000 stars using FLAMES on the ESO VLT (both Giraffe and UVES spectrographs), covering all the Milky Way populations, with a special focus on open star clusters. Aims. This article provides an overview of the survey implementation (observations, data quality, analysis and its success, data products, and releases), of the open cluster survey, of the science results and potential, and of the survey legacy. A companion article reviews the overall survey motivation, strategy, Giraffe pipeline data reduction, organisation, and workflow. Methods. We made use of the information recorded and archived in the observing blocks; during the observing runs; in a number of relevant documents; in the spectra and master catalogue of spectra; in the parameters delivered by the analysis nodes and the working groups; in the final catalogue; and in the science papers. Based on these sources, we critically analyse and discuss the output and products of the Survey, including science highlights. We also determined the average metallicities of the open clusters observed as science targets and of a sample of clusters whose spectra were retrieved from the ESO archive. Results. The Gaia-ESO Survey has determined homogeneous good-quality radial velocities and stellar parameters for a large fraction of its more than 110 000 unique target stars. Elemental abundances were derived for up to 31 elements for targets observed with UVES. Lithium abundances are delivered for about 1/3 of the sample. The analysis and homogenisation strategies have proven to be successful; several science topics have been addressed by the Gaia-ESO consortium and the community, with many highlight results achieved. Conclusions. The final catalogue will be released through the ESO archive in the first half of 2022, including the complete set of advanced data products. In addition to these results, the Gaia-ESO Survey will leave a very important legacy, for several aspects and for many years to come

The Gaia-ESO Public Spectroscopic Survey: Motivation, implementation, GIRAFFE data processing, analysis, and final data products

Context. The Gaia-ESO Public Spectroscopic Survey is an ambitious project designed to obtain astrophysical parameters and elemental abundances for 100 000 stars, including large representative samples of the stellar populations in the Galaxy, and a well-defined sample of 60 (plus 20 archive) open clusters. We provide internally consistent results calibrated on benchmark stars and star clusters, extending across a very wide range of abundances and ages. This provides a legacy data set of intrinsic value, and equally a large wide-ranging dataset that is of value for the homogenisation of other and future stellar surveys and Gaia's astrophysical parameters. Aims. This article provides an overview of the survey methodology, the scientific aims, and the implementation, including a description of the data processing for the GIRAFFE spectra. A companion paper introduces the survey results. Methods. Gaia-ESO aspires to quantify both random and systematic contributions to measurement uncertainties. Thus, all available spectroscopic analysis techniques are utilised, each spectrum being analysed by up to several different analysis pipelines, with considerable effort being made to homogenise and calibrate the resulting parameters. We describe here the sequence of activities up to delivery of processed data products to the ESO Science Archive Facility for open use. Results. The Gaia-ESO Survey obtained 202 000 spectra of 115 000 stars using 340 allocated VLT nights between December 2011 and January 2018 from GIRAFFE and UVES. Conclusions. The full consistently reduced final data set of spectra was released through the ESO Science Archive Facility in late 2020, with the full astrophysical parameters sets following in 2022. A companion article reviews the survey implementation, scientific highlights, the open cluster survey, and data products

Els alfòndecs de Damasc vistos pels notaris i mercaders francs / The Funduqs of Damascus seen by Frankish Notaries and Merchants

Syria was a region much frequented by merchants and both travelogues and their Renaissance publishers usually excluded it from their accounts. However, there is extensive Late Medieval travel literature on journeys to Egypt and Syria thanks to the texts left by the pilgrims who went to the Holy Sepulchre. In the following pages, I will attempt to offer new information from atypical travellers, such as Latin notaries public, on the structures hosting European merchants in cities like Alexandria and, above all, Damascus

