Chapter DXXVII: Section 63: of this latter act reads: 'For all purposes (6)

"In the second century of our era, in the time of Trajan and
the Antonines, Gaul with its fertile fields, its beautiful
meadows, its magnificent forests, was one of the best
cultivated countries of the Roman world. It exported into
Italy grain from Aquitaine, Celtique and from the country of
the Allobroges (Dauphiné), flax from Cadurques (Quercy) and
Bituriges (Berry), hemp from Auvergne and the valley of the
Rhône, spikenard from Provence (valeriana celtica according to
M. Littré) renowned in the Roman pharmacopœia, oak and pine
from the immense forests which still covered the Pyrenees, the
Cevennes, the Alps, the Jura, the Vosges and nearly all the
north of Gaul (forest of Ardennes), horses from Belgium, wool
from the Narbonnaise, cheese from the Alps and from Nîmes,
hams and salt provisions from Séquanaise (Franche-Comté), and
the Pyrenees. The wines of the Narbonnaise and the valley of
the Rhône, often adulterated and little relished by the
Italians, were notwithstanding one of the principal objects of
commerce in the interior of Gaul, in Great Britain and
Germany. The oysters of the Mediterranean and even those of
the Atlantic and the Channel which the ancients had perhaps
found means of keeping in fresh water, figured upon the tables
of the gourmets of Rome. We know that long before the
conquest, the Gauls took gold from the sands of their rivers
and that in certain regions (Upper Pyrenees), territory of the
Tarbelles, and Val d'Aoste, territory of the Salasses, they
extracted gold from the auriferous rocks by processes quite
analogous to those which are now employed by the great
Californian companies. These mines which were yet in existence
under Augustus were not long in being exhausted, but the iron
of Berry, Sénonais, Perigord, Rouergue, the valley of the
Rhône and of the Saône, the copper of the Pyrenees
(Saint-Etienne-de-Baïgorry), of the Alps (country of the
Centrons, now Upper Savoy), of the Cevennes (Cabrieres in
Hérault and Chessy in Rhône), the tin of Limousin, the
argentiferous lead of the territory of the Rutènes (Rouergue),
of the Gabales (Gévaudan), of the Centrons, etc., were mined
and wrought with a skill which placed the metallurgy of Gaul
in the first rank of the industries of the empire. These
mining operations, superintended by the State, although they
belonged to the proprietors of the soil, were often directed
by companies which combined the working of the metal with its
extraction from the ore. One which had its seat at Lyons is
known to us by many inscriptions. Textile industries were not
less flourishing than metallurgy, the manufacture of
sail-cloth was carried on all over Gaul; the bleached linens
of Cahors, the carpets of the Narbonnaise, the sagums of
mingled bright colors were renowned even in Italy. The
progress of commerce had followed that of agriculture and
manufacture. The network of Roman roads planned by Agrippa was
completed and four roads accessible to carriages or beasts of
burden, crossed the Alps by the passes of the Little (Graius
Mons) and of the Great Saint-Bernard (Summus Penninus), of
Mount Genèvre (Mons Matrona) and of the Argentière: the
Corniche road stretched along the Mediterranean from Genoa to
Marseilles: those of the pass of Pertus (Summa Pyrenoeco), of
the valley of Aran, of the Somport, of Roncevaux, and from
Lapurdum (Bayonne) to Pampeluna connected Gaul to Spain. …
Notwithstanding the competition of new roads, river navigation
had retained all its activity. … We know from inscriptions of
a certain number of associations for water transportation
which appear to have played a great rôle in the interior
commerce of Gaul from the first century of our era. The
boatmen of the Rhône, the Saône, the Durance, the Seine, the
Loire, the Aar, an affluent of the Rhine, formed corporations
recognized by the State, organized on the model of cities,
having their regulations, property, elective chiefs, and
patronized by great personages who charged themselves with
defending their interests against the Roman authorities. The
most celebrated, If not the most important of these
associations, is that of the Nautæ Parisiaci, the memory of
which has been preserved to us by the remains of an altar
raised, under Tiberius, at the point of the Isle of the City
(the ancient Lutetia) and found in 1711 under the choir of
Notre-Dame. … The two great commercial ports of the
Mediterranean were Narbonne and Arles, after Marseilles had
lost her maritime preponderance and was only a city of
science, luxury and pleasure. … Immense labor upon embankments
and canalization which had thrown within Narbonne the mass of
the river and deepened the maritime channel made of the
metropolis of the Narbonnaise one of the safest ports upon the
coast of Gaul. It communicated with the Rhône by the
navigation of the lakes (étangs) which at that time extended
without interruption to the western mouth of the river, with
the ocean by the course of the Garonne, navigable from
Toulouse (Tolosa). The port of the Garonne was then as now
Bordeaux (Burdigala) which already had intercourse with Great
Britain and Spain. Aries, connected with the sea by the canal
of Marius and perhaps also by the small arm of the Rhône and
the navigation of the lakes (étangs), was a maritime port and
at the same time the outlet for the navigation of the Rhône
which was prolonged by the Saône as far as Chalon
(Cabillonum). Upon the banks of the river rose the wealthy
cities of Tarascon, Avignon (Avenio), Orange (Arausio),
Vienne. Lyons is the commercial and also the political
metropolis of Gaul, the seat of the most powerful
manufacturing and commercial companies; the boatmen of the
Saône and the Rhône, the wine merchants, the mining and
smelting company of the valley of the Rhône. Above Chalon,
four great commercial routes start from the valley of the
Saône. The first ascends the Doubs as far as Besançon
(Vesuntio) and terminates at the Rhine near Augst (Augusta
Rauracorum), where the river is already navigable.
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The second follows the valley of the Saône and descends by the
Moselle, navigable above Trèves (Augusta Trevirorum), and by
the Meuse, toward the middle and lower valley of the Rhine. …
The third route, that from the Saône to the Loire, set out
from Chalon, crossed Autun (Augustodunum), and reached the
Loire above Orleans (Genabum, later Aurelianum). Goods
embarked upon the river arrived, after a voyage of 870
