Part 1194

"The connection between the two great divisions of European commerce, the northern including the Hansa and the Flemish towns, and the southern the Italian republics and Mediterranean ports, was effected by two chief routes. One was by sea from the Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar, up the coasts of Spain and France to Flanders. This route was used more by the southern, and especially by Venetian, merchants than by the northern traders, for … Venice sent every year a large fleet to Flanders and the English Channel, which fleet would meet at Bruges, the great Hansa depot, the most important merchants of North Europe and the Hansa traders. Bruges was indeed for a long time the central mart in the north for the commercial world, till 1482, when the canal connecting it with the port of Sluys was blocked up. But at Bruges also the maritime trade just mentioned met the overland trade through central Europe, a trade that was very important, and which enriched many a city upon the Rhine and farther south, from Augsburg to Cologne. We must consider this overland route more carefully. The great centre from which it started, or to which it tended, was Venice, where as we know were collected most of the products of the East, coming both via Egypt and via the lands round the Black Sea. … Starting … from Venice, the merchants used to cross the Alps by the Brenner or Julier Passes, and then would make for the Upper Danube or one of its tributaries, and thence get on to the stream of the Rhine. Their object was generally to utilise a natural waterway wherever possible, rather in contrast to the old Roman traders, who preferred the roads. But the roads of the Middle Ages were far inferior to the old Roman highways. One of the first great cities which the mediæval trader passed on this route, coming from Venice, was Augsburg. … Thence he might go down the stream to Regensburg (Ratisbon) and Vienna; or he might go up to Ulm and then make a short land journey till he reached the Rhine, and so right away down that convenient stream. This was perhaps the main route from north to south. But many others converged from central Europe to Italy, and many important cities owed their wealth to the stream of trade. In Karl the Great's time the cities on the great waterway to the East along the Danube became very flourishing; Regensburg, Passau, and Vienna being the most important. From Regensburg there ran north and west two great commercial highways into the interior of Germany, one by way of Nürnberg and Erfurt and the other past Nürnberg to the Rhine. Another route from Regensburg, by river, to Trentschin on the river Waag took its merchants through Galicia into Russia, whither they went as far as Kief, the centre of Russian trade. Along this great waterway of the Danube and its tributaries came the products of the East from Constantinople and the Black Sea. … Another important route was that from the cities of the Rhine, such as Coblenz and Basle, up that river and on to Chur and then by the Julier Pass and the Engadine and the Etschthal to Venice; or again, after passing Chur, through the Septimer Pass and the Bergeller Thal to Genoa. These Rhine cities were very flourishing, from Basle to Cologne. … Like most trading towns in the Middle Ages, the Rhine cities were compelled to form themselves into a confederacy to resist the robbery and extortions of feudal nobles, whose only idea of trade seems to have been that it providentially existed as a source of plunder to themselves. But besides this Confederacy of the Rhine there was another great Confederacy of the Swabian cities, arising from the same causes. … That of the Rhine included ninety cities, and existed in a fully organised form in 1255. {3711} The Swabian Confederacy was formed a little later, about 1300 or 1350, under the leadership of Augsburg, Ulm, and Nürnberg, and was in close political and commercial relations both with Venice and Genoa. … If now we turn from trade routes in Europe itself to those which led to Europe from the East, we find that at the time of which we are now speaking there were three main streams of commerce. In the 12th century the caravan trade in Central Asia had passed along several different paths; but after the Crusades, and the decline of the Eastern empire by the capture of Constantinople (1204), the various tribes of Central Asia, rendered more fanatical and warlike than ever by these military and religious events, caused caravan trading to become very unsafe. The first of the three routes which now remained in the 13th century was from India and the western coasts of Asia, past Basra on the Persian Gulf to Bagdad by water. From Bagdad merchants went, still by water, along the Tigris to the point on that river nearest to Seleucia and Antioch, and so to Orontes, and then to the coast of the Levant. The second route followed the same course as the first till the point of leaving the Tigris, and then proceeded over the Highlands of Asia Minor and Armenia to the port of Trebizond on the Black Sea, where Venetian vessels used to meet Asiatic traders. For both these routes Bagdad formed a very important centre. … The third route from the far East was from India by sea to Aden, then by land across the desert to Chus on the Nile, which took nine days, and then again by water down the Nile to Cairo, a journey of thirteen days. From Cairo there was a canal, 200 miles long, to Alexandria, where again Venetian and Genoese merchants were ready to receive the rich spices, sugar, perfumes, precious stones, gum, oil, cotton, and silk brought from the East."

