Why did the Southern Italian city states falter?

Gaeta, Amafi, Naples and more cities in the Italian south were at the turn of the 11th century some of the richest and most populous cities of the time with Syracuse reaching 200,000 at its peak. However they eventually came under the rein of despots while their economies faltered in contrast to their brothers in Northern Italy that found new trade routes, industry, and formed city leagues to defend themselves.

There's a variety of explanations to their fall from poor hinterlands to arab-christian-byzantine strife to political isolation but I'm curious to what you think was the reason(s) the south faltered.
 
I don't think southern Italy was any less of a commercial powerhouse as northern Italy and the adriatic, even after the 11th century.
I would argue that the most apparent reason for the decline of the southern italian city-states and their replacement by a single kingdom was, indeed, being an unfortunate military crossroads between the normans, byzantines, and arabs. So, preventing any of these from estabilishing supremacy over southern Italy should suffice. Perhaps having the HRE estabilish more authority over the region would be a good scenario.
I bring forth the Battle of Stilo (982 AD) as a good PoD -- after Otto II's defeat to the kalbids, imperial auhority over the southern lombard states shrunk, while any short-term second attempts were prevented by the distraction of a slavic revolt in northeastern Germany, instigated by this military defeat.
This could also butterfly away Otto II's sudden death, as he would probably be campaigning in Sicily instead of appointing a new pope in central Italy, where the malaria outbreak occured.
 
Last edited:
Gaeta, Amafi, Naples and more cities in the Italian south were at the turn of the 11th century some of the richest and most populous cities of the time with Syracuse reaching 200,000 at its peak. However they eventually came under the rein of despots while their economies faltered in contrast to their brothers in Northern Italy that found new trade routes, industry, and formed city leagues to defend themselves.

There's a variety of explanations to their fall from poor hinterlands to arab-christian-byzantine strife to political isolation but I'm curious to what you think was the reason(s) the south faltered.

Normans happened!

There are various causes, not a single one and often the decline of a city coincided with the rose of another, like in the dynamic between Amalfi, Gaeta and Napoli.
Amalfi was also badly crippled by an earthquake and simply lost its wars with Pisa and was sacked. It was too small tonreally compete with it or Genova.

I really really doubt Syracuse ever got any close to 200.000 in the medieval period, besides Messina was the main commercoal center along with Palermo, but even the latter didn't have so huge population numbers. In general tge disrubtion brought about by the arab conquest and later by the Norman "reconquista" should not be underestimated, the arabs (actially mostly berbers iirc) brought many progresses to the osland, but I think that their rule might have brought Sicily outside the Christian European market (at least as actibe particopants and not only a source of grain/slaves/sugar) just as Genova and Pisa were rising.
A further factor to consider (but only really happened after Amalfi was beyond its golden age) are tthe centralizing policies of Frederick II. The Swabian emperor heavily interfered in the economy and, while that had some good results like the construction of new ports, establishment of fairgrounds and incentivation of specialised coltures in Sicily among other things, the rwliance on politically friendly to the empwror cause Pisan and Genoese merchants and the restrictions on private initiative might jave hampered the creation of a mercantile class in the cities.
Cities which were by the way always quite rebellious if not outright hostile to the Hohenstaufen cause.

For example it is reported that Frederick, to boost revenues, often closed his ports to all ships but the royal ones when it came to some exports at least.

Maybe if tgere is no Norman invasion and Naples is able to develop earlier and militarily submit both Amalfi and Gaeta early enough as well as cities in its hinterland like Capua ot Caserta you have a pretty strong polity, able to contest the Southern mediterranean with Pisa and Genova. It will always lack really good landward defenses, but it has much more potwntial for expansion than Amalfi. But you really need to avert the formation of a powerful centralized state South of the Papal States.

Sorry if it is a bit incoherent, I am on a phone...
 
Gaeta, Amafi, Naples and more cities in the Italian south were at the turn of the 11th century some of the richest and most populous cities of the time with Syracuse reaching 200,000 at its peak. However they eventually came under the rein of despots while their economies faltered in contrast to their brothers in Northern Italy that found new trade routes, industry, and formed city leagues to defend themselves.

There's a variety of explanations to their fall from poor hinterlands to arab-christian-byzantine strife to political isolation but I'm curious to what you think was the reason(s) the south faltered.

