In the previous chapters I have often referred to some unusual features of north-eastern Sicily (val Demone), and of its de facto capital (Messina). I have shown that despite possessing the harshest environmental features of Sicily's three valli, val Demone consistently maintained the highest population density in the region, and I have connected this fact with the area's high degree of agricultural and manufacturing specialization. I have also suggested that Messina's status as a city was largely a function of its role as Sicily's foremost gateway to the mainland.

In this chapter I examine these two features in more detail. In the first part of the chapter I look at Messina itself, at the origins of its fortunes in trade, and at its cycles of economic expansion and contraction. The development of Messina is of interest for my more general arguments, for it epitomizes the strengths and weaknesses of purely politico-institutional explanations of economic change. As noted in chapter 1, Benedetto Croce, followed by other historians, argued that the political separation caused by the Vespers of 1282 had disastrous economic effects because it severed all ties between Sicily and the mainland for more than a century and a half.1 If Messina's fortunes depended largely on trade across the Straits, as I suggest, the city should have suffered a disastrous decline as a result of the Siculo-Angevin war.