Chapter X: The Commerce of Venice (2)

The trade in cloths-of-gold in the form of mantles or _pallii_, for either sex, was prodigious; and the profit arising to the Venetians from this source alone was incalculably large; the courts of France and Germany, and more particularly the former, were among the best customers of the republic. Charlemagne himself was seldom seen without a robe of Venetian pattern and texture; and the constant intercourse which the patriarch Fortunato maintained with the son of Pepin, had at least the good effect of spreading the knowledge and appreciation of the manufactures of his country to the banks of the Seine and the Loire. It was a point of policy which the republic steadily observed from the beginning, to make every extension of territory, every treaty of peace, beneficial to her interests as a mercantile power.[e]

The activity of all this industry increased the population, and this led to increased consumption of every kind, this again leading to new speculations and returns. The Venetians were no longer satisfied to go and buy raw materials of the foreigner, but sought to make the country produce them. Troops of sheep were reared in Polesine, and were sent into the mountains of eastern Istria. The hill-sides of Friuli were covered with mulberry trees. An attempt was made to naturalise the sugar-cane in the isles of the Levant.[g]

THE SLAVE TRADE

But after all it was as a commercial rather than as a manufacturing city that Venice was really great, and nature intended her for the former, not for the latter. It was in transporting or bartering with the produce of other peoples that her chief interest lay. In general, no more worthy passport to fame could be desired by a people than comes through such commercial enterprises. There was one phase of commerce, however, which forms an ugly blot on the otherwise pleasant picture. This is the slave trade. In carrying out this nefarious business the Genoese and Venetian merchants found, at one time, an important source of revenue. The chief market was Egypt.[a]

It appears that the mameluke sultans who governed Egypt from the middle of the thirteenth century, finding only insufficient resources for recruiting their armies in a native population little fitted for the profession of arms, had recourse to another quarter: the purchase of slaves, natives of the countries of the north. On the other hand, in order to fill their harems and those of the great men of the court, female slaves were brought in and were frequently renewed. They therefore sent agents in search of slaves of either sex wherever they could obtain them, even from Christian countries--Armenia Minor, for instance. The religion to which they had belonged was of little consequence; if they were Christians their new masters soon made converts of them. However, the Egyptian agents by preference visited the countries where Islam was the dominant religion, and _vice versa_ the merchants from Mussulman countries brought troops of slaves to Egypt to sell them. So it was especially the ports of Adalia and Candelore, situated in that part of Asia Minor which had been subjugated by the Seleucidæ, which sent young boys and young girls into Egypt. When Hadrianopolis and Gallipoli had fallen into the power of the Osmanlis, it was from these two towns that Greek or Christian vessels started, carrying slaves by hundreds to Damietta or Alexandria.

But this trade attained its most flourishing condition in the countries bordering the Black Sea. The development of the power of the mameluke sultans in Egypt and the propagation of Islam in the great Mongol Empire of Kiptchak by the khan Bereke had occurred almost simultaneously, and these events were the occasion of an active exchange of correspondence and embassies between the masters of the two countries. From this time, the agents charged with the purchase of slaves for the sultans directed their search especially towards the northern shores of the Black Sea, and Sultan Bibars by embassies and presents succeeded in obtaining from Michael Palæologus, who, it appears, was not aware of the importance of the concession which he was asked to make, permission to send Egyptian trading vessels through the Bosporus. Permission was granted only for one vessel which was to make, once a year, the voyage to the Black Sea, there and back; but instead of only one there were often two, and their cargo on the return voyage consisted of slaves destined to reinforce the sultan’s troops. It must be observed that the condition in which this region then was could not have been more favourable to the development of this kind of trade. Although the Tatars were solidly settled in their empire of Kiptchak, there were still some unsubdued tribes, and between them the normal state was one of war--skirmishing war in which Circassians, Russians, Magyars, and Alajans carried off, each in their turn, Tatar children whom they sold as slaves. Moreover the Tatars reserved the same fate for the prisoners whom they brought back from their raids in the Caucasus. And furthermore, among these savage tribes, when provisions were too dear or taxes too heavy, nothing was more common than to see parents selling their own children, especially their daughters. Naturally, it was only the strong, healthy, and well-formed who were put up for sale. But along the whole of the coast neither the Tatars nor the tribes whom they had subdued possessed large trading ports. Kaffa, Tana, etc., were in the hands of the Italians, and so it happened that the slave trade was concentrated in the Italian marts, and especially at Kaffa. This latter town was the habitual resort of the agents charged with the purchase of slaves for the sultans of Egypt; a certain number of them even lived there permanently.

