Merchants and Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean World

The topic of identity has always been relevant and perhaps never more so in this age of movements of numbers of people as immigrants, as refugees, as evacuees, with the need for the shifting of identities and the forging of new self-images. The medieval Mediterranean was a vast cultural mix of many identities, where encounters of different cultures – Jewish, Muslim, and Christian, among them – were common.  In my exploration of the challenges of trade and travel for merchants, I will consider the phenomenon of borrowed identities, of merchants sailing under the flags of different towns for the purposes of maritime travel and to benefit from certain trade provisions or patronage in distant ports.
 Fondachi and caravansarai (inns/warehouses with trading privileges) represent an important venue for the construction of identities by merchants.  Not only did merchants of multiple identities congregate in such spots, but merchants of secondary towns deliberately borrowed identities to compete with the Italian city republics and Mediterranean kingdoms, the Aragonese and the Angevin in particular. Merchants of inland towns of Tuscany frequently chose to masquerade as Pisans in the Levant because they could avail themselves of Pisan privileges such as the ability to use the Pisan fondaco in Egypt.
 Assumption of another city’s identity could lead to disadvantages.  It could be costly for “pseudo-Genoese” or “pseudo-Venetians” when the Mamluk sultan decided to wreck reprisal on merchants of Venice and Genoa for some transgression. In problematizing the concept of medieval merchant identity, I hope to contribute to a deeper understanding of this difficult issue within Mediterranean merchant culture. This inquiry of this paper raises important issues regarding self-definition and self-interest as well as the growth of larger political identification.