Part 2 — CHAPTER IV. Concerning the infallible teaching of the Roman Pontiff: (continued 84)

E. Abbott, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 13.

COMMERCE: Rome.

"Rome, placed like a mightier Mexico in the centre of her mighty lake, was furnished with every luxury and with many of her chief necessaries from beyond the waters; and cities on every coast, nearly similar in latitude and climate, vied in intense rivalry with each other in ministering to her appetite. First in the ranks of commerce was the traffic in corn, which was conducted by large fleets of galleys, sailing from certain havens once a year at stated periods, and pouring their stores into her granaries in their appointed order. Gaul and Spain, Sardinia and Sicily, Africa and Egypt were all wheat-growing countries, and all contributed of their produce, partly as a tax, partly also as an article of commerce, to the sustentation of Rome and Italy. The convoy from Alexandria was looked for with the greatest anxiety, both as the heaviest laden, and as from the length of the voyage the most liable to disaster or detention. The vessels which bore the corn of Egypt were required to hoist their topsails on sighting the promontory of Surrentum, both to distinguish them from others, and to expedite their arrival. These vessels moreover, according to the institution of Augustus, were of more than ordinary size, and they were attended by an escort of war galleys. The importance attached to this convoy was marked by the phrases, 'auspicious' and 'sacred,' applied to it. … A deputation of senators from Rome was directed to await its arrival at the port where it was about to cast anchor, which, from the bad condition of the haven at Ostia, was generally at this period Puteoli in Campania. {3701} As soon as the well-known topsails were seen above the horizon a general holiday was proclaimed, and the population of the country, far and near, streamed with joyous acclamations to the pier, and gazed upon the rich flotilla expanding gaily before them. The vessels engaged in this trade, however numerous, were after all of small burden. The corn-fleets did not indeed form the chief maritime venture of the Alexandrians. The products of India, which had formerly reached Egypt from Arabia, and were supposed indeed in Europe to have come only from the shores of the Erythræan Sea, were now conveyed direct to Cleopatris or Berenice from the mouths of the Indus and the coast of Malabar, and employed an increasing number of vessels, which took advantage of the periodical trade winds both in going and returning. The articles of which they went in quest were for the most part objects of luxury; such as ivory and tortoise shell, fabrics of cotton and silk, both then rare and costly, pearls and diamonds, and more especially gums and spices. The consumption of these latter substances in dress, in cookery, in the service of the temples, and above all at funerals, advanced with the progress of wealth and refinement. The consignments which reached Alexandria from the East were directed to every port on the Mediterranean; but there was no corresponding demand for the produce of the West in India, and these precious freights were for the most part exchanged for gold and silver, of which the drain from Europe to Asia was uninterrupted. The amount of the precious metals thus abstracted from the currency or bullion of the empire, was estimated at 100,000,000 sesterces, or about £800,000 yearly. The reed called papyrus, the growth of which seems to have been almost confined to the banks of the Nile, was in general use as the cheapest and most convenient writing material, and the consumption of it throughout the world, though it never entirely superseded the use of parchment and waxen tablets, must have been immense. It was converted into paper in Egypt, and thence exported in its manufactured state; but this practice was not universal, for we read of a house at Rome which improved on the native process, and produced what Pliny calls an imperial or noble out of a mere plebeian texture. With respect to other articles of general use, it may be remarked that the most important, such as corn, wine, oil, and wool, were the common produce of all the coasts of the Mediterranean, and there was accordingly much less interchange of these staple commodities among the nations of antiquity than with ourselves, whose relations extend through so many zones of temperature. Hence, probably, we hear of none of their great cities becoming the workshops or emporiums of the world