kilometers (2,000 stades), at Nantes (Portus Namnetum) which
appears to have been substituted, about the beginning of the
first century, for the ancient port of Corbilo and which was
also in intercourse with Great Britain. The fourth route, that
from the Saône to the Seine, crossed Autun, was there divided
into two branches which went by way of Avallon and Alise to
meet at Sens (Agedincum) on the Yonne, and descended the Seine
to its mouth by Melun (Melodunum), Paris (Lutetia) and Rouen
(Rotomagus). This was the shortest route between the new
province of Britani and the Mediterranean; but the ancients,
notwithstanding the progress in navigation, always distrusted
long passages by sea; so the principal emporium of commerce
with Britani was not Caracotinum (Harfleur), the port of the
Seine, but Gesoriacum, later Bononia (Boulogne), which is
distant only 50 kilometers from the English coast. It was
there that Caligula erected that gigantic pharos known to the
middle-ages under the name of the tower of Odre and which
existed until 1645. … When one thinks of Gaul in the second
half of the 5th century, after those great streams of invasion
which swept it for fifty years, one easily fancies that the
flood has carried everything away, that the Roman institutions
have disappeared, that private fortunes are swallowed up in a
frightful catastrophe, that the barbarians have enslaved the
Gallo-Romans, that social life is suspended, manufactures
ruined, commerce interrupted. This picture which responds to
the idea we form of a barbarian conquest, is necessarily
exaggerated, because the Germanic invasion was not a conquest.
The Germans who established themselves upon the Roman
territory, those even who had employed force to make a place
for themselves within it, did not consider themselves
conquerors, but subjects and soldiers of the Empire: they
dreamed so little of destroying it that they aspired to serve
it whether it would or no. Notwithstanding the decadence of
manufactures and the inevitable disorders which weakness of
the central power brings in its train, commerce appears to
have preserved a certain amount of activity. In the 6th
century, post stages still existed. Upon the Roman roads,
maintained and repaired by the Merovingians, heavy wagons
which served for the transportation of goods and travelers
circulated with their teams of oxen or horses. Royal decrees
commanded the preservation of towing-paths along navigable
rivers; the rivers had remained the high-ways of interior
commerce, and the boatmen's companies of Roman Gaul had
perhaps survived the fall of the imperial domination. The
ports of the Atlantic, Bordeaux and Nantes, those of the
Channel, Alet (between Saint-Malo and Saint-Servan), Rouen,
Quantovic (Etaples or Saint-Josse-sur-Mer?) on the bay of the
Canche, Boulogne, were in relations with the Visigoths and the
Suevi of Spain, the Irish, the Frisians, and received in
exchange for the wines, honey, madder, grains and linens of
Gaul, oils and lead from Spain, metals and slaves from Great
Britain, coarse cloths from Ireland and finer fabrics which
they were beginning to make in Frisia. Marseilles, Arles,
Narbonne, the great ports of the Mediterranean, were always
the depots for the trade of the Orient, where their vessels
went for spices, silks, papyrus from Alexandria, cloths and
carpets from Antioch and Laodicea, which their merchants
exchanged in part for money, in part for metals, honey,
saffron, almonds and linens from southern Gaul, coral brought
from Italy, and amber brought overland from the borders of the
Baltic. The conquests of the Franks, masters of central and
southern Germany, had opened to commerce two new roads: one,
by the Danube, stretched away to the frontiers of the Eastern
Empire and to Constantinople through the countries occupied by
the fierce tribes of the Avars and the Bulgarians; the other
arrived by Thuringia in the regions where the Slav tribes,
Sorbs (Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, Pomerania) and Wends
(Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, Carinthia) dominated. In these
uncultivated countries, covered with forests and marshes, in
the midst of these warlike peoples, the merchants could risk
themselves only in large caravans, sword at the side and lance
in hand. These distant and perilous expeditions were
attractive to the adventurous spirit of the Frank race. …
Faith, as well as ambition, found its account in these
journeys to the countries of the pagan. On the way, they
distributed religious images to the heathen, they tried to
convert them while profiting by them. … This mingling of
commerce and religion is one of the characteristic traits of
the middle ages, as it is of antiquity. The most ancient fairs
of Gaul, that of Troyes which was in existence as early as the
5th century, that of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, that of
Saint-Denis, which goes back to the time of Dagobert (629),
were at the same time pilgrimages. This latter the most
celebrated of all, under the Merovingians, was held outside
the walls of Paris, between the churches of Saint-Martin and
Saint-Laurent, upon the lands watered by the brook
Ménilmontant; it was opened on the festival of Saint-Denis and
continued four weeks, in order to permit, says its charter,
merchants from Spain, Provence and Lombardy and even those
from beyond the sea, to take part in it. … The fair of
Saint-Denis was the rendezvous of merchants from all parts of
Gaul and Europe. Beside the wines and oils of the South might
be seen the honey and wax of Armorica, the linens and madder
of Neustria, the metals of Spain and England, the furs of the
North, the products of the royal manufactories; but the
choicest goods were the spices, pepper, tissues of silk and of
cotton, jewels, enamels, goldsmiths' work, which came from the
Orient by the Mediterranean ports, more rarely by way of the
Danube, and whose guardians were the Syrians or Jews destined
to hold so great a place in the commerce of the middle ages.
The Syrians,—and under this name the Franks comprehended,
without doubt, all merchants native to Egypt or Roman
Asia,—formed powerful communities at Marseilles, Narbonne,
Bordeaux; at Paris they had sufficient influence to enable one
of them, Eusebius, to succeed in purchasing the episcopate, in
591. … As to the Jews, a great number were already established
in Gaul before the fall of the Roman Empire, but their
prosperity dates only from the epoch of disorganization which
followed the barbarian invasion."

