Note 40 — The Ottoman Turks and the Routes of Oriental Trade

A. Vandal, in his Voyages da Marquis de Nointel (1076-80), Paris, 1900, p. 12, says: ‘La Mer Rouge se ferma totalement vers 1630 et l’Égypte devint une impasse.’ P. Masson, Histoire du Commerce français dans le Levant au XVIIe Siècle, Paris, 1896, pp. i, 386 and 411, refers to the continuance of this trade (as late as 1670), but he finds no mention in the records at Marseilles of the importation of spices from Aleppo and Cairo after 1700. Nevertheless a number of pieces of evidence can be adduced to show that the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf were far from being closed, and that if Indian wares rarely passed through to Europe, this was only because it was not profitable to purchase them at Cairo and the Syrian entrepôts and ship them westward in competition with the Cape route. See, for example, Pierre Belon du Mans, Observations, 1555, pp. 121a, 158b; Travels of P. Teixeira (translated), London, 1852 (Hakluyt Society), pp. 118 ff. et passim (the Venetians bought at Aleppo in 1605, among other wares, cinnamon, cloves, nutmegs, and mace); J. de Thévenot (translated), Travels into the Levant, London, 1686, part i, pp. 152 ff., part ii. pp. 72 ff. F. Vansleb (translated), The Present State of Egypt, London, 1678, pp. 118-27, gives a long list of commodities exchanged between Europe and Egypt, with their prices, and mentions all the ordinary spices as purchasable by Europeans in Egypt in 1673. Hasselquist, writing on the Levant about 1749, describes the caravan trade which was bringing Indian stuffs and spices from Mecca to Egypt, North Africa, and Syria (i. 124 ff.), and the Indian trade by the Red Sea and Persian Gulf into Turkey (ii. 101, 124). Baron de Tott, in his Mémoires, Amsterdam, 1784-5, part iv, pp. 54 ff., found Cairo a great entrepôt between East and West: ‘le choc des ballots marqués à Madras & à Marseille semble fixer un centre à l’univers.’ C. T. Volney in his Voyage en Syrie et en Égypte, published 1783-5 (i. 189 ff., ii. 138 ff.), describes the same trade in some detail. G. A. Olivier in his Voyage dans l’Empire Othoman, l’Égypte, et la Perse, Paris, an XII, iii. 327 ff., iv. 273 ff., finds the same double trade active and flourishing, and he states that after 1498 all the products of the Orient for the use of the Moslems continued to come through Bagdad and Egypt (iv. 430).