_H. de B. Gibbins, History of Commerce in Europe, book 2, chapter 5._

COMMERCE: MEDIÆVAL: The English.

"Whilst the Italians were vigorously pursuing their trade in India and Europe, and Spain was renowned for her manufactures; whilst the Hanse merchants were extending their factories, and Portuguese navigators were bent upon maritime discoveries; whilst the Dutch were struggling for independence, and France was planting the seeds of her industries; England was only known as possessing a few articles of commerce of great value. Her wools and her metals were eagerly sought by foreign traders, but she had no ships of her own to carry them abroad. She had many raw materials, but she produced no manufactures for exportation. Nor was her policy respecting foreign trade the most wise. The chief concern of the legislature in those days seemed to be to prevent foreign nations doing with English produce what, after all, the English could not do themselves. Again and again the export of wool was prohibited, or was hindered by prohibitory duties. … The people regarded the introduction of foreigners with the utmost jealousy. They resented their competition, they grudged their profits and their advantages. The guilds would not admit them as members, and it was hard for the poor strangers to establish a footing in England, even although Magna Charta had long before declared that all merchants shall have safety in coming to or going out of England, and in remaining and travelling through it, by land or water, for buying or selling, free from any grievous imposition. Anyhow, whatever the opposition of cities and corporations, the nation was benefited by the foreign merchants. Thankful, indeed, might England have been for the Lombards, who brought hither money and merchandise, banking and insurance; for the Flemings, who, driven by intestine dissension, found refuge on British soil, and became the founders of the woollen manufacture; and for the Huguenots, who brought with them the silk manufacture. … But a new era advanced. The discovery of the American continent by Columbus, and of a maritime route to India by Vasco da Gama, altered the course and character of commerce. Till then trade was essentially inland, thenceforth its most conspicuous triumphs were to be on the ocean. Till then, the Mediterranean was the centre of international trading. From thenceforth the tendency of trade was towards the countries bordering on the Atlantic. … It was not long … before England followed the lead of Spain and Portugal. John Cabot and his sons went in quest of land to North America; Drake went to circumnavigate the globe; Chancellor sailed up the White Sea to Russia; Willoughby went on his ill-fated voyage in search of a north-eastern passage to India; Sir Walter Raleigh explored Virginia; the Merchant Adventurers pushed their adventures to Spain and Portugal; and English ships began to be seen in the Levant. Meanwhile, English trade enlarged its sphere, English bravery at sea became most conspicuous, and English industry advanced apace."

_L. Levi, History of British Commerce, 2d edition, introduction._

"In the 14th century the whole of the external, and much of the internal, trade of the country had been in the hands of foreigners; in the 15th our merchants began to push their way from point to point in the Mediterranean and the Baltic; in the 16th they followed slowly in the wake of other adventurers, or tried to establish themselves in unkindly regions which had attracted no one else. When Elizabeth ascended the throne England appears to have been behind other nations of Western Europe in the very industrial arts and commercial enterprise on which her present reputation is chiefly based."

_W. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, volume 2, page 2._

COMMERCE: MEDIÆVAL: Trade and Piracy.