_H. Pigeonneau,
Histoire du Commerce de la France
(translated from the French), tome 1, livre 1._

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COMMERCE: Mediæval.
Early trade with China.

"During the Tang Dynasty the intercourse between China and
other considerable powers was not only closer but conducted on
more nearly equal terms than at any other time. … The
neighbouring kingdom of Tibet is first mentioned in the annals
for 634 A. D. as sending ambassadors with tribute and being
able to raise a large and formidable army. … Appeals from
Persia and India for help against the Saracens were addressed
to China more than once in the 7th and 8th centuries; and the
heir apparent to the Persian throne resided for a time as
hostage at the court of China. … But for the physical
structure of the continent, which isolates India and China,
while freezing Tibet and nomadizing Tartary, the spread of
Arab conquest round or across the desert would have reached a
point near enough to bring about a collision with China. As it
was, a general impetus was given to foreign travel and foreign
commerce; and … colonies of traders established themselves in
the southern ports, as well as along the continental trade
routes. … About the year 700 A. D. a market for strangers was
opened at Canton, and an imperial commission appointed to levy
duties. In 714 A. D. we hear of a petition of foreign
merchants, arriving by way of the southern sea, which is
forwarded from the coast in quite modern fashion for the
emperor's consideration. It set forth all the precious things
which the merchants could bring from the countries of the
West, and represented them as only desirous of collecting
medicinal drugs and simples. Unfortunately for the traders,
they arrived at the beginning of a new reign, when a vigorous
attempt had been made to put down the luxury of the court. …
It was concluded to take no further notice of the petition.
Foreign trade continued to exist on sufferance, but so far as
the Chinese were concerned, it was limited by the attitude of
the Government to a moderate exportation of staple
commodities, paid for in foreign coin or precious metals. What
China had to sell was much more important to the Western
nations than anything she or her rulers could be prevailed
upon to buy; and so long as the trade dealt with surplus
manufactures, like silk, or natural products, like musk or
rhubarb, and did not endanger the local food supply, it was
not interfered with. In 794 A. D. complaints were made that
trade was leaving Canton for Cochin China, but the traders'
schemes for recovering or pursuing it were discouraged by the
Government, which opined that there must have been intolerable
extortions used to drive it away, or a want of natural
inducements to bring it, and quoted the Shoo: 'Do not prize
strange commodities too much, and persons will come from
remote parts.' Arab geographers and travellers of the 9th
century show what a development had been reached by foreign
commerce under this modified freedom. The Jewish merchants
described by Ibn Khordadbeh as speaking Persian, Latin, Greek,
Arab, Spanish, Slavonic, and Lingua franca, and trading by sea
and land to the remotest regions, had their representatives at
Canton; and the four trade routes, enumerated by Sir Henry
Yule, enabled all the great commercial communities to try
their hand at the China trade. The first of these routes led
from the Mediterranean over the Isthmus of Suez, and onwards
by sea; another reached the Indian sea viâ Antioch, Bagdad and
Bussora and the Persian Gulf; a third followed the coast of
Africa by land from Tangiers to Egypt and thence by Damascus
to Bagdad, while the fourth led south of the Caspian Sea and
north of the central Asian desert to the gates of the Great
Wall. The Chinese traders either met the Western merchants at
Ceylon, or themselves came as far as the mouth of the
Euphrates."

_E. J. Simcox,
Primitive Civilizations,
book 4, chapter 12, section 2 (volume 2)._

COMMERCE: Mediæval.
The Arabs.

