The city of Amalfi and its territory were originally part of the larger ducatus Neapolitanus, governed by a patrician, but it extracts itself from Byzantine vassalage and first elects a duke in 958 It rises to become an economic powerhouse, a commercial center whose merchants dominate Mediterranean and Italian trade for a century before being surpassed and superseded by the other maritime republics of the North, like Pisa, Venice, and Genoa.