PART II.—MEDIEVAL COMMERCE
CHAPTER V
CONDITIONS ABOUT THE YEAR 1000
30. Political conditions affecting commerce; the modern system of government.—The reader who studies the history of commerce in the medieval period faces a system of government entirely different from that of modern times, which he must understand before he can appreciate the peculiar conditions of commerce then. We can illustrate the modern method of government by taking a country, say France, for an example. We wish to understand the relations of the capital, Paris, to other parts of the country, say the district around Bordeaux, in the southwest corner. An observer of this country will find that Paris and Bordeaux are united by different means of communication and transportation, telegraphs and posts, railroads, highways and canals, which are constantly employed in the service of government. On the path from the province to the capital go the reports of the officials who are in charge of the government of Bordeaux; and, if they fail in their duties, petitions and complaints from private citizens, asking relief, will take the same path. By this path, also, the taxes collected at Bordeaux will stream to the treasury at Paris, to be employed in maintaining the government. Part of these taxes will be expended at Paris, to support the officials who live in the capital, the central army, etc. Part, however, must be used to fulfil the local needs of Bordeaux; and on the road from the capital to the province we shall find money and wares, going as salaries to officials, appropriations for public works and the like. On this road, furthermore, we shall find a stream of messages, sent by the central government to its local subordinates, directing them in their work; these messages will answer the reports of officials and the petitions and complaints of subjects.
31. Impossibility of applying modern methods of government in the period after the fall of Rome.—The system of government, thus roughly outlined, was the system used in the period when Rome was still strong. But when the power of Rome declined it became constantly more difficult to maintain a system of the kind; every obstacle to the free passage of men and wares weakened the hold of the government on its provinces. The roads grew worse, and while they were still passable the danger of traversing them increased, so that the expense of maintaining this government became prohibitive. The reports from officials and the petitions from subjects were delayed or lost; only a small part of the local taxes reached the treasury at the center. The central government, on its side, found that it had no longer the means to pay the bills for salaries and public works in the provinces, and found that its commands were not received there, or were not obeyed, because the government could no longer send officials and troops to force obedience.
32. The feudal system; rise and character.—The time came, finally, when the government had to recognize publicly the change in conditions, and to adopt a system of quite a different kind, known as the feudal system. In substance it told the man who before had been a salaried official that it could no longer pay salaries, and that he must support himself henceforth from the revenues of land which would formerly have gone to it as taxes. It maintained still a nominal superiority, and exacted from the feudal lords who now assumed the responsibility of government certain payments for general public service, occasionally a sum of money and more frequently personal service of a military or judicial kind. Practically, however, the state had split into little pieces; the central government had lost the right even to nominate the successor of an official, and each was succeeded in the duties and profits of government by his son, as though he had been a petty king. It is impossible to state accurately the number of little governments of this kind that existed in the different countries of Europe; in France, in the tenth century, it is supposed to have exceeded 10,000. The character of government varied greatly, of course, according to local conditions, not only in different countries but in different parts of the same country, but it was everywhere extremely low when measured by modern standards. This will be apparent as we survey the conditions under which commerce was carried on in the period known as the Dark Ages.
33. Difficulties and dangers of transportation.—Attempt was made to maintain the roads, which of course are essential to trade by sea as well as by land, by making the proprietors through whose land they ran responsible for their repair. Many of the proprietors managed to escape contribution, and what work was done was largely wasted, through ignorance and lack of proper superintendence. We shall see that even in later periods the roads were bad; in this early time they were so bad that they seem to have been mere tracks, of service to passengers on foot or on horseback, but of little use for wagon traffic.
The merchant suffered even more, however, from bad men than from bad roads. Government was so weak that robbery was common; people were so ignorant of everything outside the narrow sphere of local interests that they suspected every stranger, and too often with reason. There is a whole series of English laws, beginning about 700 and continuing for centuries, of which this is an early example; “If a man come from afar, or a stranger, go out of the highway, and he then neither shout nor blow a horn; he is to be accounted a thief, either to be slain or to be redeemed.”
34. Restrictions imposed to insure security. The market.—The dangers of travel required a merchant to go in company with others, and the danger that a merchant would himself turn robber made it necessary for him to subject himself constantly to public supervision, and to get residents who would act as sureties for his good behavior. In England, even in the eleventh century, the central government thought it necessary to pass a law “that every man above twelve years of age make oath that he will neither be a thief nor cognizant of theft.” Such a general statute would surely be of little use.
Many other statutes of a more specific nature were passed, which may have helped to repress robbery, but which must have hampered trade at the same time. The idea in general was to force a man to make his purchases in public, so that if he appeared at home with new wares he could get witnesses to prove that he came honestly by them. Cattle formed a large part of the personal property in early times, and as these could readily be stolen, many laws were passed restricting the trade in cattle. Other things were included in the restriction, however, as the need of protecting commerce became more apparent. In England, in the tenth century, a man was not allowed to buy or sell any goods above the value of twenty pence, unless he did it within a town where a public official and witnesses could legitimate the bargain. In this practice is found the origin of the market, a medieval institution of which more will be said later. A market was a place appointed by the government, where bargains could properly be made; and only small exchanges of household produce could be made outside it, in the open country. Beginning in the need that was felt to prevent thieving it developed as a public institution, which the people found it profitable to extend as a means of collecting tolls and of regulating internal trade.