The Genoese were obliged to permit the embarkation of slaves for Egypt to take place in their port of Kaffa; if they had placed difficulties in the way of the sultan’s agents, they would have risked compromising their own commercial relations with Egypt to the greatest extent, and even the existence of their colonies. Besides, this trade was severely controlled by the colonial authorities. Every slave passing through underwent examination; he was asked if he were Mussulman or Christian. If he was of the Christian faith or if he expressed a wish to be converted, the consul of Kaffa ransomed him and kept him in his possession; he allowed only Mussulmans to leave. Slaves who wished to become Christians also found a refuge in the bishop’s house, respected by the civil authorities. Moreover, the government watched with the greatest care that no inhabitant of Kaffa was carried away into slavery. Finally, there was a tax upon the slave trade, and the republic of Genoa enforced it energetically in 1431, in spite of the complaint of Sultan Barsabay, who, in retaliation, imposed a tax of 16,000 ducats on the Genoese merchants settled in Egypt.

So, legally, the slave trade was tolerated by the Genoese colonial authorities only for Mussulmans and on condition that the transport leaving for Egypt should be carried out by merchants of their religion and in their own ships. Captains of Genoese ships were formally forbidden, under pain of heavy fines, to ship mamelukes of either sex for the purpose of carrying them into Egypt, Barbary, or the parts of Spain occupied by the Saracens; no Genoese was allowed to take part in this trade in any manner whatever. In the same way, on the departure from Tana, the Venetian galleys were forbidden to receive on board Mussulman or Tatar slaves destined to be sent into Turkish territory. These rules, however, did not prevent certain Christians from the northern shores of the Black Sea from sending slaves into Egypt. In 1307, the colonists of Kaffa themselves stole Tatar children to sell them to the Mussulmans (that is, to send them to Egypt). In 1371, a certain Niccolo di S. Giorgio went to Kaffa and gave himself out as a “dealer in slaves.” We do not know if he traded with Egypt, but, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, a Genoese, named Segurano Salvago, went himself with slaves of both sexes to the sultan of Egypt; another, named Gentile Imperiali, accepted the post of agent for the sultan at Kaffa for the purchase of slaves. Many Genoese also assisted indirectly in the transport of slaves to Egypt; the means consisted simply in hiring their vessels for this purpose to Mussulman slave merchants. Thus the complaints of Pope John XXII were well-founded, when before the whole world he accused the Genoese of contributing to increase the power of the infidels by furnishing them with slaves. Nearly a century later, at Kaffa, Tana, and other places, Christians and Jews bought Zichians, Russians, Alajans, Mingrelians, and Abkas and sold them again to the Saracens, with a profit often ten times as great as the price of purchase. These unhappy people, who had been baptised according to the Greek rite, were forced to deny their faith, and might esteem themselves happy if they did not become the victims of the masters who employed them for their infamous pleasures. Informed of this scandal, Martin V thundered excommunication against all the Christians who took part in it, while as for the Jews, he decreed that those proved guilty of it should be condemned to wear special marks on their clothes (1425).

