Note 33 — Chapter II · THE EUXINE AND THE BOSPHORUS IN STORY, MYTH AND LEGEND
Reading edition
So paramount from the twelfth to the fifteenth century was the commerce of Genoa and Venice that an Italian writer does not hesitate to declare that, “during four centuries, the Genoese and Venetians were the arbiters of the destinies of Europe; that they alone thronged the trade-routes of Asia and Africa; that they alone controlled the commerce of these continents; that they alone civilized their barbarous inhabitants and dispelled the darkness of the Middle Ages.” Nuova Istoria della Repubblica di Genova, del Suo Commercio e della Sua Letteratura dalle Origini all’ Anno 1797, Vol. I, p. 7 (by Michel-Giuseppe Canale, Florence, 1858).
In marked contrast to this division of the commerce of the world between Genoa and Venice, the Venetian author, Fabio Mutinelli, would claim a mercantile monopoly for his countrymen. “To them alone,” he writes, “are earth and sea equally open; they alone are the channel of all the riches and the furnishers of all the world which poured into their hands all the money which it possessed.” Del Commercio dei Veneziani, p. 126 (Venice, 1835).
For interesting accounts of the Euxine trade routes during the period in question the reader may consult with profit Histoire du Commerce de la Mer Noire (by Elie de la Primaudaie); Le Danube, Chap. II (by C. I. Baicoianu, Paris, 1917); Intercourse Between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome (by H. G. Rawlinson, Cambridge, England, 1916); Travels of Marco Polo, Vol. I, Bk. I, Chap. IX (by Henry Yule, London, 1903). This masterly work is specially valuable for its numerous maps indicating the routes of Marco Polo, as well as those of the elder Polos through Asia. See also Geschichte des Levantehandels im Mittelalter, Vol. II, pp. 76, 78, 158 ff. (by Wilhelm Heyd, Stuttgart, 1879).