In a letter of 1432, using the image of a maze, an Italian merchant, Piero Pantella, described Ragusa as a place where even the most experienced traders and entrepreneurs felt disorientated. Insecurity arose mainly from the fact that Ragusa had the inland regions of the Balkans as the main business partners; Serbia and Bosnia appeared in the eyes of European merchants as still unexplored places, wild, sparsely populated and urbanized, dangerous from every point of view. In reality the most significant difficulty was the western traders’ ignorance of the Slavic language. Instead, Dubrovnik merchants knew that world intimately and partly shared the customs and lifestyle of the inland regions of the Balkans. In addition, the merchants of Ragusa had large economic power in those regions, especially by controlling the production and trade of silver from Serbia and Bosnia.
"Me pare esere in uno lanbarinto e parme esere ligato a non me sapere voltare a nulla banda": Ragusa and the Italian Merchants in the First Half of the 15th Century / Paola Pinelli. - STAMPA. - (2020), pp. 213-231. (Intervento presentato al convegno Towns and cities of the Croatian Middle Ages: the city and the newcomers tenutosi a Zagreb nel 25-26 ottobre 2016).
"Me pare esere in uno lanbarinto e parme esere ligato a non me sapere voltare a nulla banda": Ragusa and the Italian Merchants in the First Half of the 15th Century
Paola Pinelli
2020
Abstract
In a letter of 1432, using the image of a maze, an Italian merchant, Piero Pantella, described Ragusa as a place where even the most experienced traders and entrepreneurs felt disorientated. Insecurity arose mainly from the fact that Ragusa had the inland regions of the Balkans as the main business partners; Serbia and Bosnia appeared in the eyes of European merchants as still unexplored places, wild, sparsely populated and urbanized, dangerous from every point of view. In reality the most significant difficulty was the western traders’ ignorance of the Slavic language. Instead, Dubrovnik merchants knew that world intimately and partly shared the customs and lifestyle of the inland regions of the Balkans. In addition, the merchants of Ragusa had large economic power in those regions, especially by controlling the production and trade of silver from Serbia and Bosnia.I documenti in FLORE sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.