In this manner, there arrived every year in the great market of Cairo, by way of Damietta or of Alexandria, about two thousand mamelukes, whom the sultan caused to be priced by skilful experts. The subjects who fetched the highest prices were the Tatars; they were worth from 130 to 140 ducats a head; for a Circassian they paid from 110 to 120 ducats, for a Greek about 90, for an Albanian, a Slavonian or a Serbian, from 70 to 80. The merchants had the double advantage of making large profits and of receiving tokens of the sovereign’s gratitude for the services they rendered to Islam.

The eastern slaves sent towards the northern shores of the Black Sea did not all leave with the large convoys for Egypt and Mohammedan countries in general; there are many examples of sale and purchase by members of the colonies themselves. Among others a certain Fatima may be mentioned, whose name evidently proclaims her Mussulman origin. She was bought in the first place by a Genoese, named Nicoloso da Murto, and ceded by him to the prior of the church of St. Laurence of the Genoese, who sold her to a third Genoese for the sum of 400 new Armenian _dirhems_; bills of sale of a similar kind which took place at Famagusta are still in existence. Those who had taken the habit of having foreign slaves in their service, during their residence in the colonies of the Levant, brought the custom back with them, and by their example encouraged others to introduce into their houses slaves bought at a distance, instead of hired servants or work-people. No prohibition existed against this, and the slave trade in itself was not considered disgraceful, provided that the merchant abstained from trading with Egypt. A Genoese law of 1441 furnishes a decided proof of this. It forbids all captains of large galleys armed for war, which went to fetch goods from Romania or Syria, to receive slaves on board, but the reason was that all disposable space might be reserved for goods, and it makes an exception in the case where a merchant on board is bringing a slave with him for his personal service. There were other vessels specially destined to the transport of slaves, and in respect to them the law took only such measures as were necessary to prevent crowding, which would have an injurious effect on the health of the cargo; for example, a vessel with one deck could not take more than thirty slaves on board, a vessel with two decks not more than forty-five, and a vessel with three decks not more than sixty.

At this period it was an understood thing that a Christian might, without scruple, treat as a slave any infidel who fell into his hands; and, for the greater part, it was precisely the infidels, that is to say the pagans or Mussulmans who formed the objects of this trade. The majority of foreign slaves brought to the Occident came originally from the empire of Kiptchak, situated at the south of Russia, as it now exists, and belonged either to the Tatar race, the most important one of the country, or to one of the tribes under its power--tribes generally called by the same name; the Circassians and the Russians were far less numerous; then came the Turks and Saracens, a name which was doubtless applied to the Egyptians and Syrians; and lastly, but in very small numbers, came Bulgarians, Slavonians, and Greeks. According to the ideas of the time, it was only in connection with the last named that any doubt could arise as to the legality of selling them as slaves, for they were Christians; but in practice men did not inquire too closely. As for those who were not members of the Christian religion, they were generally converted shortly after their arrival in the West and then exchanged their barbarous name for a Christian one; but, in spite of their conversion, their masters had no scruple in keeping them as slaves, and even in selling them again.

The very origin of the great majority of these slaves leads to the supposition that the nations which had colonies on the shores of the Black Sea, the Genoese and Venetians for example, were also the nations more especially addicted to trade in slaves. As a matter of fact hundreds, thousands even, were sent to Genoa and Venice, while they were far rarer at Pisa, Florence, Lucca, and Barcelona. In 1368 there were such large numbers of them in Venice that their quarrelsome, undisciplined masses formed an actual danger to the safety of the city. The Tatars were not brought there separately, but sometimes whole families of them together. From the seaports the slaves were sometimes sent into the interior; thus we hear in 1463 of a confectioner of Vigevano who had a Circassian slave girl, just as Marco Polo had a Tatar slave at Venice. Merchants from Genoa and Kaffa even took slaves of both sexes to the court of the German Empire, and the emperor Frederick III gave them permission to exhibit them for sale.