The earliest date to which any positive statement of
intercourse between the Arabs and the Chinese "appears to
refer is the first half of the 5th century of our era. At this
time, according to Hamza of Ispahan and Masudi, the Euphrates
was navigable as high as Hira, a city lying south-west of
ancient Babylon, near Kufa, (now at a long distance from the
actual channel of the river), and the ships of India and China
were constantly to be seen moored before the houses of the
town. Hira was then abounding in wealth, and the country
round, now a howling wilderness, was full of that life and
prosperity which water bestows in such a climate. A gradual
recession took place in the position of the headquarters of
Indian and Chinese trade. From Hira it descended to Obolla,
the ancient Apologos, from Obolla it was transferred to the
neighbouring city of Basra, built by the Khalif Omar on the
first conquest of Irak (636), from Basra to Siraf on the
northern shore of the gulf, and from Siraf successively to
Kish and Hormuz. Chinese Annals of the Thang dynasty of the
7th and 8th centuries, describe the course followed by their
junks in voyaging to the Euphrates from Kwangcheu (Canton). …
The ships of China, according to some authorities, used to
visit Aden as well as the mouths of Indus and Euphrates. I do
not think that either Polo or any traveller of his age speaks
of them as going further than Malabar, the ports of which
appear to have become the entrepôts for commercial exchange
between China and the west, nor does it appear what led to
this change. Some time in the 15th century again they seem to
have ceased to come to Malabar. … The Arabs at an early date
of Islam, if not before, had established a factory at Canton,
and their numbers at that port were so great by the middle of
the 8th century that in 758 they were strong enough to attack
and pillage the city, to which they set fire and then fled to
their ships. Nor were they confined to this port. … In the 8th
century also the Arabs began to know the Chinese not only as
Sinæ, but as Seres, i. e. by the northern land route. …
Besides … communication by land and sea with Arabia, and with
the various states of India, … there existed from an old date
other and obscurer streams of intercourse between China and
Western Asia, of which we have but fragmentary notices, but
which seem to indicate a somewhat fuller mutual knowledge and
freer communication than most persons probably have been
prepared to recognise. Thus, China appears to have been well
known from an early period to the Armenians."

_H. Yule,
Cathay and the Way thither, preliminary essay
(volume 1), pages lxxvii-lxxxii._

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After the Arabs began their career as a conquering people,
under Mahomet and his successors, and took possession of the
great ancient fields of Asiatic and African commerce, with its
highways and its capital seats, from Ispahan to Palmyra,
Damascus, Baalbec, Tyre, Alexandria, and the old Carthaginian
ports, they quickly caught the large ideas of trade that were
then opened up to them. They improved the early caravan routes
and established new ones in many directions. They dug wells,
made cisterns and built caravansaries, or public places of
shelter for travelers and traders, along the important desert
roads. The pilgrimages which their religion encouraged had a
lively traffic connected with them, and by spreading one
language and one set of customs and laws over the wide region
which they ruled, they helped commerce as the Romans had done.
From Bagdad, the new capital city which they built on the
Tigris, nearly opposite the deserted ruins of Babylon, on the
other side of the Chaldean plain, they carried on direct trade
with India, through Afghanistan; with China by three routes
through Bokhara, or Tartary; with Siberia and with Russia, to
the very center of it, through the agency of the Turkish and
Tartar races. This city of Bagdad became a marvel of
magnificence under the early Arabian caliphs. Other cities of
Asia that acquired importance in manufactures or trade, or
both, during the period of Arabian power, were Ispahan, in
Persia, the woolens and linens from which were equally noted
for their fineness; Damascus, in Syria, which produces cutlery
of steel, and especially sword blades, that have never been
surpassed, and which gave the name of "damasks" to certain
raised patterns in linen that are well known by that term to
this day; Herat, in Afghanistan, which was famous for its
carpet looms and for its cultivation of saffron and
assafœtida; Balkh and Khotan, in Bokhara, the former of which,
on the banks of the Oxus, was a populous seat of trade between
China, India and the West. From its great antiquity, Balkh was
called "the mother of cities." In their native country, the
Arabs, during this brilliant period of their history,
increased the ancient trade which they had carried on by sea,
with India, on one hand, and with the eastern coasts of
Africa, on the other. They extended the latter far south of
the limits of ancient Ethiopia, and even to the island of
Madagascar. There are few settlements now existing on the east
African coast, below the straits of Babel-Mandeb, which were
not of Arabian origin. The pilgrimages to Mecca, their holy
city, where the remains of Mahomet were interred, made that a
great market and both industry and commerce were enlivened
throughout the Arabian peninsula. As masters of Egypt, the
Arabians reorganized with fresh vigor the ancient caravan
traffic with central Africa and with the countries on the
Upper Nile. Alexandria, it is true, lost much of its former
importance. This was owing, in part, to the bitter hostility
that existed between the Mahometans and the European
Christians, which broke up, for a long period, nearly all open
commerce between the two. But Alexandria was also hurt by the
rise of new Arabian cities, in Egypt and on the Barbary coast,
which drew away some of the trade that had centered almost
wholly at Alexandria before. Cairo, the modern capital of
Egypt, stood first among these and became a wealthy seat of
many manufactures and of much commercial exchange. The
interior caravan traffic of Egypt centered principally at
Syene, while Temnis and Damietta were busy productive towns.
Within the old Carthaginian dominions, west of Egypt, on the
Mediterranean, the Arab conquerors revived a traffic quite as
extensive, perhaps, as the greatest that ancient Carthage had
controlled. Not far from the site of that ancient emporium,
and twelve miles from the modern city of Tunis, they built the
now forgotten city of Kirwan, which was one of the largest and
most magnificent of its time. It was a point from which
numerous caravan routes led southward into the heart of the
African continent, even beyond the great desert, as well as
eastward to Egypt and westward to the Atlantic coasts and
Spain. Many flourishing towns surrounded this African
metropolis and were the centers of many different activities,
such as the cultivation of grain, the making of salt, the
rearing of silk-worms and the production of silk. In
Mauritania, which embraced the modern empire of Morocco and
part of Algiers, the Arabs introduced the same spirit of
enterprise. In their hands, the barren country—which has
since become almost a desert again—was made fertile, through
wide regions, by extensive irrigation, and produced wheat,
olives, grapes, dates and other fruits in great abundance,
besides feeding flocks and herds of sheep, goats, horses,
asses and camels in rich pastures. The people became skilful
in several manufactures, including weaving and dyeing, the
making of silk and gold thread, the mining and smelting of
copper and iron, the preparation of soap and the tanning of
leather. From the Atlantic coast of their Mauritanian
dominion, the Arabs pushed their traffic far down the western
shores of the continent, while they opened caravan routes to
the interior quite as widely, perhaps, as they did from Kirwan
and from Egypt. The chief city that they founded in Mauritania
was Fez, which still bears witness to its former glory in a
lingering university, or collection of Mahometan schools; in
the remains of many mosques, and in a vast number of
caravansaries. The native inhabitants whom the Arabs found in
Mauritania derived from their country the name of Moors. They
embraced the Mahometan religion and joined their Saracen
conquerors in invading Spain, A. D. 712. This led, in Europe,
to the applying of the name "Moors" to the whole of the mixed
races which took possession of southern Spain, and finally
gave that name to all the Mahometans on the western
Mediterranean coasts. But the Moors and the Arabs were
distinct races of people. The conquest of southern Spain gave
the Arabs the finest field in which their energy and genius
were shown. They made the most of its mineral treasures, its
delightful climate and its fertile soil. On the remains of
Roman civilization, which Vandals and Visigoths had not wholly
destroyed, they built up, with wonderful quickness, a new
culture—of industry, of manners and of taste, of art, of
literature, of government and of social life—that was
splendidly in contrast with the rude state of Europe at large.
The trade of the Spanish Moors was considerably extended
among the Christians of Europe, notwithstanding the religious
enmities that opposed it.
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The products of their skilful workmanship were so eagerly
desired, and they controlled so many of the coveted luxuries
found in Africa and the East that their Christian neighbors
could not be restrained, by war nor by the commands of the
church nor by the hatred which both stirred up, from dealings
with them. With other parts of the Mahometan dominion, and
with the countries in commercial connection with it, the trade
of Moorish Spain was active and large. In exchange for the
varied products which they received, they gave the fine
fabrics of their looms; exquisite work of their goldsmiths and
silversmiths; famous leather; iron, quicksilver and silver
from the old Spanish mines, which they worked with new
knowledge and skill; sugar, the production of which they had
learned and introduced from India; olive oil, raw silk,
dye-stuffs, sulphur and many commodities of less worth. The
career of the Arabs, in the large region of the world which
they conquered, was brilliant but not lasting. The energy
which carried them for a time far ahead of their slower
neighbors in Europe showed signs of decay before two centuries
of their career had been run.