35. Society organized to exist with the minimum of commerce; the medieval village.—The striking and important feature in the life of European peoples at this period was not the large amount of commerce carried on, but the small amount. The people were organized on a system which enabled them to support life with the least commerce possible. Instead of being concentrated in towns, they were isolated in little groups, often called manors, one of which would be composed often of less than 100 people, who got their living from the square mile or so of land surrounding them. It is not necessary here to discuss the social and political life of these little groups, though it is proper to remark that often some of the inhabitants were slaves, and many more were only half-free, like the Russian serfs of the nineteenth century.
36. Self-sufficiency of the villages; low stage of the arts of production.—The economic life of these village groups is the side in which we are interested, and the chief point in that was the self-sufficiency of each group. A village tried to produce everything that it wanted, to be free from the uncertainty and expense of trade. We find, then, that almost all the people in a village were agriculturists, and these raised the necessary food supply by methods which were always crude, and were often very cumbersome and wasteful. The stock was of such a poor breed that a grown ox seems to have been little larger than a calf of the present day, and the fleece of a sheep weighed often less than two ounces. Many of the stock had to be killed before winter, as there was no proper fodder to keep them, and those that survived were often so weak in the spring that they had to be dragged to pasture on a sledge. Insufficient stock meant insufficient manure, and though the fields were allowed to lie fallow every third year they were exhausted by constant crops of cereals, and gave a yield of only about six bushels of wheat an acre, of which two had to be retained for seed.
Not only the food but nearly everything else had to be raised where it was to be consumed. Houses were constructed of materials from the forest, clothes were made out of flax and wool from the village fields, furniture and implements were made at home. Nearly every village had a mill, usually run by water, to grind its meal or flour; some villages had a smith or carpenter; few special artisans beside those suggested were to be found in the ordinary manor.
37. Evils resulting from the lack of commerce.—Before we proceed to describe the growth of European commerce from such origins it will be well to stop and consider the results of a system which was based on the lack of commerce. With regard to the main product, food staples, the result was an alternation of waste and want. A good year brought a surplus for which there was no market outside the village, and which could not be worked up inside for lack of manufacturing skill and implements. A bad harvest, on the other hand, meant serious suffering, because there was no opportunity to buy food supplies outside the manor and bring them to it. Nearly every year was marked by a famine in one part or another of a country, and famine was often followed by pestilence. Diseases now almost unknown in the civilized world, like leprosy and ergotism or St. Anthony’s fire, were not infrequent. The food at best was coarse and monotonous; the houses were mere hovels of boughs and mud; the clothes were a few garments of rude stuff. Nothing better could be procured so long as everything had to be produced on the spot and made ready for use by the people themselves. Finally, these people were coarse and ignorant, with little regard for personal cleanliness or for moral laws, and with practically no interests outside the narrow bounds of the little village in which they lived.
38. Exceptional instances of higher organization of industry.—These conditions existed all over western Europe, and may be taken as typical of the period about the year 1000. Though they determined the commerce, or better the lack of commerce, at this time, they were not absolutely universal. Great feudal princes and great monasteries owned each a considerable number of villages or manors, and tried to introduce a more advanced economic system among them. A great lord would have his shoemaker and tailor, his saddler, swordsmith, etc.; and would have a considerable number of women gathered in a sort of factory making clothes. It is noteworthy, however, that the difficulties of transportation were so great that for a long time to come it was not practicable to concentrate the food supplies of a large group of manors in one place, and the owner would have to go to the food instead of having it brought to him. So we read of the kings and princes being always on the road, traveling with court and retinue from one manor to another, eating up the surplus that had accumulated and then moving on.
39. Common wares of commerce in the period of the manor.—Absolute self-sufficiency was impossible; it was the ideal at which the managers of the manor aimed, but there were few manors which could supply all the necessaries of life. The list, however, of articles which had to be procured by commerce with the outside world was small. Salt was one item, of special importance as it was so difficult to keep live stock through the winter, and the animals had to be killed and salted down. Iron was necessary for various implements, though it was so expensive that it was spared in every possible way. Other articles had to be bought as occasion arose, stones for the mill or tar to keep the murrain from sheep. These wares were essential to existence; by channels so obscure that they cannot now be traced they reached the places where they were wanted, and were purchased with part of the manor’s scanty surplus. Cattle and horses formed also, as is natural, common objects of exchange.
40. The slave trade in Europe.—One ware which had long been an object of commerce was of especial importance in the period just after the fall of Rome, and, indeed, for some time later; this was slaves. The slave trade extended over all Europe, and had great markets on the Mediterranean, the North, and the Baltic seas. Merchants drove troops of slaves in chains from one country to another, or exported them in lots of 100 or more. In the slave markets of the Baltic as many as 700 are said to have been put up for sale at once. A number of English laws regulated the slave trade of the time. It seems to have been largely confined to convicts, but a law of Alfred provided that a father should not sell his daughter to servitude among strange people. Later the English laws forbade the trade entirely, but we read of Bristol merchants in the eleventh century who not only bought slaves all over England for export to Ireland, but bred them as well; and the trade persisted in various sections even later.