for any special article of commerce. The woollens indeed of Miletus and Laodicea, together with other places of Asia Minor, were renowned for their excellence, and may have been transported as articles of luxury to distant parts; but Africa and Spain, Italy and parts of Greece, were also breeders of sheep, and none of these countries depended for this prime necessary on the industry or cupidity of foreigners. The finest qualities of Greek and Asiatic wines were bespoken at Rome, and at every other great seat of luxury. The Chian and Lesbian vintages were among the most celebrated. … Again, while the clothing of the mass of the population was made perhaps mainly from the skins of animals, leather of course could be obtained abundantly in almost every locality. When we remember that the ancients had neither tea, coffee, tobacco, sugar, nor for the most part spirits; that they made little use of glass, and at this period had hardly acquired a taste for fabrics of silk, cotton, or even flax, we shall perceive at a glance how large a portion of the chief articles of our commerce was entirely wanting to theirs. Against this deficiency, however, many objects of great importance are to be set. Though the ruder classes were content with wooden cups and platters fashioned at their own doors, the transport of earthenware of the finer and more precious kinds, and from certain localities, was very considerable. Though the Greeks and Romans generally were without some of our commonest implements of gold and silver, such for instance as watches and forks, it is probable that they indulged even more than we do in personal decoration with rings, seals, and trinkets of a thousand descriptions. … The conveyance of wild animals, chiefly from Africa, for the sports of the amphitheatres of some hundreds of cities throughout the empire, must alone have given occupation to a large fleet of ships and many thousand mariners. Nor were the convoys smaller which were employed to transport marble from the choicest quarries of Greece and Asia to many flourishing cities besides the metropolis. … After due deduction for the more contracted sphere of ancient commerce, and the lesser number of articles, for the extent also to which the necessaries and conveniences of life were manufactured at home in the establishments of wealthy slave owners, we shall still readily believe that the inter-communication of the cities of the Mediterranean, such as Corinth, Rhodes, Ephesus, Cyzicus, Antioch, Tyrus, Alexandria, Cyrene, Athens, Carthage, Tarraco, Narbo and Massilia, Neapolis and Tarentum, Syracuse and Agrigentum, and of all with Rome, must have been a potent instrument in fusing into one family the manifold nations of the empire. … In the eyes of the Orientals and the Greeks, the mistress of lands and continents, the leader of armies, and the builder of roads was regarded as the greatest of all maritime emporiums, and represented in their figurative style as a woman sitting enthroned upon the waves of the Mediterranean. The maritime aspect thus assumed by Rome in the eyes of her subjects beyond the sea, is the more remarkable when we consider how directly her ancient policy and habits were opposed to commercial development. … The landowners of Rome, in the highday of her insolent adolescence, had denounced both commerce and the arts as the business of slaves or freedmen. So late as the year 535 a law had been passed which forbade a senator to possess a vessel of burden, and the traffic which was prohibited to the higher class was degraded in the eyes of the lower. … It was … by following the natural train of circumstances, and by no settled policy of her own, that Rome secured her march across the sea, and joined coast to coast with the indissoluble chain of her dominion. On land, on the contrary, she constructed her military causeways with a fixed and definite purpose. … The population of Gaul crept, we know, slowly up the channel of the rivers, and the native tracks which conveyed their traffic from station to station were guided by these main arteries of their vital system. {3702} But the conquerors struck out at once a complete system of communication for their own purposes, by means of roads cut or built as occasion required, with a settled policy rigidly pursued. These high roads, as we may well call them, for they were raised above the level of the plains and the banks of the rivers, and climbed the loftiest hills, were driven in direct lines from point to point, and were stopped by neither forest nor marsh nor mountain."

