Sugar production is highly labor-intensive in both growing and processing.

The huge weight and bulk of raw cane makes it very costly to transport, especially by land, and therefore each estate has to have its own factory.

Here the cane has to be crushed to extract the juices, which are boiled to concentrate them, in a series of back-breaking and intensive operations lasting many hours.

The concentrated sugar, once processed, has a very high value for its bulk and can be traded over long distances by ship at a considerable profit.

A mixture of Crusader aristocrats and Venetian merchants shift production to Cyprus following the loss of the Levant to a resurgent Islam, beginning the European sugar industry on a major scale.

The local population on Cyprus spends most of their time growing their own food and few will work on the sugar estates.

The owners therefore bring in enslaved people from the Black Sea area (and a few from Africa) to do most of the work.

The level of demand and production is low and therefore so is the trade in slaves—no more than about a thousand people a year.

It is little greater when sugar production begins in Sicily.

Southwest Europe (1252 – 1395 CE): Mediterranean Thalassocracies and the Atlantic Turn

From the lagoons of Venice to the harbors of Lisbon, the southwest rim of Europe entered the Late Middle Ages as one of the world’s most dynamic maritime zones. The period between 1252 and 1395 witnessed the zenith of the Crown of Aragon’s thalassocracy, the consolidation of Castile and Portugal, and the financial and naval dominance of the Italian city-republics. Across the Mediterranean and Atlantic, fleets, fairs, and fortresses bound Europe’s southern peninsulas into an interlinked economy whose rhythms were set by wind, grain, and gold.

Geography and Climate

The subregion encompassed the Iberian Peninsula, the Italian peninsula and islands, and the surrounding seas—from the Guadalquivir and Tagus basins to the Venetian Adriatic and the Tyrrhenian and Balearic waters.
The onset of the Little Ice Age after 1300 brought cooler, wetter variability: Andalusian and Sicilian irrigation maintained productivity, while drier cycles in La Mancha and Alentejo encouraged sheep and transhumant herding. Maritime provisioning stabilized populations through famine years, even as the Black Death (1348–1352) devastated the great ports—Barcelona, Valencia, Genoa, Venice, and Naples—with partial demographic recovery by the century’s end.

---

Mediterranean Crowns and City-Republics

The Crown of Aragon, forged by the thirteenth-century conquests of James I, reached its maritime zenith. Catalan and Valencian fleets dominated the western Mediterranean; Sardinia was taken in the 1320s, and Sicily, freed from Angevin control after the Sicilian Vespers (1282), entered Aragon’s orbit. Barcelona’s merchants financed convoys to Tunis, Alexandria, and Constantinople, while Majorcan cartographers drew the most precise sea charts of the age.

To the west, Castile completed the reconquest of Andalusia, leaving Granada as the last Muslim emirate. The Guadalquivir valley’s cereals and Seville’s shipyards enriched the Castilian crown, while Madrid and La Mancha evolved into the agrarian-sheep core of the realm. Portugal, meanwhile, under Afonso III and Dinis I, stabilized its southern frontier in the Algarve and built the maritime forests of Leiria for ship timber. After dynastic crisis (1383–1385), João I’s victory at Aljubarrota and the Treaty of Windsor (1386) with England secured independence and inaugurated the Anglo-Portuguese alliance that would anchor the next century’s explorations.

Across the sea, Italy’s mercantile powers contested every horizon. Venice, from its lagoon capital, extended a maritime empire through the Adriatic and Aegean; its Arsenal mass-produced galleys and its patriciate ruled an empire of grain and spice. Genoa, facing west, financed expeditions and monopolized Tyrrhenian trade from Corsica to Tunis. In Florence, textile wealth and banking consolidated under the merchant guilds, while the Angevin kingdom of Naples and the Aragonese Sicily contended for southern Italy. Malta, Sardinia, and the Balearics served as naval stepping-stones, their harbors echoing with the languages of sailors from every sea.

---

Economy and Trade

Southwest Europe functioned as a dual maritime engine—Aragonese–Italian in the Mediterranean and Castilian–Portuguese in the Atlantic.

• Mediterranean circuits: Venetian and Genoese fleets carried Levantine spices, silks, and sugar; in return, they exported grain from Sicily and Apulia, wine and oil from Iberia, and salt from Ibiza and Trapani.

• Western basins: Barcelona, Valencia, and Majorca knit the western Mediterranean to Atlantic routes through Gibraltar.

• Atlantic façade: Castilian and Portuguese merchants exported wool, iron, wine, and salted fish; Castile’s Mesta(chartered 1273) organized transhumant flocks whose wool fed Flemish and Italian looms. Basque forgessupplied anchors, nails, and artillery; shipyards at Bilbao, Lisbon, and Porto produced cogs and caravels.