41. Distant commerce confined to rare luxuries.—Under conditions such as these the term “foreign commerce” in its modern sense is meaningless. The areas which now form the countries of Europe did not specialize in the production of different wares, so that we can trace a regular exchange of products between them. Most of the common wares of commerce circulated inside a restricted area. Only the rich could afford to pay for the transportation of wares over any distance, and they would spend their money only for valuable luxuries. The dignitaries of the church, by reason of their higher culture and connection with a universal organization, created a demand for a few foreign wares, and the governing classes wanted some things which could not be produced at home. Wines and spices were brought up from southern Europe, along the river routes and over the passes of the Alps, and furs were brought down from the North.
Distant sea voyages were still uncommon. An English law of about 900 provided that “if a merchant thrived so that he fared thrice over the wide sea by his own vessel” he might be promoted to a higher social class; and later laws refer to merchant ships again. The Scandinavians have left records of adventurous voyages to the North and West, and a vast number of silver coins found in Russia and the Baltic countries shows that a land trade with southwestern Asia persisted in the period of which we treat. It is only toward the close of this period, however, that we begin to get details about distant commerce, and can see that it is firmly established. The Institutes of London, issued in the eleventh century, and regulating the commerce of the town, mention ships coming from Flanders, from Rouen and other places in France, and from Germany. Foreign merchants bought wool and pigs, and sold wine, furs, spices, gloves, and fish.
42. Character of the merchant in the early Middle Ages.—We know even less of the person of the merchant, in this period (about 1000 A.D.), than of the wares that he carried. It is certain, at any rate, that the merchant was not the specialist that he afterwards became, but was a jack-of-all-trades. He might be wholesaler and retailer, transporter and pedler, and often an artisan too. Nothing like the country store of the present day existed, and trade outside the few centers where markets had been established was carried on by pedlers, who carried their wares on the back or on a pack animal. Every merchant was sure to be something of a soldier, as he was thrown largely on his own resources for self-defence; and he often assumed the garb of a missionary or pilgrim to get the help of the church in carrying on his trade. The pilgrim was exempt from many burdens laid on the ordinary traveler or merchant, and though this exemption had later to be abolished, because it was so frequently abused, it seems to have been of great use in helping commerce through its early stages.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Modern France has, approximately, an area of 200,000 square miles. Calculate the average size of the feudal state about the year 1000, and compare it with the county in which you live.
2. Can you suggest anything in cow-boy life on the plains of the West reminding you of feudal conditions, when the State was weak?
3. What district, known to you, has the least commerce with the outside world?
4. How does the yield of wheat, as given in the text, compare with the yield in different parts of the U. S.? [See Abstract of the United States Census.]
5. Show why the lack of commerce requires small groups of people to produce everything for themselves, and why this self-sufficiency involves a low standard of living.
6. How does commerce remedy the waste and want which are characteristic of self-sufficiency? Why cannot people plan to produce just enough food?
7. Report on the wares and workmen collected on the estates of a great king. [Falkner, Statistical documents of the Middle Ages, Philadelphia, 1896, 10 cents, pp. 2-5.]
8. Name some wares, important in the stock of even the smallest country store, which did not appear in commerce in the period of the manor. Show the necessity of each one of the wares mentioned in the text.
9. Why could a profitable commerce in slaves be carried on when other wares did not pay the merchant?
10. What are the luxuries which a trader now can afford to pack into the uncivilized districts of Africa and America?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
References on the rise and character of feudalism may be found in many manuals of European history; among others Emerton, Introduction, 236; Mediæval Europe, 477; Robinson, Middle Ages, 119. Brief accounts, mainly for the student of political history, may be found in the above, in Adams, European Hist., 185-191; and in the same author’s *Civilization, chap. 9. The best account of the feudal system in English is Seignobos, **Feudal regime, N. Y., Holt, 1903.
Most of the books describing conditions in this period treat them either from the political or the agrarian standpoint; the writer knows nothing, suitable for student’s reading, discussing the origins of commerce at this time. See, therefore, Cunningham, Growth, vol. 1, book 1, or the smaller manuals on English economic history.