C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 39.

COMMERCE: Gaul under the Romans and after the fall of the Empire.

"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. {3703} 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. {3706} 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.

The two peoples who inhabit the region called the Netherlands—a purely Germanic stock in the north (modern Holland) and a mixed but largely Celtic population in the south (modern Belgium)—have had a history so much in common that it cannot well be divided, though they have differed in experiences as widely as in character. The struggle with nature for a foothold in the lowland itself was harder in the north than in the south, and no doubt that is why the Teutonic Frisians led the way in industrial training. It was among them that the arts of weaving and dyeing were cultivated first to a notable excellence. As early as the age of Charlemagne (8-9th centuries), Frisian robes, of white and purple woolen stuffs, are mentioned among the choice gifts which the Emperor sometimes sent to foreign princes, and even to the great caliph, Haroun al Raschid. In the 9th century, Frisian weavers are said to have been persuaded by an enterprising count of Flanders to settle in his dominions, at Ghent, and introduce there a better knowledge of their art. But if the Flemish people borrowed from the Frisians in this matter, they soon outran their teachers and made the loom their own peculiar property. The shuttle, ere long, was in the hands of a very large part of the whole south Netherland or Belgian population, and they became almost a nation of weavers. The same Count Baldwin of Flanders who brought the Frisian weavers into Ghent established annual markets, or fairs, in various towns, which drew merchants from abroad, promoted trade and stimulated manufacturing industries throughout the country. Woolen, linen, and finally silk looms multiplied to a prodigious extent, and the weavers in all these branches acquired remarkable skill. The working of metals was also learned with great aptness, and Flemish cutlery, weapons and armor became very nearly as renowned as those of Milan and Damascus. Tanning was another valuable art which the Flemings and their Netherland neighbors cultivated, and the tilling of the soil was so industriously pursued that flax, hemp, grain and other farm products were raised quite abundantly for sale abroad. In the north Netherlands—the Hollow-land of the sturdy "Free Frisians" and Batavians, who were afterwards called the Dutch—the hard working energy of the people had been pushed in some different directions. The old trade of weaving was still vigorously carried on, in nearly every important town, and Dutch woolens, damask linens, carpets, velvets, etc., were largely produced and widely sought after; but this industry was never so prominent as it became in the Belgian provinces. The fortunes of the Hollanders were founded to a large extent upon their fisheries, and especially the herring fishery, which assumed great importance in their hands after the middle of the 12th century. Before that time, they appear to have been obliged to seek the herring in other waters than their own—along the shores of England, Scotland and Norway. But some change in the movements of those curiously swarming fish, about the time above mentioned, brought great shoals of them to the Dutch coast, and the herring harvest thereafter was a rich source of gain to the Hollanders. {3710} They discovered some secrets of salting or curing the fish which were very much valued, and the Dutch herring were eagerly bought for all parts of Europe. The making of pottery was another industry to which the Dutch applied themselves with success, and particularly at the town of Delft, which gave its name for many centuries to the common earthenware used in western Europe. In dairy farming and skilful horticulture, or gardening, the Hollanders were superior to all other people at an early time. Wherever sea-fisheries are extensive, sailors and ship builders are trained and ocean navigation and commerce are sure, in time, to be prosperously pursued. It was so with the Dutch. Their Frisian ancestors had suffered so much on their coasts from the harassing raids of the Norse pirates, or Vikings, that they did not figure very early in seafaring enterprise. But they fought the free-booters in their stubborn and stout-hearted way and were able at last to make the harbors of their coast tolerably safe. From that time the seaport towns of Holland grew rapidly, and Dutch merchants and merchant ships, trading with the cities of the Baltic, with England and with Flanders and France increased in number. The Hollanders had an advantage in this matter over their Flemish neighbors of the South Netherlands. They were provided with better harbors and they held the outlets of the great rivers in their hands. This latter was the cause of incessant quarrels between the two peoples. The 15th century found the whole Netherlands, both north and south, in a thriving state, so far as industry and trade were concerned, notwithstanding bad government and disorderly times. The people were counted among the richest in Europe. Many great and wealthy cities had grown up, containing large populations and very busy ones. In the north, there were Dordrecht or Dort, Hoorn, Zierikzee, Haarlem, Delft, Leyden, Deventer, Enkhuizen, Middelburg, Nimeguen, Utrecht, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam, which last named city eclipsed them all in the end, though it was one of the latest to rise. In the south there was Ghent, with forty thousand weavers inside its strong walls, who were always as ready to string the bow as to throw the shuttle, and whose hot-tempered revolts against tyranny and wrong are among the most exciting incidents of history. There was Bruges, which became for a time the great emporium of the commerce of northern and southern Europe, but which lost its importance before the 15th century closed. There was Antwerp, which succeeded to the trade of Bruges and rose to unrivalled rank; and there were Lille, Mechlin (or Malines), Courtrai, Ypres, Louvain, and other towns, all centers of flourishing manufactures, chiefly those of the loom.

