Against the backdrop of the dominant narratives of Venetian Levant trade and some recent studies based on social network analysis, the lecture will investigate activities of Venetian merchants in Cairo. This will show that Venetian-Mamluk trade was not only a sort of non-contact trade effected in a highly formalized and contained manner in the emporium of Alexandria, marked by an uneasy coexistence interrupted by heavy clashes. It shall be argued that the moment of interaction between the ‘cultures’ was indeed less sharp and more ambiguous: Venetian merchants and other intermediaries were active also outside the fondaco and even, despite of several regulations, in Cairo. Furthermore, the conflict line were not so much parallel to cultural divides rather than cross-cutting, i.e. transcultural. In order to track the mostly clandestine operations of these actors outside the relatively well-documented realm of official trade relations, we use a methodology inspired by an old technique: the cue card system. The lecture shall give an insight into the potential and limits of this methodology combining a new database-system with tools for collaborative work among Mediterranean scholars.
Georg Christ leads a Research Group in the Transcultural Studies Programme of Universität Heidelberg investigating trading diasporas in the Eastern Mediterranean 1250-1450. His research focuses on the climate change of the Late Middle Ages, the crisis of the 14th century and their impact on long distance trade as well as on customs, maritime police, and smuggling and more generally economic history of the Middle Ages. Besides that he coordinates a number of projects in the realm of scientific computing and historical GIS as well as digital datamanagement in historical research (cue card systems). A particular interest he takes in the combination of macro and micro perspective in the analysis of medieval trade and the application of new methods from other fields. His first Trading Conflicts: A Venetian Consul in Mamlûk Alexandria at the Beginning of the 15th Century, is forthcoming with Brill, Leiden.