Lingua Franca in the Mediterranean

J. E. Wansborough

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780700703098
• eBook ISBN: 9781136779725
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Linguistica

The subject of this study is the language of commerce and diplomacy during the period from 1500 BCE to 1500 CE. Based on texts of chancery provenance, its aim is the identification of a linguistic sub-system that effected and informed the major channel of international relations. The standard procedures of contact and exchange generated a format that facilitated inter-lingual transfer of concepts and terms. Lingua Franca refers to the several natural languages that served as vehicle in the transfer, but also to the format itself.

1

Orbits

Extrapolated from mariners’ charts and envoys’ reports, a 16th century map of the Mediterranean would be heavily inked with the traces of movement. That network of routes and terminals exhibits the accumulated expertise of at least three millennia, possibly more were the record accessible. What can be, and to considerable extent has been, perceived is that the 16th century density was not the product of steady growth but rather, of intermittent surges generated by technological advance. For that the most obvious factor might seem to be innovation in nautical techniques, e.g. compass, rigging and hull design. While it would be perverse to ignore the relevance of such to the organization of trade, one might wish to recall that the acceleration and volume of exchange was also a product of economic, political and administrative input, of the sort that determined not merely modes of production and distribution, but also the pace and rate of communication throughout the Mediterranean. A manageable axiom might be that diplomatic contact was the indispensable matrix of long distance trade.

It is in support of that proposition that the following arguments are formulated. The focus is upon chancery practice, source and framework of state diplomacy, and the perspective diachronie: to trace its Mediterranean expression from the 16th century to what appear to be Bronze Age origins. The immediately tangible evidence of contact would be routes. That these might be described as orbital can be gleaned from the simple observation that ships and emissaries were expected to, and mostly did, return to their points of departure. The implication is merely that the voyage home was the concomitant of every outward journey, and that some sort of feedback was thus the anticipated consequence of every input. For the historical record, that would produce a completed ship’s log or an ambassadorial account. For the evolution of technology it would signify a helical development that compounded principal and interest generated, wherever and however that might have been provoked. A juridical example lies to hand. In the matter of Florentine consular representation in early 16th century Egypt, the factors of procuratio and collective responsibility were operative, especially as regarded the substance of safe-conduct. The Islamic principle was that of delegation by the local authority to a single person who became thereupon accountable for the conduct of the community he represented. The procedure has an early root in Muslim jurisprudence, and that it should have found its way thence into medieval European law is just possible. For that period there are, of course, diplomatic instruments expressed in the languages of all participants to any given transaction, from which the transfer of concepts might be inferred. An irony of this particular instance lay in the later repudiation by the Ottoman empire of the celebrated “Capitulations”, then thought to be inimical to Islamic tradition.¹

Now, the structure underlying this kind of conjuncture is conceivable, but difficult to document. The longterm data are retrogressively discrete and diffuse. For example, routes do not in the earliest historical period produce a thickly inked circuit diagram. Their reconstruction requires a different sort of extrapolation: from dispersed archaeological sites and random toponyms. Putative networks linking these rest upon imaginative study of the terrain and conjectural reckoning of the pace between stages. Such has been done for tracing the movement of commodities like gold, tin, ivory and lapis lazuli, and for plotting the diffusion of industries like Mycenean ceramics and Levantine shipbuilding. Actual itineraries are rare, but paucity of data has naturally not imposed silence. Quite to the contrary: the scatter of non-native material and artifact has provoked some remarkable analyses, not only of source and distribution, but also of exchange mechanisms exhibiting non-random patterns. A stunning example is the reconstruction of prehistoric trade in obsidian, based on laboratory analysis of specimen artifacts and known deposits.² While it is true that the resulting maps indicate “interaction zones” rather than transport routes, it seems clear from the distribution of Middle Eastern findspots and their dominant mineral types that a communication network can be mooted. The quantification of these data suggests, in turn, a mode of exchange both directional and hierarchical (“down-the-line” trade), a point of considerable significance at least for the diffusion of raw materials. Whether the movement of artifacts can be so plotted is, of course, a different problem and dependent upon other variables (e.g. imitation and local reproduction).

For the most part, however, and certainly for the historical period, the kind of analysis proposed for obsidian is complicated by documentary witness. The presence and movement of commodities is attested in such a bewildering variety of archival and literary sources as to make an exponential distribution array impossible. Here the directional and hierarchical factors are obscured by a mosaic of intersections, itself imposed by the mere mention in so many contexts of a single item of extraction, production, alienation, acquisition, processing and transfer. The putative vector, if it can ever be resolved, would exhibit unequivocal components only for those commodities like, say, ivory and lapis lazuli whose sources are acknowledged to be limited.³ For anything else, a different model has got to be devised. This is always a theoretical construct, admittedly derived from analogy, but posited and pursued with the normal conviction of disciplinary training. It is largely a matter of idiom: the habitual mode of exegesis that determines the perception and allocation of data. In other words, it is from anticipated answers that questions are formulated.