COMMERCE: MEDIÆVAL. Trade Routes, west and north from the Mediterranean.

"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.

Having found the way to India by sea, the Portuguese were prompt in taking measures to make themselves strong in that part of the world and to control the trade with it. They were helped in this effort by the grant of imagined rights which Prince Henry had obtained from the Pope, long before. But they strengthened the rights which the Pope gave them, by the older fashioned methods of conquest and possession. They began at once to plant themselves firmly at important points in the eastern seas and on the Indian coast. They sent out one of their ablest military men, Francesco d'Almeida, with a strong force of ships and volunteers, and appointed him Viceroy of India. He took possession of several parts of the Malabar coast (the western coast of the southern extremity of Hindostan) and built forts in which garrisons were placed. He similarly established the Portuguese power in Ceylon, took possession of the Maldive Islands and founded trading settlements in Sumatra. The Venetians, who saw that their ancient trade with the East was doomed unless this new rivalry could be crushed, now joined their Mahometan allies of Egypt in a great effort to drive the Portuguese back. A formidable fleet was fitted out on the Red Sea and sent against Almeida. He was unfortunate in his first encounter with these allied enemies and lost the squadron that opposed them. But the resolute viceroy was undaunted. Recalled from his command, he refused to give it up until he had equipped and led another fleet against the navy of the Egyptians and completely destroyed it. The successor of Almeida, as viceroy of India, was a remarkable personage who is known in the annals of his time as "the great Afonso D'Albuquerque." The chronicle of his exploits in Africa and India, compiled by his son from his own letters and records, and entitled "The commentaries of the great Afonso D'Albuquerque," has been translated into English and published by the Hakluyt Society. He was a remarkably energetic commander, and very honest in his way, according to the notions of his time; but he did the work of subjugation and conquest which he was sent to do in a cruel and rapacious style. He was not rapacious on his own account; but he saw no wrong in anything done for the profit of his country. In the course of seven years he spread the Portuguese power so widely and fixed it so firmly on the East Indian coasts and in the neighboring seas that there was hardly an attempt for many years to disturb it. None but Portuguese ships dared enter the Indian ocean without special permits, and the few which received admission were forbidden to trade in spices—the most precious merchandise of the region. From the Indies the Portuguese made their way to the coasts of China and put themselves on friendly terms with its people. They were permitted to occupy the port of Macao and have possessed it ever since. Some years later they discovered the islands of Japan and opened the earliest European commerce with that singular country. So they held for a time the complete mastery of eastern trade and enlarged it to greater bounds than it had ever reached before. But they were satisfied with keeping the sources of the supply of eastern goods to Europe in their own hands. The first handling of the commodities was all that they tried to control. They brought to Lisbon the spices, silks, cotton, pearls, ivory, sugar, aromatic drugs and the like, which their ships and merchants gathered up, and there sold them to other traders, Dutch, English and German for the most part, who found the final markets for them and who enjoyed a good half of the profits of the trade. These latter derived great advantages from the arrangements—much more than they had gained in their trading with Genoa and Venice—and the commerce of Holland and England grew rapidly as the result. {3714} But the glory and prosperity of the Portuguese, as masters of the rich traffic of the eastern world, were not of long duration. Before the 16th century closed, they had lost the footholds of their power and were slipping into the background very fast. By misfortunes and by folly combined, all the fruits of the patient wisdom of Prince Henry, the persevering courage of Vasco da Gama, the bold energy of Almeida, and the restless enterprise of Albuquerque, were torn out of their hands. Almost from the first, a greedy and jealous court had done all that could be done to destroy the grand opportunities in trade which the country had gained. Private enterprise was discouraged; the crown claimed exclusive rights over large parts of the commerce opened up, and these rights were sold, given to favorites and dealt with in many ways that are ruinous to successful trade. Royal jealousy sent three viceroys to divide among them the government of the Portuguese possessions in the East, when there should have been but one, and the same jealousy kept these vice-royalties ever changing. Of course, there was nowhere good government nor thrifty management of trade. In the midst of this bad state of things, the royal family of Portugal died out, in 1580, and Philip II. of Spain set up claims to the crown which he was strong enough to make good. Portugal thus became joined to Spain, for the next sixty years, and was dragged into Philip's wicked war with the Netherlands. Her Spanish masters did what they could to draw her trade away from Lisbon to Cadiz and Seville. The Dutch and English, her former customers and friends, made enemies now by Philip of Spain, pushed their way into the eastern seas, defying the mandates of the Pope, and broke down her supremacy there. When the Portuguese, in 1640, threw off the Spanish yoke and asserted their independence again, calling a prince of the house of Braganza to the throne, there was not much left of their former power or their former trade. They still held Goa, on the western coast of Hindostan, and the Chinese port of Macao—as they do to the present day; and they retained, as they still do, considerable possessions in Africa. But their brief importance in navigation, in colonization and trade, was quite gone and they dropped back to a humble position in the history of the world. Even the management of their home trade with other countries fell mostly, after a time, into the hands of the English, who became their special allies and friends.