COMMERCE: MEDIÆVAL.
Byzantine Trade.

"The commerce of Europe centred at Constantinople in the 8th
and 9th centuries more completely than it has ever since done
in any one city. The principles of the government, which
reprobated monopoly, and the moderation of its duties, which
repudiated privileges, were favourable to the extension of
trade. While Charlemagne ruined the internal trade of his
dominions by fixing a maximum of prices, and destroyed foreign
commerce under the persuasion that, by discouraging luxury, he
could enable his subjects to accumulate treasures which he
might afterwards extort or filch into his own treasury,
Theophilus prohibited the persons about his court from
engaging in mercantile speculations, lest by so doing they
should injure the regular channels of commercial intercourse,
by diminishing the profits of the individual dealer. … During
this period the western nations of Europe drew their supplies
of Indian commodities from Constantinople, and the Byzantine
empire supplied them with all the gold coin in circulation for
several centuries. The Greek navy, both mercantile and
warlike, was the most numerous then in existence. Against the
merchant-ships of the Greeks, the piratical enterprises of the
Egyptian, African, and Spanish Arabs were principally
directed. Unfortunately we possess no authentic details of the
commercial state of the Byzantine empire, nor of the Greek
population during the Iconoclast period, yet we may safely
transfer to this time the records that exist proving the
extent of Greek commerce under the Basilian dynasty. Indeed,
we must remember that, as the ignorance and poverty of western
Europe was much greater in the 11th and 12th centuries than in
the 8th and 9th, we may conclude that Byzantine commerce was
also greater during the earlier period. The influence of the
trade of the Arabians with the East Indies on the supply of
the markets of western Europe has been overrated, and that of
the Greeks generally lost sight of. … The Byzantine markets
drew their supplies of Indian and Chinese productions from
Central Asia, the trade passing north of the caliph's
dominions through the territory of the Khazars to the Black
Sea. This route was long frequented by the Christians, to
avoid the countries in the possession of the Mohammedans, and
was the highway of European commerce for several centuries.
Though it appears at present a far more difficult and
expensive route than that by the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean,
it was really safer, more rapid, and more economical, in the
8th, 9th, and 10th centuries. This requires no proof to those
who are acquainted with caravan life in the East, and who
reflect on the imperfections of ancient navigation, and the
dangers and delays to which sailing vessels of any burden are
exposed in the Red Sea. When the Venetians and Genoese began
to surpass the Greeks in commercial enterprise, they
endeavoured to occupy this route; and we have some account of
the line it followed, and the manner in which it was carried
on, after the East had been thrown into confusion by the
conquests of the Crusaders and Tartars, in the travels of
Marco Polo. For several centuries the numerous cities of the
Byzantine empire supplied the majority of the European
consumers with Indian wares, and it was in them alone that the
necessary security of property existed to preserve large
stores of merchandise. Constantinople was as much superior to
every city in the civilised world, in wealth and commerce, as
London now is to the other European capitals. And it must also
be borne in mind, that the countries of central Asia were not
then in the rude and barbarous condition into which they have
now sunk, since nomade nations have subdued them. On many
parts of the road traversed by the caravans, the merchants
found a numerous and wealthy population ready to traffic in
many articles sought after both in the East and West; and the
single commodity of furs supplied the traders with the means
of adding greatly to their profits. Several circumstances
contributed to turn the great highway of trade from the
dominions of the caliphs to Constantinople. The Mohammedan
law, which prohibited all loans at interest, and the arbitrary
nature of the administration of justice, rendered all
property, and particularly commercial property, insecure.
Again, the commercial route of the Eastern trade, by the way
of Egypt and the Red Sea, was suddenly rendered both difficult
and expensive, about the year 767, by the Caliph Al Mansur,
who closed the canal connecting the Nile with the Red Sea. The
harvests of Egypt, which had previously filled the coast of
Arabia with plenty, could no longer be transported in quantity
to the ports of the Red Sea; living became expensive; the
population of Arabia declined; and the carrying trade was
ruined by the additional expenditure required. The caliph
certainly by this measure impoverished and depopulated the
rebellious cities of Medina and Mecca to such a degree as to
render their military and political power less dangerous to
the central authority at Bagdat, but at the same time he
ruined the commerce of Egypt with India and the eastern coast
of Southern Africa. Since that period, this most important
line of communication has never been restored, and the coarser
articles of food, of which Egypt can produce inexhaustible
stores, are deprived of their natural market in the arid
regions of Arabia.
{3707}
The hostile relations between the caliphs of Bagdat and Spain
likewise induced a considerable portion of the Mohammedan
population on the shores of the Mediterranean to maintain
close commercial relations with Constantinople. A remarkable
proof of the great wealth of society at this period is to be
found in the immense amount of specie in circulation. … The
poverty of Europe at a later period, when the isolation caused
by the feudal system had annihilated commerce and prevented
the circulation of the precious metals, cannot be used as an
argument against the probability of this wealth having existed
at the earlier period of which we are treating."