Well, North Italy has the benefit of actually being geographically close to/connected into the Centeral European economy. Venice, in particular, benefited hugely from being the main corridor between the Germaines and the Mediterrainian world. Southern Italy, being on the Med and only the Med, coulden't capitalize on a role as a commercial corridor and so were stuck dealing in the much more heavily competed intra-Med trade.

Genoa, also, had the benefit of being Iberia's primary banker. It really helps when your loyal clients end up winning the geographic/colonial lottery and get into the wonderful situation of needing to take out a lot of loans and having a constant stream of silver to finance them.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Genoa, also, had the benefit of being Iberia's primary banker. It really helps when your loyal clients end up winning the geographic/colonial lottery and get into the wonderful situation of needing to take out a lot of loans and having a constant stream of silver to finance them.

Wasn't Genova's peak well before the age of discovery? Possibly even before the Black Death? By 1600 you hardly hear anything about the place, whereas Venezia was the occasional newsmaker up till the war of the Holy League in the early 1700s.
 
Wasn't Genova's peak well before the age of discovery? Possibly even before the Black Death?
You are correct, Genoa was closely tied (post 16th century) to the Spanish economy so when Spain was hit hard economically, Genoa was hit even harder, as many of their banking houses were within Spain. Combine this with taking part in some rather damaging wars, having half their population killed during a plague outbreak in the early 17th century, and having all of their territory taken over outside of Genoa itself left it pretty much an empty shell. They required control of the shipping lanes to stay afloat and they simply weren't able to compete against stronger regional powers.
 
Amalfi's explanation is the easiest. Look at a map of Amalfi and the Sorrento peninsula sometime. It's an extremely odd place for a maritime power - it doesn't really have a sheltered natural harbor, and it's squeezed between the mountainous spine of the peninsula and the sea. It rose to importance as a trading city because a) what else are you going to do on the side of a rocky prominence in the sea where you can't grow much of anything, and b) that same rugged terrain gave it some protection from landward attack. It never had the obvious gifts of Genoa or Venice, however, and lacked the rich hinterland of Pisa; correspondingly, its growth and power were capped, and it was doomed to be overtaken by its competitors. It lasted only as long as it took for those competitors to catch up, and then it was destroyed and slumped into relative obscurity.

The reasons for Gaeta's decline are less obvious, as Gaeta was at least marginally more privileged geographically than Amalfi, but Gaeta followed a similar trajectory of flourishing and then being eclipsed fairly early on by the northern maritime powers. Gaeta may have suffered from both an internal schism between territorial and mercantile "factions" and its proximity to Latium, which meant it was drawn into the politics of 10th/11th century Rome and all that entailed. Gaeta is a particularly interesting case as it seems to have had a "consular" government with some similarities to northern city-states by the late 11th century, quite a bit earlier than most cities in the north developed such institutions, but that "experiment" was eventually quashed by the centralizing of the Norman kings.

As for Naples, the city never became much of a trade or maritime power in the Middle Ages despite its excellent harbor. Crucially, the leadership of Naples prior to the Norman conquest was territorial in nature; far from having a "poor hinterland," the elites of early Naples had prosperous estates and drew their power and wealth from land exploitation rather than maritime trade. Unlike Amalfi, where the sea was the only resource of note, Naples could do just fine with its possessions much closer to home. Correspondingly, it tended to look inward, and was involved in local Lombard-Byzantine power struggles (although even little Amalfi was hardly immune to this; for a while the dukes of Amalfi conquered and ruled Salerno as well). Naples was a busy port and produced goods, but it never took much of an interest in carrying those goods, a status which did not change appreciably after the Norman conquest.

I don't really like the North-vs-South comparison in general; the two countries had very different geographical, political, and historical contexts. Arguably it was northern Italy which was the abnormality in a European sense: the relevant question is not so much why the southern cities "faltered" compared to the North, but why the North came to be so different from the rest of Christendom, and there's already been tanker truckloads of ink spilled on that.
 
Last edited:
Wasn't Genova's peak well before the age of discovery? Possibly even before the Black Death? By 1600 you hardly hear anything about the place, whereas Venezia was the occasional newsmaker up till the war of the Holy League in the early 1700s.

Yes, it certainly was: but it was still chugging along better than the southern Italian cities for a couple of centuries. I wanted to point out that being able to piggy-back off the larger economies : the Germanys in Venice's case and Spain in Geneoa's, allowed them to punch above their weight when the need/role for maritime trading city-states was becoming increasingly marginalized That dosen't mean they were doing spectacular, per say: just that they were doing better than their southern counterparts.
 
Top