CHAPTER VI
TOWN TRADE
43. Significance of towns in the economic organization; decline of the Roman towns.—In the latter part of the Middle Ages, beginning after the year 1000, a striking change took place in the life of Europe; the people advanced so rapidly in their economic and political organization that we can make this a new era in their history. It will be necessary to notice the important changes in detail, but we can summarize them now, from the economic standpoint, by saying that people advanced from the stage of the village or manor to that of the town. A town, as the word will be used here, means a group of at least several hundred, perhaps several thousand people, settled closely together, and maintaining themselves in large part by manufactures and trade. Such towns had existed, as noted above, in the Roman Empire of the West. In Roman Gaul (modern France) there were over one hundred of them. They depended for their existence, however, on the stimulus of Roman culture, and on the security which good government could afford to their trade. A manufacturing class evidently could not eat the wares it made, and needed the chance to exchange them for food products from the country districts if it was to maintain itself. In the period before, during, and after the German invasions the chance for exchange grew steadily less, as we have seen. Some of the towns were entirely destroyed in the period of disorder which followed the fall of the Roman government. London, for instance, which had been a flourishing town under Roman rule, must have become a mere heap of rubbish, for when it was rebuilt in later times no attempt was made to follow the lines of the old streets, and new streets were laid out over the ruins of former houses. When a town was not actually destroyed it ceased to live; the inhabitants had to take to agriculture to support themselves, and the town shrank to a mere village, which could not be distinguished from the manors about it. Of more than 500 modern French cities scarcely 80 can be traced back to the Roman period, and all of these lost their identity as towns and became simple villages in the intervening time.
44. Rise of towns after 1000; conditions determining their location.—We read of towns in Europe before the year 1000 but they scarcely deserve the name; they were rather the germs from which towns were later to spring. Considerable numbers of people would collect in the place where some great feudal lord spent most of his time, or where a monastery had been founded; garrisons would be established at places suitable for military operations. We must regard such groups, however, as supported by taxation rather than by the trade of individuals, from which most urban groups arise. Trade of this kind became, however, so considerable after the year 1000 that real towns grew up in constantly increasing numbers. Their position was determined by two important conditions of existence, political protection and the chance for profitable trade. People found the former by nestling under the walls of some castle or monastery; the many French towns which bear the name of some saint show how much the protection of the church was prized. The latter object was generally attained by founding the town at some break in a line of transportation, where goods had to be transshipped and where merchants would naturally congregate to rest and exchange their wares (cf. Ox-ford, Cam-bridge, etc.). We find the most considerable towns, therefore, along the seacoast and rivers, and at breaks or intersections of the land routes.
45. Development of manufacturing in the towns.—The rise of the towns brought with it, as has been suggested, a new era in manufactures. In the ordinary village it did not pay men to specialize in the production of wares, as the market was so small. A shoemaker, for instance, could not make a living by selling 50 or 100 pairs of shoes a year. If we think, however, of a village growing into a town surrounded by a considerable country population, we see that the market has widened into an area of size sufficient to support a number of specialists. Manufacturing became a profession to which men devoted most of their time. A man could learn his trade much more thoroughly, and could afford to make the tools which would enable him to exercise it most efficiently. The result was an increase in production which enabled the people on a given area to live far more comfortably than they had done before.
46. Effect of the towns in improving the conditions in the country.—This movement was bound to change the conditions of life in the country districts. The people there were freed from the necessity of devoting part of their time to work which they never did well; they could apply most of their energy to agriculture, and could use the surplus crop which they thus obtained, for a profitable exchange with the artisans of the town. The growth of towns affected them in another way. In the purely manorial period a serf could not better his condition by running away; he had nowhere to go except to other manors like the one he had left, where his condition might actually be worse than before. In the towns, however, practically all the population were free; the artisans were numerous and intelligent enough to provide for their own protection, and did not need to subject themselves to a lord. The towns were islands of freedom in a sea of serfdom or of half-freedom. The custom established itself that a serf who could escape from his lord, and who lived a year and a day within the walls of a town, became a free man, and could not be reduced to his former position. Landlords found that they must bid against the attractions of the town if they were to keep the laborers in the country, and agreed to lighten their burdens if they would stay. Many influences worked together, and the results were modified by many factors, especially of a political kind, in various countries, but the upward movement of the country population was general throughout western Europe. Free men produced more than serfs, and this was another influence increasing the surplus of the country districts, and furthering trade thereby.
47. The “foreign” trade of this period was that between towns, even in the same country.—The student who has begun the history of commerce with the notion, as common as it is erroneous, that the foreign trade of a country is more important than its internal trade, and who is impatient to arrive at the description of this foreign trade, will be disappointed to learn that even in the latter part of the Middle Ages it scarcely existed in the modern sense. We mean now by foreign trade that between states—between the United States and Germany, for example. In the manorial period, as has been suggested, foreign trade was rather that which existed between manors. In the period under discussion it was that which existed between towns. The towns existing inside the boundaries of a modern European country did not, it is true, differ as much among themselves, in their products, as they differed, taking them altogether, from the towns of another country. But the expense of transportation restricted most trade still to a comparatively small radius, and the town, rather than the country, was the natural trading unit. The radius of profitable trade, for most articles, was so small that an English town would have its most important commercial relations with the other English towns rather than with the towns of foreign countries. The town, moreover, was the unit for regulating trade. Each town would have its own customs tariff, and to a merchant of London it made little difference whether he traded with Southampton or with Paris; national regulation was less important than municipal. Climatic and historical influences, it is true, made a clearly marked distinction between the great sections of Europe, the North and the South, the East and the West, and we shall have to take up some of these sections in detail; but we shall use our time most effectively by spending it not on the features of trade in the different modern countries considered separately, but on the characteristics of trade common to all the advanced countries.