_G. Finlay,
History of the Byzantine Empire, 716-1057,
book 1, chapter 4, section 1._

COMMERCE: MEDIÆVAL.
Venice and Genoa.

In the slow revival of commerce which took place in Christian
Europe, during the later half of the middle ages, no one city
or people can be said to have taken a lead from the beginning.
At various points, north and south, on the Mediterranean and
the Adriatic, on the Baltic, on the Rhine and other rivers
which flow into the North Sea, and on the Danube, the Dnieper
and the Don, centers of trade were growing up in a gradual
way, out of which it would be hard to name one that ranked
much above the rest for many generations. But the 11th century
brought a great commercial leader to the front. This was
Venice. The circumstances of the founding of Venice, in the
5th century, and the history of the rise of the singular
republic, are given elsewhere.

See VENICE (page 8602).

The condition of the unfortunate refugees, who sought shelter
from invading savages on a few small mud banks, barely
separated from the shore of their Adriatic coast, did not seem
to be a promising one. Nor was it so. While the neighboring
parts of Italy were being overrun by Huns, Goths and Lombards
in succession, and while the settlement of the barbarous new
races was going on over all Southern Europe, in the midst of
great disorder and constant war, these islanders and their
descendants, for generations, were protected as much by their
poverty as by the shallow waters that surrounded them. They
had nothing to tempt either plunder or conquest. They lived by
salt-making, fishing and fish-salting. They began trade in a
small way by exchanging their salt and salted fish for other
articles. It grew in their hands from year to year, for they
were enterprising, industrious and courageous. Procuring
timber on the opposite Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic, they
became expert ship builders and sailors. The safety of their
situation caused increasing numbers of their Italian fellow
countrymen to join them. The islands of the Venetian lagune
were, in time, all occupied, and bridges between several of
them were built. From the selling of salt and fish to their
neighbors, the Venetians went on to more extensive commercial
business. By slow degrees, they took the occupation of general
merchants, buying goods here and there to sell again. They
became friendly with the Greeks on the eastern side of the
Adriatic, in Dalmatia and Albania, and this led them into
important relations, both commercial and political, with the
Byzantine Empire and its capital city, Constantinople. By the
time they had gained wealth and consequence enough to attract
the notice of their rough neighbors and invite attack, they
had also gained strength enough to defend themselves. They
took part then in the wars of the Byzantines, rendering
valuable services in Italy and elsewhere, and they joined the
Greeks in destroying the pirates who infested the Adriatic
Sea. The early important trade of the Venetians was with
Constantinople, where they enjoyed, for a long period, the
peculiar favor of the Byzantine rulers. After the Saracens had
mastered Syria and Persia, and taken possession of Alexandria
(A. D. 640), Constantinople became the emporium of Eastern
trade, adding it to a great traffic which the Byzantine
capital had always carried on with the Tartar and Russian
territories in Asia and Europe. When the Venetians gained a
footing there, as political friends and favored merchants,
their fortunes were made. While the Greeks were busy in
desperate wars with their Mahometan neighbors, these
enterprising Italians took into their own hands more and more
of the profitable trade which the Greeks had opened to them.
They soon had the handling of Byzantine commerce in western
Europe almost wholly. From partners they became rivals, and
especially in the Russian traffic, which they drew away from
Constantinople, to a large extent, by opening direct dealings
with the Russian traders, at a market place established on the
Dnieper. From the beginning of the Crusades, in the 11th
century, the rise of Venetian commerce and Venetian power was
very rapid. The Venetians were prepared, as no other people
were, at the time, to furnish fleets, both for transportation
and for naval war. They enlisted in the crusading enterprises
with a zeal which was not, perhaps, purely pious. Their
carrying ships were busy conveying men and supplies; their war
galleys were in the front of some sea fighting with the
Moslems, and more with Christian rivals; their shrewd
politicians were alert, at all points and among all parties,
looking after the interests of the republic; their merchants
were everywhere ready to improve the new opportunities of
trade which these times of excitement opened up. In all
directions, and throughout the whole of Europe, new activities
were awakened, and especially such as led to a busier trade.
The crusaders who lived to return, into France, Flanders,
Italy, Germany, and England, brought home with them many ideas
which they had picked up in the East, and much new knowledge
of oriental products and arts, all of which became widely
diffused and produced great effects. The result was to
stimulate and improve the industries and to increase the
commerce which the Europeans carried on among themselves, as
well as to greatly enlarge their demand for the products of
the Asiatic world. A new era in European commerce was opened,