• Banking and cartography: Genoese and Venetian financiers underwrote commerce, while Catalan and Majorcan mapmakers synthesized Mediterranean and Atlantic knowledge into the new portolan charts.

Mixed agriculture—grains, vines, olives—and irrigation in the Valencia and Murcia huertas sustained populations; the Algarve, Sicily, and Crete pioneered sugar cultivation, a foretaste of the colonial plantations to come.

---

Movement and Interaction Corridors

Sea routes defined the region’s geography.
The Strait of Gibraltar linked Lisbon, Seville, and Barcelona to Tunis and Alexandria; the Messina and Otranto Straits funneled Sicilian and Adriatic convoys; the Venetian–Aegean corridor joined Constantinople to the Po valley.
Overland arteries—Ebro–Pyrenees, Tagus–Guadiana, Po–Alps—fed the ports, while the Douro road connected the Castilian plateau to Porto’s wine markets. The pilgrim routes to Santiago de Compostela continued to channel people and goods across northern Iberia, even amid war and plague.

---

Belief and Symbolism

Faith framed identity in a region of plural crowns.
The mendicant orders—Franciscans and Dominicans—flourished in Barcelona, Valencia, Venice, and Naples, preaching reform and mercy during plague years.
Cathedrals such as Seville’s, Valencia’s, and Florence’s Duomo, and civic loggias in Italian and Catalan cities expressed both religious devotion and urban pride.
The lingering influence of the Avignon Papacy tied Provençal, Aragonese, and Italian politics to papal diplomacy, while the Reconquista and frontier crusades gave Iberian warfare a sanctified rhetoric that foreshadowed later overseas expansion.

---

Adaptation and Resilience

Despite climatic uncertainty and epidemic loss, Southwest Europe remained remarkably adaptive.

• Irrigation, terrace agriculture, and maritime provisioning cushioned drought.

• Polycentric power—Venice, Genoa, Aragon, Castile, Portugal—allowed commerce to shift ports and flags as crises arose.

• Guild statutes and municipal charters stabilized labor and credit after the Black Death.

• The recovery of the 1380s–1390s re-energized trade, strengthened dynasties, and renewed shipbuilding, positioning the region for its fifteenth-century ascent.

---

Long-Term Significance

By 1395 CE, Southwest Europe stood as the beating heart of the late-medieval maritime world.
In the Mediterranean, Venice ruled the Adriatic lanes, Genoa and Florence financed the wider economy, and Aragon’s Catalan fleets mastered the western sea.
Across the Iberian Peninsula, Castile and Portugal unified their realms and turned outward to the Atlantic, where Lisbon’s and Bilbao’s shipwrights were already experimenting with ocean-going hulls.
From the Rialto to Lisbon, from Barcelona to Seville, merchants, mapmakers, and mariners laid the logistical and intellectual foundations of Europe’s global age.
The dual maritime systems of the Mediterranean thalassocracies and the Atlantic wool-iron networks formed a single economic engine—one that would propel Iberia and Italy beyond their seas and into the wider world of the fifteenth century.

Mediterranean Southwest Europe (1252 – 1395 CE): Aragonese Thalassocracy, Venetian Hegemony, and Castilian–Portuguese Consolidation

Geographic and Environmental Context

Mediterranean Southwest Europe includes Portugal’s Algarve and Alentejo, Spain’s Extremadura, Andalusia, Murcia, Valencia, Castile/La Mancha, southeastern Castile and León, Madrid, southeastern Rioja, southeastern Navarra, Aragon, Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Andorra, and all of Italy (peninsula, Sicily, Sardinia, Venice), plus Malta.

• Anchors: the Guadalquivir Valley (Seville–Granada frontier), the Tagus–Alentejo/Algarve under Portugal, Madrid–La Mancha–Extremadura consolidated in Castile, the Valencia/Murcia huertas, the Ebro–Barcelona–Aragon–Andorra corridor, the Balearics under Aragon, Venice as Adriatic hegemon, Genoa and Florence as rivals in Liguria and Tuscany, the Kingdom of Naples/Angevin South, Sicily in Aragonese orbit, Sardinia, and Malta as naval outposts.

Climate and Environmental Shifts

• Little Ice Age onset (~1300) brought cooler, wetter variability; irrigation kept Valencia, Murcia, Andalusia, Sicily productive.

• Black Death (1348–1352) devastated Barcelona, Valencia, Genoa, Venice, Naples, with partial demographic recovery by the 1390s.

