Status Updates From De Middellandse Zee: De Sam...

At the same time there was no let up in Christians trading with Algiers - principally to buy up stolen goods

In response to the taking of captives by pirates the papacy set up in 1581 a body to ransom them, followed by Sicily in 1596 and Genoa in 1597. Braudel mentions there is an achive of material in Genoa deali g with the ransom of prisoners and their lives in captivity.

Some figures from venice, between 1592 and 1609 between 250 and 300 ships were captured by pirates (about 16 per year). 90 of the attackers have been identified 44 were Muslim, 24 English or Dutch, and 22 Spanish.

The typical pirate ship was small and very lightly armed - built for speed not firepower.

A Portuguese prisoner in Algiers estimated that between 1621 and 1627 there were five thousand people captured by purstes and kept prusoner in Algiers including Portuguese, flemmings, scots, english, danes, irish, Hungarians, slavs, spaniards, french, italians, syrians, egyptians, Japanese, chinese, Mexicans and Ethiopians!

Simon Simonsen (alias Simon Danser) of Dordrecht arrived in Algiers in 1609 as a pirate, with a ship built in Lübeck and a crew made up of Turks, Dutch and English. Converted to Islam, later returned to Christianity in Marseille where he had a wife and daughter. 1616 he was 3xecuted for piracy in Tunis.

So we see the flexible labour market of the period

A grandson of Columbus, Luis, was slightly too fond of getting married and so ended up arrested in Valladolid for trigamy. Sentenced to ten years of ecile he died in the spanish controlled town of Oran in the nineth year of his sentence.

Braudel cites a 1940s book about Dante which argues that the legendary voyages of Saint Brenden are an Irish version of the voyages of sinbad the sailer.

I believe the manuscript history of St.Brenden stories predates the Sinbad tradition which complicates matters slightly...

The slow process of change and cultural adoption. Use of Arabic numerals forbidden in Florence-1299, likewise in Freiburg in 1520, used in Antwerp only from the end of the 16th century.

Spread of paper, Bagdad 794, 11th century Valencia and Greece, western europe from circa 1350

'Spanish' men's fashion that emerged 14th century stemmed from Siberia while the women's fashions from Cyprus came from Tang China

Braudel says that even now (ie 1960s) the lifestyle in Croatia, despite being mixed with many other influences, is like that in Italy, although of an Italy of long ago.

Here I would have liked some examples - which even the footnotes deny me.

Coffee arrived in Constantinople around 1550, in venice about 1580, it only reach France and England in the 17th century (Marseille- 1646)

Bandits might be supportrd by the local nobility, in.some regions relations seem particularly close - catalonia, southern Italy and Sicily, the papal states.

The Ottoman Turks defeat the Mamluks by using artillery (the mamluks apparently thought it was a dishonourable weapon and so shunned it). Artillery was the basis Braudel notes for the success of France, Muscovy (against Kazan at least), and Spain against Granada.

At the end of the 14th century the Mediterranean belonged to the cities and the city states, larger states like the Byzantine empireand the kingdom of Aragón were the product of their large cities.
This situation changed completelyduring the 15th century

English Levant company between 1581 and 1592 was making profits of up to 300%; but in 1595 the company was operating 15 ships with a total crew of 790. Mainly sailing to Egypt, Cyprus, and the Aegean. Less often to Venice and Algiers.

Presumably mostly smaller vessels buying high value luxury goods - spices, carpets, silk

Importing grain from distant countries was a clear sign of overall prosperity, although it was catastrophic for the poor.

In Portugal grain was pushed out by vines and olive trees. Grain was increasingly imported from Flanders and the Baltic region - this trade was conducted by Bretons who sold the grain in Lisbon for gold.

Later the Bretons were also transporting grain to Galicia

There was bread for the poor and bread for the rich and only the latter was made from wheat.

Pepper. I woke up in the dark hours of last night thinking about this. On the XVIth century Portugal controlled the supply of pepper to Europe. In 1586 Phillip II signed a contract for a consortium to buy up that pepper for wholsale into European countries at a fixed rate. The consortium had 20 shares, 7 of which were held by the Fuggers - a German banking family

To pay for the war in Flanders, the king of Spain sent ships loaded with silver from Barcelona to Genoa. Sometimes, ships were lost at sea - but not so often as the insurance premium that the spanish were paying was 1.5%

The story goes that in Mali in 1450 salt was exchanged for its own weight in gold

At the same time as there was emigration from Spain chiefly to the Americas there was also imigration into Spain mostly from the Auvergne.

Sardinia and Corsica as semi-closed economic zones. Very little money in circulation in Corsica, therefore taxes could be paid in goods - grain, cgestnuts, silkworms, or oil. While a school teacher might be paid 40 liters of grain a year for their work.

Sardines in the text.

I tell you, if there is a fish in a book that I read, it will mostly be a sardine.

Time and space were relative. News travelled between Venice and Cairo in the half the time that it went between Venice and Corfu even though ships haf to pass Corfu on their way to Cairo.

News of a secret peace agreement between Venice and the Ottoman turks signed on thec4th of april1573 was known in Rome on the 8th of april and in Palermo and madrid on the 17th of april. I wonder if the news would have spread more slowly if it had not been secret