The Medieval Frontiers of Latin Christendom by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto James Muldoon

Author:Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, James Muldoon [Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, James Muldoon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781351885768
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2017-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

10

The Transfer of Colonial Techniques from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic*

Charles Verlinden

The colonization of the Atlantic world is generally considered to be an unprecedented and completely original phenomenon. This view is erroneous, however, since colonies existed in the eastern Mediterranean or Levant at the end of the Middle Ages. It was there that the technique of colonization which spread across the Atlantic world originated. The study of medieval influences on colonization in the Atlantic zone, i.e. America and Africa, opens up a new field of historical research and modifies the traditional perspectives from which we are accustomed to examine relations between the Old and New Worlds. Such a study, moreover, implies a conception of colonial history different from the old "external" conception. This point requires some explanation.

During the colonial era historians were interested almost exclusively in the colonies as a function of the metropolises. They studied the colonies founded by a particular nation from a nationalist perspective. The study of the medieval precedents of Atlantic colonization requires, on the contrary, knowledge of reciprocal influences in a very large area and cannot be accomplished unless one deals with the American continent, the Atlantic archipelagoes, and a large part of Africa on the one hand, and western and southern Europe on the other, as well as Italian, Catalan, and French medieval colonies in the Mediterranean. Reciprocal contacts and influences, in both administrative and economic terms, are so important that we must consider the various colonies and metropolises as forming part of one large historical area. Instead of merely examining the external diplomatic and commercial history of the colonies, we must study and compare their internal economic, social, and institutional development. By doing this, we find that certain phenomena are continuous, and we are thus able to understand the transfer of colonial techniques.

I am not suggesting that Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries introduced identical economic and social institutions and structures into their Atlantic colonies. The obvious differences in the development of the metropolises, in the eras in which the colonies were founded, and in the geographical and anthropological environment prevented such similarities. Their common atmosphere, characterized by phenomena of filiation or continuity, is undeniable, however. If we adhere constantly to the influence exercised over the various Atlantic colonies by the economic, social, and administrative institutions of the colonies in the later Middle Ages, and of the metropolises, if we combine this study with an analysis of the influence and transformations of the indigenous populations, it becomes possible to follow the development of colonial history in a way that will be useful not only to those interested in the past, but equally to those who are studying the contribution of the West to the countries now in the process of developing.

We have too often lost sight of the fact that from the early twelfth century the eastern Mediterranean countries provided an outlet for the European desire to colonize, and this situation continued not only after Columbus but, for the Venetians at least, long after the beginning of English colonization in America.

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