El Mediterrani Occidental al darrer quart del segle XIII: Concurrència comercial i conflictivitat política

Abstract

The annexation of Sicily to the Crown of Aragon in 1282 re-enforced the economical and political presence of the latter in the Mediterranean Sea and allowed the Catalans to penetrate the foreign markets, aroused suspicions in Genoa and reactivated the Ghibelin party in Italy.
During the two last decades of Xlllth century, the Franco-Angevin league, with the support of the Holy See, tried to regain Sicily by force of arms. At the same time, Genoa and Pisa contended for supremacy in the Tyrhenian Sea and in Sardinia. Both conflicts occurred together and each one of the four belligerent parties concentrated their ships in their own quarrel and, at the same time, observed attentively the movements of the others. The political tension reached such high levels that, at the end, it harmed international commerce as a result of a war of piracy between Catalans and Ligurians in the Central Mediterranean. After 1297, the situation calmed down little by little, when since Pisa was a second-class power, James II of Aragon obtained from Pope Bonifacio VIII the post of "Defender of the Church and the feudal status of Sardinia, but he himself had to give back Sicily, being sure that their subjects' business would not suffer any damage, and also had to give up his Ghibelline plans.