Venetian Trading Networks in the Medieval Mediterranean

To understand the system of business relations within the commercial network of the Republic of Venice, this article adopts a network analysis that differs from a standard narrative based on a privileged subset of actors or relations. It allows us to examine the socially mixed group of entrepreneurs, brokers, and shippers at the heart of Venice’s economic system, as well as the various conditions under which they operated. Venice’s overseas mercantile relations, shaped by the ruling patriciate, were riddled with restrictions upon foreigners and colonial subjects. The Venetian trading community centered in Alexandria from 1418 to 1420 exemplifled this far-reaching Venetian system during the fourteenth and ªfteenth centuries. It featured a number of lower-rank characters negotiating, flaunting, and frequently breaking the rules, all to the greater proªt of the empire

A Mamluk-Venetian Memorandum on Asian Trade, AD 1503

This article presents and discusses a source of unique importance for our knowledge of early modern global exchanges. Produced in 1503 by the Egyptian administration and found among the records of a Venetian company with global commercial interests, the document records hitherto unknown connections between the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia, followed by cargo figures. By sending the Memorandum to the head office in Venice, the Company's agents in Egypt were labouring to solve the most important concern of Venice's information network, that of coordinating Indian with Mediterranean trading seasons. By analysing the document's context, namely, a company involved in the export of central European metals to Asia, this article focuses on the capacity of its agents to gather information through collaboration, networking and ultimately, friendship with Muslim partners and informers. The story of the 1503 Memorandum and its transmission raises questions about the mixed networks underpinning global exchanges, the role of information and the drive of the late Mamluk sultanate into the world of the Indian Ocean

Piracy and law in the Ottoman Mediterranean

Joshua White’s Piracy and Law unpacks the idea of an Ottoman Mediterranean, a unified legal space extending over large areas East of the Strait of Messina, with a particular focus on Cyprus waters, the Adriatic and the Aegean seas, and equally comprising Orthodox, Jewish and Muslim subjects under the aegis of the Islamic rule of law. White introduces us to a sea populated by conflicting interests, ambiguous allegiances, and mixed identities, where a strict Christian-Muslim dichotomy proves to be a particularly unhelpful tool. The monograph’s main focus is the post-Lepanto (1571) apparent paradox: White presents a wide range of maritime relations and raiding, against the backdrop of a politically-declining empire, where the Ottoman legal system did not fade away but rather became omnipresent. The Ottoman Mediterranean had its own lines of demarcation since North-African regencies contested the monopoly of Istanbul chief judges, did not acknowledge peace treaties signed by the sultan, and developed their own foreign policy, hence challenging a hegemonic, Istanbul-minded rule of law

Els alfòndecs de Damasc vistos pels notaris i mercaders francs / The Funduqs of Damascus seen by Frankish Notaries and Merchants

Syria was a region much frequented by merchants and both travelogues and their Renaissance publishers usually excluded it from their accounts. However, there is extensive Late Medieval travel literature on journeys to Egypt and Syria thanks to the texts left by the pilgrims who went to the Holy Sepulchre. In the following pages, I will attempt to offer new information from atypical travellers, such as Latin notaries public, on the structures hosting European merchants in cities like Alexandria and, above all, Damascus

Breaching the Bronze Wall: Franks at Mamluk and Ottoman Courts and Markets

Breaching the Bronze Wall deals with the idea that the words of honorable Muslims constitute proof and that written documents and the words of non-Muslims are of inferior value. Thus, foreign merchants in cities such as Istanbul, Damascus or Alexandria could barely prove any claim, as neither their contracts nor their words were of any value if countered by Muslims. Francisco Apellániz explores how both groups labored to overcome the 'biases against non-Muslims' in Mamluk Egypt’s and Syria’s courts and markets (14th–15th c.) and how the Ottoman conquest (1517) imposed a new, orthodox view on the problem. The book slips into the Middle Eastern archive and the Ottoman , and scrutinizes sharia’s intricacies and their handling by consuls, dragomans, qadis and other legal actors. Readership: Readers of Ottoman and Mamlūk history, Islamic law and justice and anyone interested in the history of Venice and the East and Christian-Muslim relations, as well as cross-cultural relations more broadly