COMMERCE: MODERN: The Spaniards.

While the Portuguese were pursuing glory and gain in the track of Vasco da Gama, which led them south and east, the Spaniards were doing the same in the wake of the three little ships which Columbus, with a bolder hand, had steered westward, to strange shores which he never dreamed of finding. These newly opened regions of the globe, in the Atlantic and on both sides of it, were divided between the two nations by the Pope, and it was a bold matter in those days to dispute his right. He gave to the Spaniards all islands and countries found west of a meridian line drawn 27½° west of the island of Ferro, in the Canary group. This nearly corresponds with the meridian 45½° west of Greenwich. To the Portuguese he assigned all discoveries east of it. So they both went on their appointed ways, with pious hearts and untroubled consciences, busily hunting for heathen lands to seize and despoil. But the eastern field, in which the Portuguese did most of their work, was one where commerce was old and where something of Europe and its people was already known. They were forced to look upon trade as the chief object of their pursuit. With the Spaniards the case was different. They found their way to a quarter of the world which Europe had never heard of and came upon people who never saw the faces of white men until then. These strange races of the new world were some of them quite as civilized, in certain respects, as the Spaniards who invaded them, and even more so, it would seem, in their notions of truth and in the refinement of their manners and modes of life. But they were simple and unsuspecting; they were not warlike in disposition and they were rudely and poorly armed. So the mail-clad cavaliers of Spain crushed them into helpless slavery with perfect ease. From the islands of the West Indies, which they discovered and occupied first, the Spaniards had soon made their way to the shores of the two continents of America, North and South. They found cities and nations which astonished them by their splendor and wealth and set them wild with greedy desires. Europe looked poor in comparison with the shining wealth of Mexico and Peru. The Spaniards went mad with the lust of gold. They lost human feeling and common sense in their greediness to grasp the metal treasures of the new world. They were indifferent to the more precious and abounding products that it offered, and neglected to build up the great commerce which might have filled their hands with lasting riches. They made the old fable of the goose which laid golden eggs a piece of real history. They killed the goose; they destroyed their source of wealth in Peru and Mexico by their eager extortions. Of true commerce between the old world and the new there was little while the Spaniards controlled it. They did, in the course of time, ship considerable quantities of sugar, tobacco, hides, logwood, indigo, cochineal, cocoa, cinchona, or Peruvian bark (from which quinine is extracted) and other American products, from their various colonies; but to no such extent as a wise and enterprising people would have done, having the same opportunities. Once a year, or once in two years, a fleet of ships was sent from Seville, at first, and afterwards from Cadiz, to Vera Cruz, for freights from Mexico, and another to Porto Bello, on the Isthmus of Panama, for the South American freights. The ships which made the latter voyage were distinguished from the Mexican fleet by being called the galleons. For a long time, twelve galleons in the one squadron and fifteen ships in the other, making their voyage once a year, and sometimes only every other year, conveyed all the trade that passed between Spain and America; which shows how little the Spaniards drew from their great possessions, except the