Between Byzantium and Rus’, the Genoese and the Venetians

The Black Sea is a historical region, now increasingly recognised as such, situated at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. In the Middle Ages, it was a source of wealth for merchants, seafarers and fishermen, but also a trading centre for slaves and the point of origin of the plague. It was both a ‘hospitable’ sea (Pontos Euxeinos) and an ‘inhospitable’ sea (Pontos Axeinos). The lecture begins in late antiquity and traces a path from the trading activities of the Genoese and Venetians to the conquest of the last remnants of Christian rule by the Ottomans at the end of the 15th century.