therefore, by the Crusades, and the Venetians, by their
enterprise, their energy and their early experience, took the
lead in its activities. They organized the traffic between the
East and the West, the North and the South, upon a great
scale, and centered the larger part of it in their island
city. By sea and by land they managed it with equal vigor.
Their merchant fleets were under the protection of the state
and made voyages, at regular and appointed times, under the
convoy of vessels of war. On the landward side, they arranged
an extensive trade with the interior of Germany, Hungary and
Bohemia, through the Tyrol and Carinthia.
{3708}
As the first bitterness of hatred between Christians and
Mahometans wore away, they grew willing to trade with one
an·other, though the Popes still forbade it. The Venetians
were among the first in such willingness. Having many quarrels
with the Byzantine Greeks, they were eager to reopen the old
eastern market at Alexandria, and did so at the earliest
opportunity. From that beginning they spread their trade with
Arabs, Moors and Turks, along the whole Mahometan line, in
Asia and Africa. But, though Venice took the lead in the
reviving commerce of the middle ages and held it substantially
to the end of that period of history, she had powerful rivals
to contend with, and the strongest were among her near
neighbors in Italy. The same commercial spirit was alive in
several other Italian cities, which had grown up in the midst
of those disorderly times and had contrived to acquire more or
less of independence and more or less of power to defend
themselves. Amalfi, Genoa and Pisa were the earliest of these
in growing to importance, and Florence at a somewhat later day
rose to high rank. Florence, which did not become a free city
until near the end of the 12th century, gained its subsequent
wealth more by manufactures and by banking than by trade. Its
chief products were woolens, silk and jewelry, and its
money-lenders were everywhere in Europe.

See FLORENCE (pages 1130-1143).

The commercial career of Amalfi was cut short in the 12th
century by events connected with the Norman conquest of
Southern Italy. Pisa, an ancient city, whose history goes back
to Etruscan times, was a considerable seat of trade while
Venice was little known; but she fell behind both Venice and
Genoa, soon after those vigorous republics were fairly entered
in the race. The Pisans prospered highly for some time, by
going into partnership or alliance with the Venetians, first,
and afterwards with the Genoese; but they quarreled with the
latter and were ruined in the wars that ensued. After the
thirteenth century Pisa had no commercial importance.

See PISA (pages 2537-2539).

The great rival of Venice was Genoa, a city which claims to
be, like Pisa, of more than Roman antiquity. In the trade of
the Levant—that is, the eastern ports of the Mediterranean
Sea—the Genoese pushed themselves into competition with the
Venetians at an early day, and they seemed for some time to
hold an equal chance of controlling the prize. During the
later part of the 12th century, such unfriendly feelings had
grown up between the Venetians and the Byzantine court that
the latter transferred its commercial favors to the merchants
of Genoa, Pisa and Amalfi, and gave them many privileges at
Constantinople. The Venetians were thus placed at a
disadvantage in the Bosphorus and the Black Sea; but they did
not long submit. In 1204 they persuaded one of the crusading
expeditions to join them in attacking Constantinople, which
was taken, and the dominions of the ancient Empire of the East
were divided among the captors, Venice receiving a goodly
share.

See CRUSADES (page 631).

This was a golden era for Venice and she improved it to the
utmost. For almost sixty years she triumphed over her rivals
completely. But in 1261 her merchants were again expelled from
Constantinople and the Black Sea. The Greeks had continued to
hold a large part of the ancient domain of the Byzantine
Empire in Asia Minor, and now, with the help of the Genoese,
they succeeded in retaking their old capital city. The Frank
Empire, or Latin Empire as it was differently called, which
the Crusaders and the Venetians had set up, was extinguished
and the Genoese again took the place of the Venetians as
masters of the Byzantine trade, including that of the Black
Sea and the Asiatic traffic which was carried on from its
ports. But by this time the better disposition to deal
commercially with one another had grown up between the
Christians and the Mahometans. So the Venetians, when they
lost their footing at Constantinople, very promptly went over
to Alexandria and made excellent arrangements with the
Saracens there, for supplying Europe once more with the
commodities of the East, by those easier and shorter ancient
routes which Christian commerce had not used for several
hundred years. This opening of trade with the Mahometan races,
at Alexandria, and elsewhere soon afterwards, may easily have
repaid the Venetians for what they lost in the Byzantine
direction; but they did not give up the latter. A long series
of desperate wars between the competitors ensued, with such
shiftings of victory that Venice seemed sometimes to be almost
in a hopeless strait; but, in the end, she broke the power of
her rival completely. The final peace, which was concluded in
1381, left her quite undisputed]y, for a time, the mistress of
the Mediterranean and its trade.