"It would be wrong to infer from the prevalence of piracy at this period [the 15th century] that commerce must have declined. On the contrary, it was probably the increase of commerce, unaccompanied by the growth of adequate means for its defence, which made the pirate's calling so profitable. Nor was the evil confined to the professional pirate class, if we may use the expression. Even recognised associations of merchants frequently indulged in practices which can only be characterised as piracy. Commerce, in fact, was deeply imbued with the spirit of lawlessness, and in these circumstances it is probable that the depredations of pirates did not excite the same alarm nor discourage trade in the same degree as would be the case in more law-abiding times. In the 15th century the profession of Christianity and extreme respectability were not incompatible with a life of violence and outrage, and it is to be feared that in some cases the Governments which should have repressed pirates by the severest measures, encouraged their depredations. {3712} Certainly they have never enjoyed such immunity from the strong arm of the law as in the 15th century. Outrage and robbery went on unchecked along the coasts and in the track of merchant vessels. No trader was safe even in the rivers and ports of his own country. The pirates burnt and sacked towns as important as Sandwich and Southampton; they carried off not only the goods they could lay their hands on, but men and women, and even children, whom they held to ransom. Unable to look to the Government for protection of life and property while they were engaged in trade, the merchants were thrown upon their own resources to provide security. The best method of grappling with the pirates, and that which was most frequently adopted, was for merchant vessels to sail together in such numbers that they could repel attack; and these voluntary efforts were sometimes aided by the Government. In 1406 Henry IV. granted the merchants 3s. on every cask of wine imported, and certain payments on Staple exports for purposes of defence. Two Admirals were appointed, one for the north and the other for the south, with full jurisdiction in maritime affairs and power to organise naval forces. But this scheme was unsuccessful. A similar expedient was tried in 1453, but abandoned two years afterwards. The only satisfactory remedy would have been a strong navy, but the conditions necessary for this had not yet been realised. The country could not have supported the charge of maintaining a strong naval force. … That merchants were beginning to realise the importance of the subject, and were becoming wealthy enough to build vessels of a considerable size, is evident from the operations of John Taverner, of Kingston-upon-Hull, and the famous William Cannynges of Bristol, the latter of whom is said to have possessed 2,470 tons of shipping and some vessels of 900 tons burthen."

_W. A. S. Hewins, Industry and Commerce (in "Social England," edited by H. D. Traill, chapter 7, volume 2)._

COMMERCE: MEDIÆVAL: The Portuguese, and the finding of the Ocean Way to the Indies.

It was not by accident that the Portuguese rose all at once, in the closing years of the 15th century and the early years of the 16th, to a position in which they controlled and directed the main current of trade between Europe and the Eastern world. The discovery by Vasco da Gama of an ocean route to the Indies, and all the results (hereafter described), which it yielded to his countrymen for the time, were a reward of enterprise which the Portuguese had fully earned. They had worked for it, patiently and resolutely, through almost a hundred years. The undertaking was begun, at about the commencement of the 15th century, by a Portuguese prince who ought to enjoy greater fame than if he had conquered an empire; because his ambition was nobler and the fruits were of higher worth to the world. He was known as "Prince Henry the Navigator," and he was the third son of the Portuguese King John I. who was called the Great, on account of his success in wars with the Castillians and the Moors. But this young son, Prince Henry, was much the greater man of the two. He could not endure the ignorance of his time with regard to the mysterious ocean that stretched westward and southward from the shores of the little country which his father ruled. He was bent on knowing more about it; and he was specially bent on having the Portuguese sailors make their way down the shores of the African continent, to learn where it ended and what track to the farther side might be found. Beyond Cape Nun, at the southern extremity of the modern empire of Morocco, nothing was known of the western coast of Africa when Prince Henry began his work. The Phœnicians and Carthaginians, two thousand years earlier, had probably known more about it; but their knowledge was lost. Prince Henry studied everything that could give him light and became well convinced that round the continent of Africa there was a way to the Indies for bold sailors to find. Then he applied himself, with a zeal which never flagged, to the working out of that achievement. He was a young man when he began, and during more than forty years of his life he devoted his time and his means almost wholly to the fitting out and directing of exploring ships and he fixed his residence upon the most southerly promontory of Portugal, to watch their going and coming. But the art of navigation was so little understood and the navigators were so timid, that slow progress was made. Each explorer only ventured a little farther than the one before him; and so they went feeling their way, league by league, down the African coast. The forty-three years of Prince Henry's endeavors were consumed in reaching what is now the settlement of Sierra Leone, near the head of the gulf of Guinea. But even this added more than a thousand miles of the western coast of Africa to the maps of the 15th century and was a greater advance in geographical knowledge than had been made since Carthage fell. Before he died (A. D. 1460), Prince Henry secured from the Pope (who was supposed to have the giving of all heathen countries) a grant to Portugal of all these discoveries, both island and mainland, and of all which the Portuguese explorers might make in the future, between Europe and India. So he died well content, let us hope, with the work which he had done for his country and for mankind. The enthusiasm for exploration which Prince Henry had awakened in Portugal did not die with him, though his efforts had met with unending opposition and excited very much discontent. Repeated expeditions were still sent down the African coast, and they crept farther and farther toward the goal of desire. At last, in 1486, Bartholomew Diaz, with three ships, actually rounded the Cape of Good Hope without knowing it, and only learned the fact when he turned backward from his voyage, discouraged by storms. Eleven years later, Vasco da Gama set out, fired with fresh determination, by the great discovery of a new world which Columbus had so lately made for Spain, and this time there was no failure. He passed the Cape, sailed up the eastern shores of the African continent to Melinda, in Zanguebar, and thence across the Indian Ocean to Calicut in Hindostan. The ocean route to India was now fully proved; the new era was opened and its grand prize plucked by the Portuguese—thanks to Prince Henry the Navigator.

