NAȘTEREA UNEI COMUNITĂȚI DE NEGUSTORI. GRECII DIN MOLDOVA SECOLULUI AL XVI-LEA (I)

The 16th century brought a change for Moldova 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 reconstruct the beginnings of this community, following two lines of investigation, published separately. In this first part, the external conditions that made this mutation possible are explored. The research highlights several forces that acted simultaneously to contribute to this result: 1) the gradual elimination of Moldavian merchants from the position of intermediaries in trade between Poland and the Ottoman Empire; 2) the favouring by the Moldavian legal system of Christian Ottoman subjects (most of them Orthodox Greeks), to the detriment of the Muslims; 3) the opening of Venice's oriental trade for its Greek subjects, in the Stato da Màr; 4) the unprecedented increase in wine consumption in Poland and its supply by the Cretan merchants; 5) the dominance of the Ottoman economy by Jewish merchants and their efficiency in combatting the competition of Greek merchants.