Note Back to Main Text — Chapter III · EUROPE AND CATHAY.

The general effect of the Crusades upon Oriental commerce was to increase the amount of traffic through Egypt and Syria. Of this lucrative trade Venice got the lion's share, and while she helped support the short-lived Latin dynasty upon the throne at Constantinople, she monopolized a great part of the business of the Black Sea also. Rivalry between Venice and Genoa. But in 1261 Venice's rival, Genoa, allied herself with the Greek emperor, Michael Palæologus, at Nicæa, placed him upon the Byzantine throne, and again cut off Venice from the trade that came through the Bosphorus. From this time forth the mutual hatred between Venice and Genoa "waxed fiercer than ever; no merchant fleet of either state could go to sea without convoy, and wherever their ships met they fought. It was something like the state of things between Spain and England in the days of Drake."[323] In the one case as in the other, it was a strife for the mastery of the sea and its commerce. Genoa obtained full control of the Euxine, took possession of the Crimea, and thus acquired a monopoly of the trade from central Asia along the northern route. With the fall of Acre in 1291, and the consequent expulsion of Christians from Syria, Venice lost her hold upon the middle route. But with the pope's leave[324] she succeeded in making a series of advantageous commercial treaties with the new Mameluke sovereigns of Egypt, and the dealings between the Red Sea and the Adriatic soon came to be prodigious. The Venetians gained control of part of the Peloponnesus, with many islands of the Ægean and eastern Mediterranean. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries their city was the most splendid and luxurious in all Christendom.