Societies and Political Developments

• Crown of Aragon: James I’s conquests of Valencia (1238) and Balearics (1229–35) were integrated; Sardinia conquered (from 1320s); Sicily entered Aragonese orbit after the Sicilian Vespers (1282); Catalonia projected power across the western Med.

• Castile consolidated Andalusia; Granada survived as the last Nasrid emirate; Madrid matured under Castilian administration; La Mancha became a grain–sheep heartland.

• Portugal stabilized Alentejo/Algarve and built Atlantic–Med linkages.

• Italy: Venice dominated Adriatic–Aegean routes; Genoa contested Tyrrhenian and western lanes; the Angevin Kingdom of Naples and Aragonese Sicily rivaled in the south; Sardinia held by Aragon; Malta under Sicilian–Aragonese control.

• Andorra remained a Pyrenean co-principality (Counts of Foix/Bishop of Urgell).

Economy and Trade

• Venetian hegemony in the Adriatic–Aegean; Genoese finance and Ligurian shipping; Barcelona–Valencia–Majorca fleets knit the western basin.

• Exports: grain (Sicily/Apulia), olive oil/wine (Iberia/Italy), sugar/citrus (Sicily/Valencia), salt (Ibiza, Trapani);

• Imports: spices/silks via Levant; wool from La Mancha and Aragon fed Italian and Catalan looms.

• Banking: Venetian and Genoese firms, Catalan–Majorcan cartography and credit.

Subsistence and Technology

• Canal estates and huertas in Valencia/Murcia/Andalusia; Venetian Arsenal mass-produced galleys; Rialto and Piazza San Marco symbolized mercantile power.

Movement and Interaction Corridors

• Strait of Gibraltar linked Atlantic–Med flows; Messina straits managed Sicily transit; Po–Venetian lagoon fed Adriatic convoys; Ebro–Pyrenees, Tajo–Guadiana corridors fed Iberian ports.

Belief and Symbolism

• Avignon Papacy (outside region yet influential) shaped Provençal–Italian–Aragonese politics;

• Mendicant orders (Franciscans, Dominicans) in Barcelona, Valencia, Venice, Naples;

• Cathedrals and civic loggias embodied urban identities.

Adaptation and Resilience

• Irrigation + maritime redundancy cushioned climatic stress;

• Plural city-republics and crowns allowed merchants to shift flags, ports, and credit;

• Guilds and statutes stabilized labor and prices post-plague.

Long-Term Significance

By 1395, Mediterranean Southwest Europe was a dual maritime engine—Venice in the east, Crown of Aragon in the west—nested with Castile–Portugal consolidation on land. The subregion underwrote the late-medieval Mediterranean economy, setting the stage for 15th-century imperial and commercial expansion.

Aragon had fulfilled its territorial aims in the thirteenth century when it annexed Valencia.

The Catalans, however, look for further expansion abroad, and their economic views prevail over those of the parochial Aragonese nobility, who are not enthusiastic about foreign entanglements.

Peter III, king of Aragon from 1276 until 1285, is elected to the throne of Sicily when the French Angevins (House of Anjou) are expelled from the island kingdom during an uprising in 1282.

Sicily, and later Naples, becomes part of the federation of Spanish crowns, and Aragon, become embroiled in Italian politics, which will continue to affect Spain into the eighteenth century.

Aragon-Catalonia accepts and develops—not without conflict—the federal principle, and it makes no concerted attempt to establish a political union of the Spanish and Italian principalities outside of their personal union under the Aragonese crown.

The principal regions of Spain are divided not only by conflicting local loyalties, but also by their political, economic, and social orientations.

Catalonia particularly stands apart from the rest of the country.

North Africa (1252 – 1395 CE): Hafsid, Marinid, and Zayyanid Rivalries

Geographic and Environmental Context

North Africa includes the Maghreb littoral and inland from modern Morocco through Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya (west of Egypt and the Nile). It also includes Western Sahara.

• Anchors: the Atlas Mountains, Tell coastlands, Sahara fringes, and Ifriqiya (Tunisia–eastern Algeria–western Libya).

Climate and Environmental Shifts

• The Little Ice Age onset (~1300) brought cooler, drier intervals.

• Pastoralism expanded into degraded agricultural zones.

• Caravans adjusted routes to shifting oases.

Societies and Political Developments

• Marinid dynasty (Morocco): replaced Almohads; ruled from Fez; intervened in al-Andalus (Granada).

• Zayyanids (Abd al-Wadids of Tlemcen): ruled western Algeria, balancing between Marinids and Hafsids.

• Hafsid dynasty (Ifriqiya/Tunisia): successor of Almohads; based in Tunis; became a major Mediterranean power.

• Merinid–Hafsid–Zayyanid rivalries produced frequent wars but also vibrant urban culture.