One of the interesting sides of the question we are now studying is the proportion of slaves of either sex in different countries; there was a marked difference in this respect between Egypt and the West. In Egypt, in spite of a somewhat large demand for female slaves for the harems, there was a still larger demand for male slaves, for they formed the chief contingent of army-recruiting; in the West, on the contrary, preference was given to young girls, and for various reasons: possessing a more gentle disposition, they more easily adapted themselves to life in general; then they were more apt than men for the domestic services required of them; they learned manual work more easily; and lastly, most of them were the instruments of their master’s pleasure. Which was the more enviable fate--that of the men slaves in Egypt, or that of the women slaves in Italy? It would be difficult to say. The former underwent much rough treatment while they were in the ranks, but they could rise to high posts in the army, and have sometimes even been seen seated on the throne of the sultan: the others were treated more kindly; and indeed their master not infrequently set them free, either during his life or by his will, but they never occupied a really respected position among the people.

Youth and health were the two qualities most esteemed; if the slave was also beautiful, naturally his value increased. M. Cibrario has made a list of the sales of slaves, the greater number of which occurred at Genoa or Venice; he found fifty-three in the thirteenth century, twenty-nine in the fourteenth, and twenty-eight in the fifteenth; he noted that the prices increased from one century to the other; for example, in the thirteenth century they varied between 200 and 300 lire; in the following century bargains struck under 500 lire are rare; the highest price rose to about 1400 lire; in the fifteenth century the current price was more than 800 lire; in 1492 at Venice a young Russian girl was even sold for 87 ducats, that is 2093 lire. In Tuscany, Bongi found that prices varied from 50 to 75 gold crowns; the two highest prices were 85 and 132 gold crowns, and they also were paid for Russian slaves.

The most brilliant period of the slave trade at Genoa and Venice corresponds to the most prosperous time at Kaffa and Tana. But, in 1395, Tamerlane struck a blow at the colony of Tana from which it never recovered; then came the taking of Constantinople by Muhammed II; then this same sultan forbade the Venetians, through the whole extent of his empire, to transport Mussulman slaves; he only permitted Christian slaves to be taken. These various blows caused the ruin of this branch of trade; in 1459, loud complaint was made in the Venetian senate of the increasing rarity of slaves. However, Felix Fabri estimated that, at the end of the fifteenth century, there were still at Venice about three thousand slaves, natives of the north of Africa and of Tatary; he only mentions Slavonian slaves, without giving the number.[h]

THE DECLINE OF VENETIAN COMMERCE

Venetian commerce was at its height in the fifteenth century, and Venice was the undisputed business centre of the world, but not long after this the prosperity of the city began to decline. There was no very sudden change, but a gradual alteration brought about by changed exterior conditions.[a] Other European peoples had become commercial, and naturally ceased to procure from Venice what they could themselves provide. They became rivals to Venice in every market where the natives carried on only a passive commerce. Asiatic merchandise changed its course and no longer flowed into the Adriatic. Finally those arts which contributed to the perfecting of industry progressed among other nations so quickly that the Venetians could not keep pace. After the fifteenth century many causes made the commerce decline pretty rapidly. The first of these causes was the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, and the policy of Sultan Suleiman, who, in 1530, undertook to make all Asiatic merchandise pass by Constantinople, even that coming to Europe by Syria and Egypt. They had succeeded in making the divan understand that there was no advantage in making the merchandise take a long détour, resulting only in augmenting the price without profit to the seller. Direct communication with Egypt and Syria was allowed, but when the Turks were masters of nearly all Greece and the Albanian coasts, they accustomed caravans to arrive there bringing all the divers productions from the East. Then the Venetians, always prompt to seize on this merchandise at its landing point, themselves established at Spalato--which offered a sure and convenient port--a bank, a hospital, and a fair. In the seventeenth century Spalato became a commercial town more abundantly furnished than any Levantine port, being particularly well situated to receive productions from Persia and the Black Sea.