48. Small size of the medieval towns.—A point deserving special emphasis in the description of the medieval town is this, that though the town comprised practically all the mercantile and manufacturing population of a country, and though it marked a tremendous advance over the village, yet the town was a very small affair when measured by modern standards. In England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the average size of the first class of towns was probably below 5,000 inhabitants; few had more than 10,000 and many had less than 1,000. On the Continent, in the last centuries of the Middle Ages, even celebrated cities like Nuremberg and Strassburg had not over 20,000 inhabitants. Frankfort on the Main had scarcely 10,000, and other cities which played a great part in economic and political history had even less.
49. Rural characteristics of the towns.—Another misconception must be guarded against. Though the town was a distinctly industrial group in comparison with the village, yet each town had grown from a village, and retained many features of its agricultural infancy even to a late period. Most of the townspeople owned some land which they used for garden plots, and every town had considerable amounts of arable and pasture land outside the walls which was used for the benefit of the townspeople if not actually worked by them. In Coblentz, in the thirteenth century, work on the city walls was stopped during harvest by lack of labor, and in London at the same period people were allowed to keep pigs “within their houses,” and the attempt to keep vagrant swine off the streets was a distinct failure.
50. General description of a town.—There were generally a few streets that were broad and straight, as they were the old highways on which the town had grown up. The attempt was made to keep these clear of encroaching houses and shops by sending a horseman through them once a year with a spear held horizontally, and by forcing the removal of obstructions. Most of the streets, however, had grown up from village by-paths and were narrow and crooked. They were rarely paved, and as they served as the repository for all kinds of offal and garbage we can understand why the townspeople wore wooden overshoes when they went out, and even the saints in the pictures were painted with them on. The houses were of wood in the early period, and there were no chimneys, so that fires were frequent and disastrous until they forced people to a better mode of building. Travelers in Europe now remark upon the picturesque beauty of the old houses, and upon the merits of their construction, but it should be noted that most of these relics date from the very end of the Middle Ages and that they were the select few of their time, and give no indication of the character of the average house. Most of the people lived in narrow quarters, dark and drafty, unsuited for good work places and unwholesome as habitations. Wares were exposed for sale either in the open market-places which are so common in European towns, or in little shops like pedlers’ booths at the front of the house. The municipal government spent little or nothing for public works or police protection; it tried to make the inhabitants share in performing all absolutely necessary duties, but succeeded so ill that all the towns were sinks of disease, and breach of the peace was a constant occurrence.
51. Improvement in conditions in the later Middle Ages.—In the early period of the towns, say before 1300, conditions were distinctly worse than they were in the last two centuries of the Middle Ages, when commerce had attained such development that it brought great wealth to some and comparative comfort to many among the city people. The town of Colchester, in England, ranked as one of importance in 1295, but a tax roll of that date shows a striking poverty in the stock in trade assessed for taxation, in the small value of household furniture, in the insignificant amount of most of the assessments, and in the preponderance of rural wealth like live-stock and agricultural produce over other kinds of personal property. In the fourteenth century, however, the population of the town doubled, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the towns of England in general freed themselves from the worst features of medieval squalor, accumulated wealth, and expended large sums in building and improvements.
52. Town organization. The merchant gilds.—Much more might be said about the general characteristics of the medieval town, but the student of the history of commerce must devote most of his time to its economic life. He must prepare himself to accept and understand conditions quite different from those of modern times, and must try to realize how much the world has gained by the advance of the commercial organization from these early stages. In every town the merchants and manufacturers were organized in gilds and subject to strict regulation. The Anglo-Saxon word gild means “a contribution to a common fund,” and came to be applied to the society itself. Societies had existed in the first part of the Middle Ages with social and religious objects, and about the eleventh century, with the springing up of trade, commercial gilds became more and more common. It is supposed that the dangers and difficulties of trade were then so great that merchants united in bands for a journey, as caravans are now formed in the unsettled countries of the East. A collection of early gild rules shows that the members were subject to regulations like the following: Every one was obliged to carry armor, a bow and twelve arrows on penalty of a fine; they must stand by and help each other when they set out for a journey; in case one member had not sold his wares the others must wait one day for him; if one was imprisoned or lost his wares on the road the others must ransom him. The organization was probably temporary at first, and the company of merchants dissolved at the end of the trip; but as such caravans became more regular at any place there grew the tendency to permanence of organization. These merchant gilds were at first also private associations, formed voluntarily by the merchants to protect themselves; but they received public recognition and became a part of the town government as the town saw the advantage it could get from them in pushing its trade and protecting it against the efforts of rivals. They included not only professional merchants, but all who bought and sold, including many artisans. Of the nine members who belonged to the Shrewsbury merchant gild in its earliest period two were fishermen and one was a butcher.
