Luxury historical commentary.
Read 'Saladin the Strategist': https://t.co/kiWQBy63F2
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The flood of New World silver into Asian markets in the 1500s crushed the value of metal currency, but also supercharged trade as new markets were opened for exports. The effect was the same from Syria to China.
That's a staggering amount of material, intellectual, and economic infrastructure required just to sustain one part of a very complicated process. Sustaining that infrastructure depends in turn on maintaining the process. If any one of several highly-centralized nodes is disrupted for any length of time, it becomes disproportionately more expensive and difficult to get it back online.
The House of Lusignan founded the Kingdom in 1196 and ruled it for its three-century existence. They were of French origin, and attracted many knights and nobles from both France proper and the Crusader states.
As soon as Venice began acquiring her terra ferma empire in Italy, she found herself torn between obligations on the mainland and the rising Ottoman threat in the east. The great danger was that crises would flare up in both directions at once.
The 1261 Treaty of Nymphaeum had already guaranteed Genoa extensive trade concessions in the empire in return for naval assistance against the Crusaders occupying Constantinople. As it turned out, the Byzantines recaptured Constantinople without needing this help. 
There are four big factors:
When Genoese, Venetian, and Pisan crews arrived in the Levant in the wake of the First Crusade, they quickly realized the fortunes to be made. They assisted the Crusaders in conquering cities along the coast in return for quarters that could be used as trade colonies. 
Banking ultimately came out of money-changing. Money-changers had always been around, earning a premium on the spread between exchange rates—this was necessary for interregional commerce.
William Montagu was among the oldest of the lot, 36 when the war broke out, and was the king’s closest advisor. He was sent to the Low Countries in 1337 to arrange an alliance with local princes.
By the summer of 1336, it was clear that France and England were headed for war. Tensions had been building for years over the Duchy of Aquitaine, a territory in southwest France held in fief by the English Crown. 
There were three main routes to the Mediterranean from the Indian Ocean in antiquity:
The Second Crusade was launched in response to the first great crisis that Outremer faced: the fall of Edessa to the powerful warlord Zengi. This brought the loss of much of their inland territories east of the defensible coastal ranges and the Jordan.
In the 4th century, an Egyptian Greek visited the island of Taprobane (usually identified as Sri Lanka, based on Ptolemy’s description). He reported that magnetic rocks on the island prevented ships made with iron nails from departing. https://t.co/WsdwqjNOsAtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…
The campaign of 1187 was Saladin’s fifth major invasion of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He had greatly outnumbered the Crusaders on each previous occasion, but these had resulted in one major defeat, a minor victory, and two stalemates.
After reaching their territorial peak in the 1130s, the Crusader states were put on their back foot. Upper Mesopotamia and most of inland Syria were being united under a single dynasty, while the relatively few Frankish knights received little reinforcement from the West. 
Trade expeditions usually departed Basra’s port of al-Ubullah in September or October, when the seas were still calm. Sailing down the Shatt al-Arab, they entered the Gulf.
Medieval Basra was not located at the same site as the modern city. It was originally founded as a garrison town in the wake of the Arab conquests on the edge of the desert, which gave easy access for armies coming from Arabia to reach the Gulf. 
Francesco Guicciardini, who was 14 years Macchiavelli’s junior, also served the Florentine Republic. Not being as prominent in the government, he was allowed to retain his office when the Medici returned to power—he was even brought into Papal service under the Medici pope Leo X. 
A lot of Machiavelli quotes have been making the rounds the past day or two, only to look completely silly less than 24 hours later.
Like a modern reserve currency, the high and consistent quality of certain medieval coins led them to be widely trusted for large commercial transactions, commanding a premium in international markets. Many commodities were priced in such a currency, even if paid in another. 