Maritime Pisa and Its Independence

Volpe emphasised Pisa's isolation. In geopolitical if not geographical terms, Pisa was an island. The routes connecting northern and southern Italy by­passed it. The via Francigena that led northern Europe's pilgrims to Rome went through Lucca. Volpe saw the sea as Pisa's natural way out. The comune was isolated politically and geographically from its surrounds and after having made landfall, it gravitated towards the German emperor. Thus Pisa became â€?coadiutrice del sire germanico' (â€?coadjutrix of the Germanic sire'; Volpe's na­tionalism prevented him from admitting subservience to a foreign ruler).ⁿ But in Pisa the opposition between â€?nobility' and what would become known as â€?popolo’ (the â€?popular' faction), which would trouble all other communes, was traditionally mediated by the availability of a colonial outlet: social contradic­tions were managed through collaboration overseas (hence the mention, in the passage quoted above, of the ability of the merchant aristocracy to remain involve other related social milieux in its activities abroad while dissipating social tensions locally).

There were two main areas of Pisan colonial endeavour in the twelfth cen­tury: the Orient (Syria and Constantinople especially) and Sardinia. They were profoundly dissimilar modes of engagement; one was �protocolonial’, the other already distinctly colonial. In the Orient, there was no acquisition of sover­eignty or territorial dominion. There was residency, including permanent resi­dency, sometimes extraterritoriality, but local authorities remained paramount and unthreatened in their control over local subjects. The Pisan colonies in the east were often able to avoid taxation and manage their own affairs but limita­tions were placed on the newcomers’ mobility, including a prohibition to pro­ceed further inland and the customary demand that the ships entering the harbour relinquish their sails and oars.^{[718] [719] [720] [721] There were trading colonies, formally established in 1108 in Laodicea and Antiochia, 1100 in Jaffa, 1111 in Constantino­ple, and 1153 in Alessandria and Cairo. In North Africa, especially Tunisia, Volpe notes how the Pisan colonies were becoming �semiautonomous’ communes?3 These were islands in foreign seas, and would be subject to pogroms like that of 1182, which destroyed in Constantinople the local Pisan community. These colonies were often loathed by the natives, and the loathing was reciprocat- ed.14 A different situation developed in Sardinia. Here, as more recent histori­cal research reveals, Pisan aristocrats acquired something like territorial sover­eignty there while remaining citizens of the republic and often residing in the metropole.15 Unlike the trading colonies of the Levant, which specialised in luxury goods, Sardinia’s economy was familiarly �colonial’. It exchanged raw materials (silver, salt, timber, raw hides, wool, and unprocessed fish) in return for Pisan products (fabrics, iron, leather goods), while rapidly becoming a pro­tected market for Pisan industries.}

Pisan influence over the region increased during the eleventh century. In 1015-1016 a joint Pisan-Genoese expedition had expelled Arab sailors and a brief conflict with its erstwhile allies had confirmed Pisan primacy over the island.1^[723] The acquisition of vast interests in the island and the ability to enforce a commercial hegemony later created recognisably colonial conditions includ­ing the exclusion of trading competitors and the local rulers' ostensible de­pendency on Pisan political support, circumstances resembling modern pro- tectorates.i^[724] Pisa was able to impose a mercantilist policy, including monopolies on grains and metals, two crucial exports?^[725] A historiography focusing on eco­nomic linkages has later emphasised mutual relationships benefiting both parties.^{[726] [727]}

Pisan aristocratic �lineages' had established their rule in Sardinia, intermar­ried with local elites and acquired extensive interests in the island.21 Volpe re­marked a �fatto strano’ (�a strange fact'): �potenti persone che, cittadini a Pisa, erano re nellisola e dipendenti dal comune pisano per Gallura, ne erano affatto liberi per Torres’ (�powerful individuals who, citizens in Pisa and kings in the island, were subjects of the Pisan commune in Gallura but entirely free of it in Torres [different areas of Sardinia]’).^{[728] [729] [730] [731] [732] Pisa's rule in the island was varied: parts of it were controlled directly by Pisa, while there were areas in which Pisan citizens were ruling in a personal capacity.}

as the municipality of Pisa, for the initiative of private citizens and with its own strength, was able to obtain from the Judges [Sardinian rulers] favourable treaties and stability of rights over them, and to put in the most important locations its â€?consul et potestas’, or captain or castellan, which represented at least a principle of effective territorial sovereignty of the city, commercial relations grew even among the coastal lands of the island and Pisa.2⁵

Volpe’s search for the origins of the modern Italian state, for the origins of its historical progression, led him to Pisa first and then across the water. Territo­rial sovereignty had been born overseas; it was what would be later called â€?un­equal’ treaties that led to the despatch of government officials representing Pisa’s territorial sovereignty on site. It was an eminently unequal relationship and had been a couple of centuries in the making by the time it was formal­ised. Sardinia’s original reconquista had been effected by Pisan adventurers, and the Pisan archbishop acquired rights over Corsica in 1078, and over Sar­dinia in 1093. Colonial ties were in this instance literally about the developing relationship between a metropole, its metropolite, and a dominion across the sea.2⁶

Volpe talks about a �comune marittimo’ (the curiae maris) as separate from the territorial commune. The two governments overlap for a long time, operat­ing side by side, and only at a later stage they establish a formalised articula­tion of prerogatives and governance structure. Private interests move the co- mune marittimo and its merchants and shipowners and consuls, but these interests were actually conducting the whole of Pisa's colonial policy, that is, the system of external relations that was not involved in dealing with the Ital­ian and Tuscanian polities.