53. Position of the merchant gilds; their privilege of monopoly.—These merchant gilds did not exist in all parts of Europe, and differed much from each other in the various regions where they did exist. In England, which we shall choose to illustrate their operation, they became regular parts of the town government. They were granted one most important privilege, the exclusive right of trading within the town. “Foreigners,” which meant at this period the people from any other town, whether English or not, were allowed to bring their wares to the town and to sell them wholesale, but they were forbidden to purchase wares which the townspeople wanted for themselves, and they were not allowed to keep shops and to sell retail. The gilds were not like modern “trusts,” for, in the first place, their membership was very broad, and, in the second, they were associations of men, not of capital, and there was no division of profits among the members. There was a strong feeling of solidarity among the members, however, and competition between them was discouraged. In some places there was a law that if a gildsman made a bargain for any ware another gildsman had the right to share in it if he gave security that he could pay for the portion he desired.
54. Development of manufactures in the towns; the common handicrafts.—The growth of towns led, as has been said, to a specialization in manufactures which was impossible before. All the industries that had been carried on in villages were continued in towns by professional craftsmen, and new ones were added as the demand for them grew. There were from a dozen to a score of handicrafts which supported for centuries the staple manufacturing groups of the towns: butchers, bakers, brewers, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, coppersmiths, masons, carpenters, cabinet-makers, wheelwrights, skinners or furriers, tanners, shoemakers, saddlers and harness-makers, weavers, dyers, fullers, and tailors. Most of these terms will be familiar to the reader. Coppersmiths took the place of the modern tinsmiths before the introduction of tinned iron. Fullers improved the texture of cloth after it had been woven, by beating and washing it with fuller’s earth, a clay which absorbs the grease from the wool; the cloth loses in length and breadth but gains in body and thickness.
55. The craft gilds.—The craftsmen, like the traders, were organized in gilds, which followed shortly after the rise of merchant gilds. The general reason for their existence was the desire on the part of members of a particular craft to be free to regulate their professional affairs as they pleased, and the willingness on the part of the public authorities to grant them this privilege when it seemed to promise better work and better products for the consumer. To insure efficient regulation the grant of monopoly was necessary, and accordingly no one was allowed to practise a craft who did not belong to the appropriate gild. We shall see that the monopoly was greatly abused in later times and was a serious hindrance to the development of manufacturing. At the start, however, the craft gilds were liberal; they desired a large number of members to increase their political importance, and admitted them freely; inside the gild the class distinctions were at first unimportant. “The regulations drawn up by the crafts aimed at the prevention of fraud, and the observance of certain standards of size and quality in the wares produced. Articles made in violation of these rules were called ‘false,’ just as clipped or counterfeit coin was ‘false money.’ For such ‘false work’ the makers were punished by fines (one half going to the craft, the other half to the town funds), and, upon the third or fourth offence, by expulsion from the trade. Penalties were provided, as far as possible, for every sort of deceitful device; such as putting better wares at the top of a bale than below, moistening groceries so as to make them heavier, selling second-hand furs for new, soldering together broken swords, selling sheep leather for doe leather, and many other like tricks.”
56. Town policy; imports, exports, protection.—Every town felt a community of interests among its inhabitants and a competition with the inhabitants of other towns, which expressed themselves in a town policy very like the national commercial policy of the modern state. We can consider this municipal policy under several different heads.
(1) Every town had what may be called a “revenue tariff,” consisting of duties levied on articles brought within the walls, with additional dues for the use of the market. As an example we can cite a brief extract from one of the London tariffs, giving the customs on victuals. “Every load of poultry that comes upon horse, shall pay three farthings, the franchise excepted.... If a man or woman brings any manner of poultry upon horse, and lets it touch the ground, such person shall pay for stallage three farthings. And if a man carries it upon his back and places it upon the ground, he shall pay one half-penny, of whatever franchise he may be.” It is interesting to note that this custom still survives in some European cities (octroi).
(2) Prohibitions to export goods, now rare in national policy (though suggested recently to keep English coal at home), were common in the town policy, when the supply of necessaries was small. “No butcher, or wife of a butcher, shall sell tallow or lard to a strange person for carrying to the parts beyond sea; by reason of the great dearness and scarcity that has been thereof in the City of late.” “No person shall carry corn or malt out of the City, under penalty of forfeiture.”
(3) The modern idea of protection was applied by the towns in a number of different ways. Bread from one part of London could not be sold in another part, which formed a separate jurisdiction. The protection at this period was attained more commonly, however, by aiming it against persons rather than wares; the merchant always accompanied his wares at this period, so it was easy to discriminate against “foreigners,” by making them pay special dues from which members “of the franchise,” i.e., townspeople, were excepted, and by restricting their chances for profit. Reference has been made above to the monopoly of retail trade reserved to townspeople and designed to protect the “home market.”
57. The market and its regulations.—(4) The market was an institution used in this period to regulate trade for the benefit of the townspeople; the name is applied now especially to meat shops simply because regulations were imposed on butchers after other dealers were freed from them. The townspeople were afraid that traders bringing provisions for sale could impose on their needs and force higher prices by making separate individual bargains. Therefore they required the country people to bring their provisions to a certain place (market-place) at a certain time, that they might have the benefit of competition among sellers; and tried to force the traders to sell out their stock before the close of the market. That all the townspeople might have an equal chance they were forbidden to buy goods on their way to market (“forestalling”); to buy larger amounts than they needed (“engrossing”); and to buy goods for retailing before the ordinary consumers had supplied their needs (“regrating”). After the close of the market the town shop-keepers looked after the needs of retail trade.
