Late-medieval Mediterranean empires : Catalan example

Abstract

'Empire' may be defined as a 'supreme and wide (political) dominion. During the late middle ages the Kings of Aragon, who came to rule not only in Aragon, Catalunya and Valencia but also in the Balearics, Sardinia, Sicily, Naples and elsewhere, thought of their wide Mediterranean dominion, a dynastic confederation or commonwealth which was also a strategic sphere of influence and an economic community, as being in some sense an empire; and they could address its inhabitants, whatever their language or origins and whether or not they came immediately under the supreme rule of the Aragonese Crown, as their subjects or naturals - often using that term in Catalan, the imperial lingua franca.