enormous treasure of silver and gold which a few ships could transport. This glittering treasure formed, in fact, the main cargo of the Peruvian galleons and the Mexican fleet. Before the close of the reign of Philip II. the number of galleons was increased to about forty and that of the fleet to fifty or sixty. {3715} It is quite certain that no country had ever before received such a quantity of gold and silver as came into Spain during the 16th century. Instead of enriching, it ruined the nation. Neither rulers nor people had sense enough to see what a treacherous and delusive kind of wealth it formed, if trusted to alone. They vainly fancied that, with such a store of precious metals to draw upon, they could afford to despise the homely labors by which other people lived. With such mad notions as these, the honest industries of Spain were treated with neglect or worse. Her trade with neighboring countries was looked upon as a business too insignificant for Spaniards to care for or trouble themselves about. It was mostly given over to the Dutch and Flemings, while they remained under Spanish rule, and it was afterwards kept up in great part by smugglers, Dutch and English. Agriculture decayed, and its destruction was helped by the formation of a great aristocratic company of sheep-farmers, called the Mesta, to which such tyrannical rights and privileges were given by the crown that the most fertile parts of Spain were finally turned into sheep-pasture, under its control. The best artisans and the most enterprising merchants of the kingdom were driven out, because they were Moors and Jews, or they were burned for Christian beliefs which the Church did not approve. The Inquisition was so busy, with its racks and its fires, that no other business could thrive. Every kind of production dwindled, and for the supplying of all descriptions of wants the Spaniards were soon driven to look to other countries. The few who laid hands upon the riches coming in from the plunder of America spent it recklessly, in extravagant ways, while costly foreign wars which had no success, and plots in France and England which came to nothing, drained the coffers of the king. And thus the great stream of gold and silver which flowed into Spain from the new world ran out of it quite as fast, until nearly every other country in Europe held more of it than Spain herself. The strong hand with which the Spaniards were able at first, and for some time, to hold the vast domain of sea and land which the Pope had given them and which their own sailors and soldiers had explored and seized, grew weak before the end of a hundred years after the memorable voyage of Columbus was made. The hardy Dutch, driven to revolt and enmity by tyrannical government and by cruel religious persecutions, attacked them everywhere, in the eastern and western world. The English, just beginning to grow ambitious and bold on the ocean, and constantly threatened by the armadas of Spain, did the same. But these were not the only enemies who harassed the Spanish colonies and fleets. In a general way, the whole world went to war with the insolent nation which claimed the lordship of the earth. There came into existence, in the 17th century, a powerful organization of pirates or freebooters, made up of daring men of all nations, who carried on for many years a villainous warfare of their own against the Spaniards at sea and against their American settlements. These Buccaneers, as they were called, gained strongholds in several islands of the West Indies, from which the Spaniards were not able to dislodge them. Under the attacks of all these enemies, combined with her own misgovernment and her contempt and abuse of thrifty industries and fair trade—which no people can neglect without ruin—Spain steadily and rapidly sank.