• Western Sahara and caravan tribes: Sanhaja and Maqil groups (including Banu Hilal descendants) controlled Saharan routes.

Economy and Trade

• Trans-Saharan trade: gold, slaves, salt, copper from Mali and Niger basins enriched Maghreb states.

• Mediterranean trade: Tunis and Fez thrived in exchanges with Genoa, Venice, and Aragon.

• Agriculture: cereals, olives, dates, citrus supported urban growth.

Belief and Symbolism

• Islam: Maliki orthodoxy dominant; Sufi orders flourished.

• Cities: Fez, Tunis, and Tlemcen became centers of Islamic scholarship, law, and art.

• Architecture: Marinid madrasas in Fez; Hafsid monuments in Tunis.

Long-Term Significance

By 1395, North Africa was a tripartite system of Marinids, Hafsids, and Zayyanids, with Western Sahara tribescontrolling caravan routes. Despite rivalries, the Maghreb remained deeply tied to Mediterranean commerce and West African gold.

The War of the Vespers starts with the insurrection of the Sicilian Vespers against Charles of Anjou in 1282.

The Aragonese Crusade or Crusade of Aragon, a part of the larger War of the Sicilian Vespers, is declared by Pope Martin IV against the King of Aragon, Peter III the Great, in 1284 and 1285.

Because of the recent conquest of Sicily by Peter, the Pope declared a crusade against him and officially deposed him as king, on the grounds that Sicily is a papal fief.

Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose: Satire and Controversy in Late 13th-Century France

Jean de Meun (or Meung) composed a 22,000-line continuation of the Roman de la Rose, transforming the idealistic and courtly allegory of Guillaume de Lorris into a wide-ranging, erudite, and often caustic satire. His additions (lines 4089–21780) stand in stark contrast to de Lorris’s original 4,000-line portrayal of love as an ennobling quest, instead presenting a deeply skeptical and intellectual critique of love, women, and the Church, as well as a broader commentary on medieval society.

The date of composition for this second part is generally placed between 1268 and 1285, based on a reference within the poem to the deaths of Manfred of Sicily and Conradin, both executed in 1268 on the orders of Charles of Anjou—who is described in the poem as the current king of Sicily. This contextual clue suggests that Jean de Meun was actively composing his work during this period.

However, some scholars, notably M. F. Guillon (Jean Clopinel, 1903), argue for a later date, proposing that the poem should be read primarily as a political satire and assigning its composition to the last five years of the 13th century. This alternative dating aligns with Jean de Meun’s known anti-clerical views, suggesting that the work may have been shaped by the intensifying ideological conflicts of the period.

Regardless of its precise dating, Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose became one of the most influential literary works of the Middle Ages, provoking admiration, debate, and condemnation for its provocative, unorthodox perspectives. It deeply influenced later medieval thought, sparking controversies on gender, philosophy, and ecclesiastical authority that persisted well into the 14th and 15th centuries.

Michael VIII has spent the years since 1261 fighting off various western plots to restore the Latin emperors, in which the Angevin king Charles I of Naples and Sicily is always his principal opponent.

By negotiating a reunion of the Eastern and Western churches, Michael had induced Pope Gregory X to restrain Charles in 1276, but the union has been broken again.

Transferring the battle to Charles' own country by shrewd diplomacy, Michael finances a successful revolt against Charles, the Sicilian Vespers, which breaks out in 1282.

The Sicilian Vespers thus saves Constantinople from a second occupation by the Latins.

Although Michael's network of diplomacy covers the Mongols of Iran and the Golden Horde in Russia, as well as the Mamluks of Egypt, diplomacy is ineffective against Muslim Ghazis (warriors inspired by the ideal of holy war); by the time the threat from Italy is removed in 1282, it is almost too late to save Greek Anatolia.

Thus, at Michael's death on December 11, 1282, he leaves to his twenty-two-year-old son Andronikos II an empire that is a barely intact.

Excommunicated shortly before his death by Pope Martin for lack of sincerity in the cause of union between the Greek and Latin churches, Michael had saved his empire from its most persistent enemy, but died condemned by his church and people as a heretic and a traitor.

Immediately after his death, the Greek Church declares the union with Rome invalid and a fraud.

Stefan Milutin, the youngest son of King Stefan Uroš I and his wife, Helen of Anjou, unexpectedly becomes king of Serbia at around the age of twenty-nine after the abdication of his brother Stefan Dragutin, who had broken his leg while hunting and become ill.

Immediately upon his accession to the throne, he attacks imperial lands in Macedonia, conquering the northern parts of Macedonia including the city of Skopje, which in 1282 becomes his capital.

Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos begins preparations for war but dies before their completion.