Ignorance and distrust were still so powerful in the town period that merchants were subject to constant supervision; they had to employ officials to weigh and measure for them, and could not employ brokers to hunt up customers unless the agents were also officials acting under oath.
58. Attempts to regulate prices. The assize of bread.—The town government went even so far as to set the prices at which wares must be sold. We are familiar, nowadays, with instances of the regulation of prices by public authority, as in the case of hack fares. Such instances, however, are now exceptional, while in the Middle Ages innumerable attempts at public regulation, covering practically all wares, were made at different times and places. Most of them were soon given up, because they defeated their own object; when the price was set too low the ware was no longer offered, and people suffered more by going without than by paying the higher price. Thus it was found unwise to set a price for a necessary like wheat; and high wheat prices were allowed to work their own cure by the inducement they offered to an increase in supply. It was as hopeless to set a fixed price for bread, but the government determined that at least the baker should not make improper profits from the necessities of his customers. It established, therefore, the “assize of bread,” a sliding-scale which fixed the weight or the price of a loaf according to the market price of wheat, and so restricted the power of the baker to raise his charges unduly. The same system was applied to ale, and assizes of this kind have lasted down to the nineteenth century in some countries.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Show what would happen to our modern cities if there were an interruption of commerce, either physical (perhaps the giving out of coal) or political (wars, strikes attended with violence, etc.).
2. Study the effect on a modern city of such a brief interruption as a great blizzard.
3. Find the reasons for the rise and growth of the following: London, York, Paris, St. Omer, Lille, St. Denis, Lyons, Bruges, St. Cloud. [Use a geography and the encyclopedia.]
4. Starting from the statements in the text, that in a manor of 100 inhabitants the only specialists were perhaps miller and smith, try to think of specialists who would appear as the group grew in size to 1,000; to 10,000; to 100,000; to 1,000,000. For example, when would the following appear: watch-maker, artificial limb-maker, shoe-maker, saddler? [The business directory of a city may supply helpful suggestions.]
5. How has the growth of cities in the U. S. affected the agriculture of the surrounding districts and the welfare of the farmers?
6. Compare the size of medieval towns with that of towns and villages familiar to you, and try to realize the conditions if all the larger cities were swept off the map. [See Abstract of the Census of U. S. giving the population of all places having 2,500 or more inhabitants, arranged by States.]
7. (a) Make a list of the ten or fifteen largest towns in modern England. [Statesman’s Year-Book, index, England, cities and towns.] (b) Compare this with a list of towns in early times and discover what large towns are of recent origin. [Cheyney, English towns, pp. 35-39. Beware of the large figures of population, p. 38; they are misleading.]
8. Write a report on the economic and social life of a medieval town. [See M. D. Harris, Life, or the original local customs in Cheyney, English towns, pp. 2-6.]
9. Write a similar report on the merchant gilds. [Harris, Life, chap. 7; Cheyney, English towns, pp. 12-20.]
10. Reviewing the list of trades in the text, try to realize how the people managed in the manorial period, when professional specialists in these trades were lacking.
11. Study the list of craft gilds in York, 1415; find from dictionary and encyclopædia the meaning of each trade mentioned; arrange them in classes, as for example: food, clothing, building utensils, personal service, etc. [Cheyney, English towns, pp. 29-32.]
12. Write a report on the town artisans and the craft gilds. [Harris, Life, chap. 13; Cheyney, English towns, pp. 21-29.]
13. Compare medieval and modern ideas on the regulation of trade. [Farrer, The State in its relation to trade, N. Y., Macmillan, 1902, $1.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gross, Sources, §§ 24a, 72.
General.—For the significance of towns in the development of the industrial organization the student may be referred to two important books, differing in details: Schmoller, Merc. system; Bücher, Indust. evolution. Chapters on the rise of towns and town life will be found in Adams, *Civ.; Emerton, Med. Eur.; Robinson, Middle Ages; Munro, Hist.; etc. Greater emphasis is, of course, laid on the economic (including commercial) aspects of town life in **Ashley and *Cunningham. Jessopp, *Coming, gives a vivid picture of urban and rural life of the period. Mary D. Harris, **Life in an old English town (Coventry), London, 1898 (N. Y., Macmillan, $1.75), should be very useful to student and teacher. Green, **English Towns, is valuable and interesting for the English towns of the fifteenth century.
Sources.—Cheyney, **English towns and gilds, Penn. Translations, Phila., 1895, $.20, gives an excellent selection, which can be used to advantage with advanced students.
CHAPTER VII
LAND TRADE
59. Roads neglected, or left to benevolent associations.—The maintenance of the roads was still left to local authorities. We find in the court records of manors that the people reported stretches of road which were in bad condition, and ordered that they should be repaired under penalty of fine; but a road had to be very bad before it attracted attention, and received little care at best. The clergy were the leaders in maintaining the roads, for their estates were scattered and they felt the need of transportation as none other but merchants did. Pious persons also devoted themselves to this object, as a meritorious work like visiting the sick or caring for the poor; they formed associations to keep roads in repair, and left bequests to allow the work to be carried on after their death. The Alpine hospices, which are so familiar to visitors in Switzerland now, were established by religious orders to help travelers and merchants on their way.