It has become fashionable in recent years to experiment with idiom juxtaposition, from which it must seem that the traditional academic division of labour can only impede progress in what ought to be an interdisciplinary field of study. Archaeology and ancient history have benefited from the persistent attention of anthropologists (Adams, Kohl, Larsen, Yoffee) and economists (Polanyi, Silver), serving to highlight a curious and abiding dichotomy between data and theory. Difference in treatment is signalled not so much by disparity of subject as by distinction of style. If reading is thus made arduous, one can only suppose that writing is more so. The extent to which the explanatory paradigm could be in danger of emancipation from the always exiguous data was already apparent in the work of Polanyi, a hazard since obviated.⁴ But the impact of mathematics and the predictive sciences upon history is not yet expended, so nicely illustrated in the concept of “transformations”.⁵ Recasting archaeological, archival, even literary data as formulaic and statistical quantity is still something of an innovation. If there is a stylistic loss in the algorithm or histogram, it can hardly be denied that morphogenesis is as useful in the description of socio-economic as of biological forms.

In a general but very important sense, “trade” may be taken to comprehend the processes of change as well as the procedures of exchange. As a descriptive concept it would thus be seen both to encompass and to engender all the forms at either end or during a trajectory through time and space. To characterize that process as diffusion is a prejudgement of the many transactions involved, since there is very little that ever survives the route entirely intact. An easy alternative is polygenesis, which evades the problems of contact, adjustment, and above all, improvisation. But wherever and however often duplicated, “invention” is less likely to be ex nihilo discovery than deliberate or even accidental manipulation of accessible data. Archaeological data are mostly, perhaps inevitably, read as evidence of result rather than of process. Detection of similarities or analogies could not, of course, in the absence of witness to historical contact, help in a decision for either diffusion or polygenesis. For that the explanatory paradigm is essential, which is merely to say that the question is methodological rather than empirical.

Now, the study of a technique such as chancery language and its dissemination from one or many centres may draw upon not only a considerable stock of analogy but also of historical contact. Like all exchange commodities, this particular artifact (and for the archaeologist it can be nothing else) must have been subject to the usual spectrum of reception mechanisms, such as need, efficiency and prestige. Catalysts and/or obstacles, whether spatial or temporal, would have to be plotted within and across linguistic/cultural borders. Assessment of these might be thought calculable in terms of literacy, which, however difficult to determine statistically, must be at least one arbiter of improvisation in chancery practice.⁶ And there is no compelling reason why the spread of literacy should be very much different from the acquisition of expertise in some other trade or profession, say ceramics or metallurgy, that is, consonant with a standard demographic curve. The locus of scribal technique is admittedly crucial: the behaviour of a temple guild would hardly be that of a municipal chancery. But competence is also a functional parameter, and one would expect increased literacy to accompany any diversification of administrative activity. And of the latter, historical records exhibit an erratic but for the most part obstinate augmentation, even if its precise mapping is difficult.

The virtue of “activity analysis” is its attention to process rather than (merely) to result.⁷ While that is an obvious advantage in the exegesis of notoriously discrete data, it must be conceded that its value lies primarily in acceptance of the proffered paradigm. The concession is important and will become more so at later stages of this investigation, when I shall attempt a reconstruction of technology transfer (Chapter 2). For the immediate aim, it is a matter of receptivity to the routes of stimulus diffusion, in other words, the paths of communication that are likely to have generated innovation. Clearly, some were more productive than others. Calculation of these requires some insight into the parameters of decision-making, i.e. the difference between necessary and sufficient causes of change. These will vary according to local circumstances, of course, but also according to stimulus provenance. Here we have to do with such behavioural factors as role, status, prestige and opportunism, for all of which the source of inspiration is as important as its practical value. Performance will always depend as much upon these as upon the ineluctable logic which might with hindsight be thought to have dictated a change of course.

One component of that logic is the computation of transaction costs, a gift of economists to the beleaguered predicament of archaeologists. This particular calculus cannot, however, be more than notional, involving as it does not merely risk but probability. The concepts of gain and goal-motivated behaviour have naturally to be reckoned, but only as adjunct to the overall composition of human conduct. Anyone, after all, can be seen to have acted against what with hindsight and distance must have been his “best interests”. It is precisely the probabilities and costs that would have to be assigned to every alternative in the decision process that could make the historical reconstruction persuasive. It is of course to that issue that every historian aspires, but it is nonetheless important to recall that his conclusion cannot but rest upon a hypothetical construct.

