A major port city located on Italy’s Ligurian coast.
Genoa’s fine natural harbor attracted native Ligurian people and seafaring ancient merchants since at least the fifth century B.C.E. Trade-minded Etruscans also settled there, and Rome had strong contacts with the city by the outbreak of the Second Punic War (218 B.C.E.). Hannibal sacked Genoa in 205 for cooperating with Rome, but the Romans quickly rebuilt it as a base from which to control Liguria.
Little is mentioned in Roman historical sources about Genoa (Genua), though the geographer Strabo mentions the major goods that flowed through the city: local timber (especially good for shipbuilding), hides, honey, wool fells, and amber, exchanged for olive oil and wine. A minor outpost on the Roman Aemilian Way, in the later empire it became a major seaport for western Lombardy, including Milan and Pavia.
As the Roman empire disintegrated, like much of Italy, Genoa fell under Ostrogothic, then Byzantine, then Lombard, and then Frankish rule from the fifth through the ninth centuries. With few natural resources at its disposal, Genoa relied on maritime trade, which had all but disappeared. North African Muslims sacked the city in 934–935, and there is some indication it was a local center of the cloth trade. Apparently abandoned for some years, by the eleventh century the Genoese were counterraiding Muslim holdings in Sardinia and Corsica and trading in North Africa. By at least 1065, Genoese ships were found in Syrian ports, having gained leverage that would make them extremely valuable to the crusader armies. During this time, Genoa emerged as an independent-minded city that ran most of its own affairs.
A bird’s-eye view of the harbor and city of Genoa, Italy, circa mid-nineteenth century. Genoa’s natural harbor attracted native Ligurian people and ancient seafaring merchants since at least the fifth century B.C.E. (Library of Congress)
The revival of the northern Italian economy in the High Middle Ages meant both a supply of goods to ship out and a demand for goods from all over the Mediterranean and beyond. The landed aristocracy of the early Middle Ages became the merchant aristocracy of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Genuense ergo mercator—Genoese therefore a merchant—was a valid cliché. War, especially at sea, went hand in hand with the development of markets. Genoese aid to the Castilian reconquista against the Moors was exchanged for a near monopoly on Spanish seaborne trade before Catalonia’s rise in the 1300s. Genoese merchants held a privileged place in Constantinople from 1155 until being evicted by the victorious Venetians in the wake of its capture and sack in 1205. After 1261, the restored Greek monarchy cut off the Venetians and reinstated the Genoese. The Genoese empire also supported the Genoese control of the eastern Aegean region. Rivalry with nearby Pisa ended in 1284 with the naval victory of Meloria. Venice proved more resilient, and Genoese power had clearly waned after four wars (1255–1381). In this struggle, control of trade in the eastern Mediterranean was at stake. In the years before the fourth war ended, trade with Alexandria alone amounted to well over half of the total value of its overseas commerce. The Genoese had colonies in the Black Sea, through which they gathered goods from the Silk Road and the Golden Horde, and slaves for Muslim and Christian markets, and through one of which, Caffa, they supposedly imported the Black Death into the Mediterranean and Europe.
The rulers of Cyprus relied on Genoese ships, and the Genoese used Cypriot ports as bases for Levantine and Armenian trade. Beginning in 1277, Genoese ships sailed into the Atlantic, directly trading with London and continental ports as far north as Bruges. Its merchants also penetrated inland trade routes, from Milan to central Europe and through the Aquitaine to thirteenth-century French fairs. With such far-flung offices, colonies, and customers, medieval Genoese were in the forefront of developing instruments of commercial credit, new forms of commercial partnership, and insurance. Genoese shipbuilders were also instrumental in developing both round ships and galleys into more spacious and reliable conveyances, and in advancing navigation tools and techniques.
The fifteenth century saw the rise of the important Banco San Giorgio, which dominated
Genoese finance until the eighteenth century. Genoa fell under foreign domination by Milan (1421–1436) and Milan and France (1463–1499). Genoa’s fortunes declined further with the fall of Constantinople, the shift of economic activity from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic seaboard, the rebellions along the Ligurian coast, and the continuation of traditional interfamily strife. In 1522, the Spaniards sacked the city in the midst of the Hapsburg-Valois Wars. Nonetheless, Genoa survived as a republic until Napoléon Bonaparte’s arrival in 1797. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Genoa enjoyed some economic recovery, and many local fortunes were made through foreign investment and foreign exchange speculation. The Genoese chartered their vessels and made loans to foreign merchants. Napoléon’s Continental System and the British blockade diminished Genoa’s role as a major port, but the Genoese regained it after the French defeat when Piedmont annexed Genoa. From this point on, Genoa has served first Piedmont and then united Italy as the country’s major commercial port, with only Marseilles as a peer in the Mediterranean.
Genoa’s extensive harbor area (seventeen square miles) was badly damaged by Allied action during World War II, and storms ravaged the area again in 1954 and 1955. Genoa, with a population of about 650,000 in 2000, is the main outlet for northern Italian bulk goods such as olive oil, wine, macaroni, cheese, fruits, rice, and textiles. Fuel of all kinds, grain, and industrial raw materials lead the list of imports. Genoa also leads all other Italian ports in the volume of passenger traffic. Genoa’s industrial base remains important, though declining and well behind the port and its activities. Iron and steel, cement, chemicals, ships, airplanes, rolling stock, paper, textiles, and sugar are among the area’s major products. Banking and finance are increasing in importance, and as a land, sea, and air transportation hub, Genoa is without peer in contemporary Italy.
Joseph P. Byrne
See also: Crusades; Mediterranean Sea; Napoleonic Wars; Roman Empire; World War II.
Day, Gerald. Genoa’s Response to Byzantium, 1155–1204: Commercial Expansion and Factionalism in a Medieval City. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988.
Epstein, Steven. Genoa and the Genoese, 958–1528. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Quintieri, Beniamino, ed. Patterns of Trade, Competition, and Trade Policies. Brookfield, VT: Avebury, 1995.