THE MAKING OF A MERCHANT COMMUNITY THE GREEKS IN THE 16TH CENTURY MOLDAVIA (II)

Abstract

The 16^th century brought to Moldavia a change that marked its economic and social life throughout the early modern era. Local merchants (Moldavian subjects of different ethnicities) lost control of the principality's trade to strong foreign competition. The winning side was dominated by Greek-speaking merchants, immigrants from the Ottoman Empire and the Venetian maritime empire starting from 1540s. Within a few decades, they formed a distinct community based on relationships of trust and various forms of solidarity. Towards the end of the century some of its members even began to take to a group identity. The present paper reconstructs the beginnings of this community, following two lines of investigation, published separately.

The second part of the study focuses on the interaction of Greek merchants with the economic-social environment in Moldova and aims at explaining how they managed to win against the local merchants. Sources from the 1550s-1570s suggest that business opportunities initially favored petty merchants only. They exploited the empty place left in the local economic-social system by the religious persecutions inflicted on the reformed protestants (Germans and Hungarians) and the Monophysites (Armenian) by orthodox princes. For the great merchants, the way was opened starting with the mid-1580s, when the financial crisis gripped the Ottoman Empire. In search of liquidity, the Ottoman government increased both the rate and the amount of financial obligations owed by the princes of Moldavia. Consequently, the latter had to constantly resort to credits offered by the merchants of Constantinople and the Cretan wine merchants. As a rule, credit relations were doubled by the favoring of creditors in the competition for leasing the fiscal revenues of the state/princes. Particularly profitable was the rank of “great publican”, which ensured the holder economic, fiscal and even legal advantages. Relations between the two sides were frequently strengthened with matrimonial alliances, followed by the promotion of Greek-speaking relatives into key positions in the government apparatus. Finally, the cooperation between the Moldavian princes and their Greek creditors took on a political nature as well. It should be noted that many of the local noble families did the same. The effects of these social integration strategies were the withdrawal of capital from commercial activities, land estate acquisitions and cultural assimilation. However, the economic conditions in Moldova remained unchanged, as the principality kept its peripheral status, both in relation to the Ottoman imperial system and to the European economic system. As a result, the assimilated merchants would be replaced in the 17th century by new waves of Greek-speaking merchants, migrating from both the Ottoman Empire and the Venetian maritime empire.