The question is thus location of orbits, in the sense both of geographical route and channel of cultural dominance. Like their electrical paradigm, these circuits would be susceptible to variable conductors (resistance), voltage gaps (collapse), and inconsistent amperage (motivation). The model is one in which feedback, both positive and negative, is the norm, and fresh input always liable to adjustment, diminution or oblivion. A version of the imagery was employed by Braudel who, in his description of the “greater Mediterranean”, wrote of the configurations of a “magnetic field” fluctuating with the ebb and flow of forces seasonal, mechanical, and spiritual.⁸ Visually helpful, the metaphor cannot really be challenged, though his exegesis of much of the material from which it was elicited has been. It is, ironically, the very abundance of documentation that generates a range of defensible interpretation rather than a single “correct” version. But the advantage of a “field of force” model is its accommodation of random and non-contiguous elements. No amount of evidence, for example, would make readily apparent the reasons why despatch of business should take so much longer in Habsburg Spain than at Venice. Here the elusive factor is not geographical, and certainly not ethnic, but rather, the difference in pace of bureaucratic procedure between an empire and a merchant republic.⁹ One can imagine, even without being able to quantify, the variety of managerial pressures respectively brought to bear upon what was essentially the same transaction. Whatever techniques may have been devised in one context will seldom be appropriate to the exigencies of another, and yet both must be calculated in any joint enterprise or encounter.

Some impression of the décalage can be inferred from the course of diplomatic relations between Venice and the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. During a period of seventy years (1442-1512) six commercial treaties were concluded between the two powers. The attendant negotiations exhibit spans of time and contact quite out of proportion to the results achieved. An example is the treaty of 31 May 1507: a major Egyptian embassy was extended to seventeen months owing to the limited authority delegated to the envoy by his principal, whose intervention in matters of detail could only be effected by resort to an interim return journey. In the end the sultan refused to ratify the agreement on the grounds that his instructions had not been followed. In 1512, after five years of long-distance and acrimonious dispute, the Signoria was compelled to de novo negotiation.¹⁰ It was, of course, not always oriental autocracy that impeded the despatch of business. The conclusion of a commercial treaty between Egypt and the republic of Florence in October 1489 was considerably complicated, and delayed, by the role of the Vatican, whose bureaucratic machinery was not merely inscrutable but geared to a view of Mediterranean politics quite different to that which obtained in Tuscany.¹¹ The significance of such discrepancy lies in its effect upon traffic patterns during a period for which these can with some confidence be plotted on maps. The calculation of space depends, in other words, upon temporal data. Where these are wanting, the concept of orbit becomes distorted, but not, I think, impossible.

Without a chronological dimension cartography would reflect a space bound by lexical convention, that is, compass points, commodities and toponyms. Its accuracy would be restricted to (approximate) direction, (assumed) relation, and (conjectural) orthography. The sum could be a confirmation, but hardly a calculus, of contact. Had one been designed and transmitted, a Bronze Age map of the Mediterranean, not yet conversant with the lucubrations of Ptolemy, Idrisi, Mercator and Ortelius, must have resembled the lenticular Babylonian tablet displaying familiar landmarks.¹² Data empirically derived tend to attract a schematic design, imposed upon rather than elicited from adventitiously available report. It is within these admittedly stringent but ineluctable limits that reconstruction of the ancient traffic patterns must be attempted. An interesting example of commodity transfer may be seen in efforts to explain the extent (!) of contact between Egypt and Mesopotamia during the Old and Middle Babylonian periods.

A conceivable distinction between the two periods (c2000-1600 and 1600-1200 BCE, respectively) is derived from a single control: the presence/absence of gold. Unmentioned in the earlier period, it figures as both luxury and medium of exchange in the later, documented from the Amarna correspondence. Now, that archive is crucial but also sui generis, and hardly solid evidence for an alteration in import/export activity. To ascribe (as Edzard does) the change to a Kassite predilection (earlier and somewhere else generated) for gold does not, in terms of economic analysis, make much sense. That exegesis could be read either as Egyptian unwillingness to part with its traditional treasure until pointedly invited to do so or that there had been no capital (gold) to dispense before its mention in the so far available documentation.¹³ It must be obvious that data such as these are not likely to contribute much to a map of commodity exchange, but also that it is precisely this kind of material that, with the honourable exception (e.g. Eratosthenes), tends to generate the maps of pre-Ptolemaic cartography.

And these, whatever the margin of distortion, are the only means of determining the coordinates of frequency and distribution in a standard Cartesian graph, from which just might be inferred the substance and nature of exchange. The above-mentioned instance exhibits all the shortcomings of the genre. And I think it is not wayward to speak of a “genre”. For despite the ut...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Orbits
• Chapter 2: Chancery Practice
• Chapter 3: Lingua Franca
• Notes
• Index