Note 41 — The Ottoman Turks and the Routes of Oriental Trade

Heyd merely states that no gain accrued to the trade of Syria and Egypt from the Turkish conquest (Commerce du Levant, ii. 546). Thorold Rogers (op. cit., iv. 653-7) affirms that before the Portuguese discoveries the Turks ‘appear to have blocked every passage but one’, and that ‘their conquest of Egypt proceeded to block the only remaining road’, It has been shown that they ‘blocked’ no roads, that two (through Syria and Egypt) were out of their power until 1516 and 1517, and that they were actually desirous of keeping these roads open. Rogers finds confirmation of his view in the rise of the prices of oriental wares after 1520. At first sight he might seem justified. By twenty-year periods the price of a dozen pounds of pepper in England in the sixteenth century was 16, 23, 26, and 39 shillings. But the price of a quarter of wheat, by his own figures, was 6, 7-1/2, 13, and 15 shillings for the same periods. The fact is that pepper and other oriental wares rose with the general rise of prices in the sixteenth century, almost certainly caused by the addition to the European stock of gold and silver from the Americas. The evidence of price cannot be said to indicate disturbance from the Turkish conquest of Egypt; indeed it shows singularly little from the doubling of the Cape, which might be presumed to have caused a noticeable fall in prices.