See GENOA: A. D. 1261-1299 (page 1419);
and VENICE: A. D. 1378-1379, and 1379-1381 (page 3608).

Both the northward and the southward lines of traffic between
Asia and Europe, through Alexandria and through
Constantinople, were now chiefly in the hands of the
Venetians. Between those great courses were important minor
currents of commerce, along caravan routes through Asia Minor
and Syria, which they mainly controlled. The trade of the rich
islands of the Levant and of Moorish Africa was under their
management for the most part, and they found on the northern
shores of the Black Sea a commerce with the Russian region
which the Genoese had increased while they ruled in those
waters. For three quarters of a century the Venetians enjoyed
this large extent of commerce with the East. Then the Turks
came, besieged and captured Constantinople (A. D. 1453) and
spread over the country which they now occupy. For the next
two centuries the Venetians were at war with the Turks
—defending Christendom in the Mediterranean with little help.
At the same time they had to encounter an almost fatal attack
from Christian princes who had become jealous of their
formidable wealth and power and who united against the
republic in the League of Cambrai.

See VENICE: A. D. 1508-1509 (page 3611).

They might have recovered from this attack, for they still
held the Mediterranean trade; but a great event had occurred,
just ten years before the League of Cambrai, which was more
fatal than war, not to Venice alone, but to most of her rivals
in trade as well. This was the discovery, by Vasco da Gama, of
the ocean passage to the Eastern world around the Cape of Good
Hope. The toiling traffic of desert caravans, to Alexandria,
to Constantinople, to Tyre, Antioch, Ephesus and Erzeroum, was
soon reduced to insignificance. The rich trade of the Indies
and of all the farther East—the trade of the silk countries
and the cotton countries, of the spice islands, of the pearl
fisheries, of the lands of ivory, of ebony, of gold, of
precious stones, of fragrant gums, of curious things and
curious arts—was quickly swept into a different course—into
broader seas than the Mediterranean and into new hands.

{3709}

COMMERCE: MEDIÆVAL.
Northern Europe.
The Baltic Cities.
The Hansa.

The earliest commercial seaports of northwestern Europe had
their rise, not on the North Sea, but on the Baltic and the
straits which enter it. The Northmen of that region were not
alone in the traffic which grew up there, for the Wends (a
Slavonic people), who occupied most of the southern shores of
the Baltic, east of the Elbe, appear to have stoutly rivalled
them from the first. Biorko, on an island in Lake Maelar,
Sweden (the inlet upon which Stockholm is situated), was one
of the first of the seats of commerce at the North. It is
supposed to have been destroyed about 1008. But the most
famous was the city of Winet, or Vineta, on the island of
Usedom, at the mouth of the river Oder. It may not have been
quite as rich and magnificent a town as some would infer from
accounts given in early chronicles; but no doubt it was
remarkable for the age, in that part of the world, and carried
on a large trade. The Swedes and Danes were the destroyers of
Vineta, before the middle of the 9th century, and the former
people are said to have carried away from it great quantities
of marble, brass and iron work, with which they gave splendor
to their own newer city of Wisby, then just rising on the
island of Gothland. The career of Wisby lasted several
centuries and it was prominent in commerce throughout the
Middle Ages. All that can be said of that most ancient
commerce in northern Europe is gathered from sources which are
uncertain and obscure. It is not until the 12th century that
much of the real history of trade in the Baltic region opens.
In 1140 the modern city of Lubeck was founded, on the site of
a more ancient town, known as Old Lubeck, which is supposed to
have been a thriving port of trade in its day but which had
been utterly destroyed by its rivals or enemies. The new
Lubeck established close relations with the Genoese and soon
took the lead in the commerce of the north, among a large
number of enterprising towns which, about that time, came into
prominence on the northern coast and on the rivers which run
to it. The city of Hamburg, on the Elbe, lying inland and not
very distant from Lubeck, was one of the earliest of these.
Like Lubeck, it had suffered destruction, in the constant
warfare of the earlier time, and had made a new beginning of
existence about 1013. Hamburg had access to the North Sea by
the Elbe and Lubeck to the Baltic by the Trave. Trading in
different directions, therefore, by sea, they carried on an
active traffic with one another, across the narrow stretch of
land which divides them,—as they still do to this day. But
this inland commerce was greatly disturbed by robbers who
infested the country, until the two cities, Lubeck and
Hamburg, in 1241, agreed to establish and support in common a
body of soldiers for the protection of their merchants. That
agreement is believed to have been the beginning of a
wide-spread union which afterwards took shape among the
commercial cities of northern Europe, and which became
powerful and famous in the later history of the Middle Ages,
under the name of the Hanseatic League.

See HANSA TOWNS: (pages 1624-1626),
and (in this Supplement) GERMANY, 13-15th,
and 15-17th CENTURIES.

COMMERCE: MEDIÆVAL.
Frisians and Flemings.
The early Netherlands.