the light was always shifting, the colours were always changing - reading braudel's out of italy

thanks tlg. i’ve read large chunks of his capitalism and civilisation trilogy, but there he’s processed and is presenting a lot of information and it’s less quixotic than this (unless you deem that astonishing annals project to turn raw data into accurate pictorial history capable of representing the previously indivisible as quixotic, which it may be reasonable to do). that one you’ve recommended looks like it will have a similar manner to Out of Italy.

Next up in the Subjugation of Three Civilisations – Islam.

The story Braudel tells is effectively one of transactional engagement and respect. He points out that although, 'the West' having lost the Crusades, they lost a significant positional footprint on the 'Asiatic mainland', Christians retained control of the Mediterranean sea.

This creates one of those boundary areas of complexity and engagement, which are generally so fascinating I think. But the story here, as with the loss of Constantinople in 1453 is one of engagement by merchants on both sides, with Italians 'coming and going as they pleased' in the main Levantine ports of Syria and Egypt, and north African ports on the Barbary coast in latter day Libya, Tunisia and Morocco.

There's a fascinating picture of the Sahara trade (compare with the Black Sea goods): of dates, black slaves, elephant tusks, ostrich feathers, and gold dust from Sudan (as with the Caucasus slaves in the Black Sea, it's clear that slavery was of intrinsic value to the building of what I'll call for shorthand, complying with Braudel's translator, 'Italian greatness.'

It was interesting reading at the same time two current day pieces about Sudan:

This from the Foreign Policy Institute. It is, as you might expect, the standard 'western' geopolitical view, on the possibility of Sudan as a country 'in transition', examining the possibility becoming more widely integrated into 'the global community' by reducing its reputation for illicit activities.

A major part of Sudan’s problem today is geography. Sudan abuts seven countries and shares a vast shoreline with the Red Sea, positioning the state at the heart of some of the most endemic areas of militant activity in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.

With Khartoum as a major staging post on the channel for sub-Saharan and wider Middle Eastern 'irregular' migrants into Europe. This necessarily means that it's also seen as a conduit for terrorism, though it seems the evidence is quite vague on that, with quite a lot of 'could's and 'is likely to's' with 'open-source evidence [..] currently not robust enough to conclude that this is the case'.

Still, that whole Sahel strip is awash with instability at the moment, and it's not unreasonable to see Sudan at the moment as central to geopolitical considerations.

This excellent piece shows what it's like to be on the other side of that geopolitical viewpoint - the viewpoint of a Sudanese woman who likes global travel.

Travelling the world as an Arab-African, as a Muslim female, as a solo traveler is certainly difficult and complicated. But will I stop travelling? Absolutely not. I am just more selective as to where I go – the countries that are open and won’t put me through an inquisition just because I want to visit.

Testimony of this sort is vital to understand the nature of global movement in a world where population flows and migrant movement of all sorts is going to become far more fluid. (I read the other day that Lake Chad, which feeds the Sahel, that narrow fertile strip, in which most of the capital cities of African countries east to west are based, is drying up – just one specific example of how climate change will drive global migration in a way which western countries are not set up for).

Why am I diverting from Braudel? Because one of the enticing things about reading history is the flattening of time into a space - the telescopic perspective that brings everything into one changing place.

That gold dust from Sudan led to a number of Italian merchants to try and enter the North African hinterland and Sahara, although Braudel says no testimonies survive apart from that of a Genoese, Antonio Malfante, who made it as far as Tuat in 1417.

While Italian merchants were trying overland, Portuguese caravels were racing via the African western seaboard to open up a route to the valuable pepper and spice trade. Apparently the first attempt at this was in 1291, launched by the Vivaldi brothers out of Portugal, which nevertheless ended 'with obscure loss of life and possession' somewhere on the Guinea coast.

Vasca de Game managed it eventually, which results in an amusing anecdote, which ends the chapter

on May 21, 1498, as Vasco de Gama's ships were at anchor in Calicut Bay, there arrived to meet his emissaries two Moors of Tunis, who spoke Catalan and Genoese. "How the devil did you come here?" they exclaimed. The Portuguese reply is revealing: "Vimos busker cristãos e especiaria" ("We have come in search of Christians and spices"), they said.

Completing Braudel's 'long external view' of the period preceding Italy's final long period of greatness, he looks at its relation to 'Western Europe.'

He's at pains to point out that Western Europe at this point should not be perceived as backward, but an up-and-coming economy, on which Italy could base profitable superiority. He speaks of the bipolarity of Europe at this point, with Flanders at the top and Italy at the bottom.

He then problematises this view, by pointing out that very far from being bipolar, you had significant items like the Flemish invention of oil painting, the invention of the modern footsoldier in the Swiss cantons, the Portuguese light trading caravel, and pre-eminent, France, with Gothic architecture, its Champagne fairs and universities.

I found his picture of power relations *confused* here - Italy emergent or exploiting, an aggregator of European technocratic skills, or an eventual dominator of them? I think this confusion is unlikely to be Braudel's, and is probably mine, or it did occur to me while reading how much the depiction of power relations in written history is based on prepositions, whose nuance may be peculiarly subject to translation. Even the internal dynamics of a metaphor may be prepositional and subject to the same translated distortion. The grammar of history may at times merge quite closely with the grammar of language.

Braudel makes a big thing of French encirclement... actually there's a good example of what I was just talking about when he starts talking about encirclement. Of Italian emergence from being 'only a face in the crowd in the newly diversified Europe':

It was not a question purely of of intellectual or eminence or cultural prowess. Underlying Italian predominance, there very soon stood revealed economic sources of superiority.

What do the dynamics of that sentence tell us about Braudel's perception of historical process. It's not... clear? 'Underlying but very soon revealed' is a complex mechanic.

Hennnnnnyway. Encirclement. Braudel makes a big thing about Italy being able to encircle France via its maritime routes, first Genoa, and then Venice, with long haul trade, the so-called 'di largo respiro' via Aigues-Mortes, Valencia, Seville, Cape Finisterre, then non-stop (ie at no French ports) to Southampton, London and Bruges, for cloth, tin and lead.

I was confused why this encirclement mattered, really, given that Braudel also makes a big thing of Italian mercantile dominance of the beating heart of Western Europe - the great Champagne and Geneva fairs. But I think it was because of the social, political and financial disruption of the 100 Years War, or 100 Years of dynastic spats and conflicts and general disruption.

Regardless, I do find something highly romantic about the italian establishment of the maritime trade routes: woollen cloth from Burgundy (ie Flanders and the Netherlands, tin and lead from England, transacting with spices, pepper, sugar, perfumes and silk from the Middle and Far East. The galleys connecting Levantine trade with Baltic shipping and goods via the Hanseatic ports.

Braudel decides to finish his view of the relation of Italy to these three superpowers, with an image rather than a commentary, of the galeres da mercato system of Venice.

These were state built galleys (though which only used their oars into and out of port, under sail the rest of the time) auctioned out to the highest bidder, who would then sell its space to other merchants who had cargo to move.

By 1450 the system was fully in operation:

• Romanian galleys that went to La Tana and Trebizond
• The Aigues-Mortes galleys heading to Flanders
• The Syrian and Alexandrine galleys
• The Barbary Galleys, plying the north African coast, and eventually including Egypt as they did so.

one interesting new definition of greatness to add to the complex and shifting notion at the heart of this book. Braudel considers Venice exemplary of Italy's greatness, as at its centre was 'prosperity built up to the detriment of others'.

I should tear myself away from this thread and read the books. But right now all I can do is say, Go Fizzles!

(Also, I'll soon be back in the sea of W.E.B. Du Bois.)