Who did Italy trade with in the Renaissance and what?
First of all there was no “Italy” at the time but a number of independent Italian city states. If you look on a map you’ll see that Italy was ideally located to trade between the East and the West. So basically they imported products from the East and sold them to Western Europe (the reverse was also true). So the Italian merchants chiefly traded with Egypt during the Renaissance. Byzance had been a major client during the Middle Ages but was not doing that well during the early Renaissance. After the fall of Constantinople, the Venetians would move in the Ottoman Empire chiefly in Istanbul and Aleppo. Lesser trades were also conducted with North Africa. China and India were not commonly reached by the Italian merchants themselves although numerous Chinese and Indian wares found their way to Europe through the Muslim world. In the West, the Italian merchants’ strongholds were Lisbon, Antwerp, Bruge, London and Dantzig. But nearly every major urban center had some Italian traders. The G