See, also, PORTUGAL: A. D. 1415-1460 and 1463-1498 (pages 2571-2573).

{3713}

COMMERCE: MODERN: New Routes and New Marts.

There is nothing at all imaginary in the line which is drawn in history across the later years of the 15th and the early years of the 16th century, to mark the beginning of a new era in human affairs. It is a line very real and very distinct, dividing one state of things, known as the mediæval, from another state of things, known as the modern. It was fixed by the occurrence of a series of extraordinary events, which came quickly, one after the other, and which brought about, either singly or together, the most tremendous changes, in many ways, that ever happened to the world in the same space of time. The first of these was the invention of printing, which dates as a practical art from about 1454. The second was the discovery of the new world by Columbus, A. D. 1492. The third was the passage around the Cape of Good Hope by the Portuguese navigator, Vasco da Gama, A. D. 1497. The fourth was the religious reformation set in motion by Martin Luther, at Wittenberg, A. D. 1517. The combined effect of these great events was to make really a new starting point in almost every particular of human history, and to do so very quickly. The commercial changes which resulted are among the most remarkable. No sooner had the route by sea to southern and eastern Asia and the islands of the Indian ocean been found, than almost the whole traffic of Europe with that rich eastern world abandoned its ancient channels and ran into the new one. There were several strong reasons for this. In the first place, it cost less to bring goods by ship from India, Ceylon or China direct to European ports, than to carry them over long distances by land to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean and there ship them to the West. In the second place, by taking its new route, this commerce escaped the Moorish pirates in the Mediterranean, who had long been very troublesome. And, lastly, but not least in importance, the European merchants gained a great advantage in becoming able to deal directly with the East Indians and the Chinese, instead of trading at second hand with them, through Arabs and Mahometan Turks, who controlled the Asiatic and African routes. So the commerce of the Indies, as it was generally called, fled suddenly away from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic; fled away from the Venetians, the Genoese, the Marseillaise, and the Barcelonians; from Constantinople, lately conquered by the Turks; from Antioch and Alexandria; and from many cities of the Hansa League in the north, which had learned the old ways of traffic and were slow to learn anything new. Soon many of the great marts which had been busiest, grew silent and deserted and fell into slow decay. The most enriching commerce of the world was passing to different hands and bringing younger races into the front of history.

COMMERCE: MODERN: The Portuguese in the lead.