The second cause of decadence was the ill treatment of European merchants by the Turks, who put a stop to the coming of the large Venetian fleets. A third was the discovery of America, and of a way to India by the Cape of Good Hope. A fourth was the ill-directed power of Charles V who, from the beginning of his reign in 1517, doubled the custom-house duties payable by the Venetians in his states, making them 20 per cent. on all goods imported or exported. This was practically a prohibitive tariff. Moreover Charles formally forbade entry to merchants who did not consent to stop direct trading with Africa and to bring into his town of Oran all merchandise they had to sell to the Moors. The new king of Spain wanted to make of this town, where there were already celebrated fairs, a central and general mart for all barbarian commerce. The Venetians would not submit, and had to choose between the commerce of Africa and Spain.

Under the reign of Philip II, son of Charles V, the jealousy of Spanish ministers against Venetian commerce continued to be shown. Many Venetian merchants were annoyed in their undertakings, many of their ships were retained in port or seized in open sea under various pretexts. It became necessary to take marines on board to protect them against this species of piracy. Finally, a fifth cause of the commercial decadence was the loss of the isles of Cyprus and Candia. One is perhaps surprised at the number of reasons which made for the downfall of Venetian commerce, yet we have not taken account of the rivalry of Hanseatic towns, leagued towards the end of the twelfth century. Their ambition was confined to creating a northern commerce, while that of Venice was to retain that of the south; the success of one meant partial failure of the other. The state of navigation was such that it was impossible to make a journey to the Baltic by the Mediterranean and return in one year. That is why the town of Bruges had been chosen as an intermediate mart, where merchandise from north and south could be exchanged.

THE BANK OF VENICE

It remains to say a few words on the Bank of Venice. Its antiquity, which goes back to the twelfth century, that is further than any other known bank, proves the priority of the Venetians in all commercial establishments. This bank was a depot which opened a credit to investors to facilitate payments and bills of exchange; that is, instead of paying real money, cheques could be drawn on the bank. Bills on this bank could be payable at sight, and the bank always justified public confidence. In the early days there had been plenty of private banks, supported entirely by public confidence. These were principally held by nobles. Later on the government profited by suppressing them, in accordance with the law which forbade commerce to aristocrats, and established a sole national bank, placing it under the care of a prince, and taking account of all funds deposited therein. This bank was a depository pure and simple. The banker held no right of retention or commission and paid no interest. In order to insure capitalists paying in, it was necessary that the credit of the bank should be such that notes on the bank should count in business as real money.

This is how it was managed. First there was an office where cheques presented were cashed promptly in coin. By proving themselves able to do this, fewer demands of the kind were made. There were in Venice several kinds of money. The best was chosen for the bank. It was ruled that it would only take or pay ducats of full value, whose quality was finer and alloy less common. It resulted then that drawers of a bill on private bankers had to run the risk of being paid in money of base alloy, whilst the holder of credit on the bank was sure of receiving the best value. This system won bank money a preference over that of current coin and augmented the credit of the establishment.

Little by little the government introduced the custom of making certain payments in bills on the bank instead of in coin. It began by admitting these bills in public depositories without difficulty, and when this usage was established a law regulated that money would be given at the bank for bills of exchange, whether from home or abroad, when these exceeded 300 ducats. It was forbidden to refuse these bills when there was no contrary convention. This was almost giving them a forced value, yet no violence was offered to public confidence. Thus specie was virtually multiplied by making bank bills do duty for it. The value of these bills being rigorously sustained, and their redemption in the best coin assured on demand, this convenient form of currency naturally became popular. As a result, the government found itself in possession of a large mass of funds which it could use for itself without paying interest. It would be very difficult to state the amount deposited in this central commercial bank. It necessarily varied. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century there were 5,000,000 ducats sterling; at the end of that century 14,000,000 or 15,000,000.[g]

FOOTNOTES

[19] Brother or son of Batu, grandson of Jenghiz Khan.