The birth of the bond market started with a ruthless multinational raid that sent shock waves through the Mediterranean. On the morning of March 12, 1171, the Byzantine emperor’s soldiers suddenly rounded up every Venetian man, woman, and child they could find throughout their lands, seized their shops, wares, and ships, and threw the owners in jail. Over 10,000 people in Constantinople alone were rounded up, and more than 20,000 overall — so many that monasteries were requisitioned to handle the overflow. The raids were a consequence of more than a century of rising tensions between Constantinople and its nominal vassal in northern Italy.
By the 12th century, Venice was the beating heart of Mediterranean trade. It became Europe’s emporium, with 80,000 citizens almost all dedicated to commerce in some fashion. Partnership contracts between investors and merchants known as colleganza allowed even poorer citizens to pool their money, invest in long-distance trade, and share in both the risks and the spoils. These became known as commenda elsewhere in Italy and were an early precursor to joint-stock companies that sprang up in northern Europe centuries later. These ensured a stunning level of social mobility in Venice. One surviving colleganza from the period reveals how Zaccaria Stagnario, the grandson of a freed Croatian slave and the son of a humble helmsman, managed to turn his skill as an entrepreneurial trader into a fortune, and eventually his family’s entry into the Venetian governing elite.
