ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the commercial role of Caffa and Gazaria, dealing first with the goods exported from or through the black sea region or destined for local consumption, followed by the Western goods imported from Europe or Latin Romania. At the end of the chapter, I touch upon the slave trade, which was the segment of commerce of primary importance, and which is relatively better studied compared to the rest. I revealed new data for estimating and reconsidering the economic role of Caffa in international trade, commerce in the Black Sea region, and the slave trade with Europe and Egypt. What I question here are the decline of long-distance trade and the regionalization of commercial activity. Both remain controversial issues. Indeed, the routes of the European trade with Eastern Asia shifted in the fourteenth century towards the Levantine ports, while the Black Sea ports ceased to be a major intermediary in spice and silk trade. This led to a drop of profitability rates of luxury goods on the Black Sea. However, the drop in profits which happened after the crisis of trade of the fourteenth century does not per se mean the decline of trade; it may simply be evidence of the shifts in the trade’s structure which can be compensated by an increase of scale. The problem of ‘regionalization or long-distance trade’ leads me to another question: were the patterns of commercial exchange similar to the previous experience of medieval trade, or did it have features of modern capitalism alongside its colonial trade patterns? After the mid-fourteenth century the silk and spices trade decreased and a new pattern seems to have been established. This new pattern implied an export of the raw materials (furs, food, and timber) from the Black Sea region in exchange for the textiles and other products from Italy and the West, which looks more like a modern colonial model characteristic of a new world system. Another issue to be treated specially is the institution of slavery and the slave trade.