60. Difficulties of transportation by road.—A feudal lawyer distinguished in theory five kinds of roads: the path, the wagon road of eight feet, the road of sixteen feet, the highway of thirty-two feet, and the Roman roads of sixty-four feet. There was nothing in reality to correspond to this distinction. The Roman roads were still in use, but they were too much worn and too few in number to raise the general level of transportation. When an English king wanted to transport provisions to Scotland about 1300, he required four horses, or, in the northern counties, eight oxen to a wagon. Transportation by wagon was so difficult that pack animals were still in general use and travelers nearly always went on horseback, both men and women riding astride, and twenty miles being considered a fair day’s journey. The town of Bristol was granted a county court in 1373 to save the townspeople the journey to Gloucester, “distant thirty miles of road, deep, especially in winter time, and dangerous to passengers.” At the very end of this period (1499) a glover traveling to market at Aylesbury was drowned with his horse in a pit which a miller had dug to get clay from the road. A court acquitted the miller on the ground that he had no malicious intent, and really did not know of any other place where he could get the kind of clay he wanted.
61. Lack of bridges.—Bridges were still rare. Those which the Romans had built fell into ruins; they were rebuilt in wood, or replaced by bridges of boats, by simple ferries, or by mere fords. Complaint was made to the English Parliament in 1376 that nobody was bound to maintain the bridge over the Trent near Nottingham; the bridge was “ruinous,” and “oftentimes have several persons been drowned, as well horsemen, as carts, man and harness”: Parliament refused authority to keep the bridge in repair. A large number of towns had grown up on rivers, as is shown, for instance, by the number of English town names ending in -ford, -bridge, -ferry; and the difficulty and danger of crossing the streams were serious obstacles to trade. Pious and public-spirited people took up the work which the government was still unable to undertake, and devoted their time and money to the construction and repair of bridges; the church assisted by the grant of indulgences (remitting church punishments for sins) to those who contributed. Even now the religious character of some of the European bridges is attested by the chapels built on or near them.
62. Advantages of river transportation.—The difficulties of land transport led to the use of river navigation wherever it was practicable. It is said that the flow of many European rivers was more full in the Middle Ages than it is now, and though the course was apt to be obstructed by mill dams and fish-weirs, and little was done to preserve the channel, merchants could transport by rivers bulky articles which would not have paid for their carriage on land. A single boat, it is estimated, carried as much as 500 pack animals would take, and it often paid to go far out of the shortest way to a market to follow navigable water. It was cheaper, for instance, to bring salt from Lüneburg to Brandenburg by way of Lübeck and Stettin, though the direct land route was of course far shorter.
63. Danger of violence on the road.—The physical difficulties of travel were accompanied by danger of violence of which people nowadays have little conception. The church attempted to secure the safety of merchants, and cooperated with the political authorities in maintaining the “Peace of God,” and in repressing disorder. The feudal system had developed into a more efficient system of government in its later period, and something like the modern state rose from it before the close of the Middle Ages. But in spite of all efforts highway robbery and violence were regular and normal occurrences, even in the more advanced countries. In many parts of Europe merchants still traveled in temporary bands or “caravans,” for better protection, and students going to college in England were encouraged to carry arms on the journey.
64. Complicity of feudal lords in robbery.—The King of France tried in vain, in the thirteenth century, to make feudal lords responsible for crimes committed in their territories. The lords were often accomplices in the crimes; the King himself was not always above suspicion; and even dignitaries of the church or heroes of the crusades turned highway robbers on occasion. An indication of the conditions is given by a complaint of the English House of Commons in 1348. “Whereas it is notoriously known throughout all the shires of England that robbers, thieves, and other malefactors on foot and on horseback, go and ride on the highway through all the land in divers places, committing larcenies and robberies; may it please our lord the king to charge the nobility of the land that none such be maintained by them, privately nor openly; but that they help to arrest and take such bad fellows.” A century before, two merchants from the continent had been robbed in Hampshire; the culprits were arrested, but could not be convicted for a long time; finally more than sixty persons were executed for complicity in this and similar crimes, the number including many men of position, numerous royal officials and some even of the king’s household. Shakespeare’s story of Prince Hal’s exploits on the road may not be true, but it is not at all improbable.
65. Tolls imposed by feudal authorities.—It would be a great mistake to suppose that the merchant’s expense comprised only the sums necessary to transport his goods over bad roads and to protect himself against robbers. In addition every merchant had to pay the feudal tolls: tolls for the repair of a road which was not kept up, and tolls for protection which he had to furnish himself. Feudal lords were everywhere, and every feudal lord tried to make money out of the movement of men and goods. As early as the time of Charlemagne (809) we find the central government attempting to keep the ways of commerce open. Charlemagne forbade the compelling of travelers to use bridges when there were short-cuts, or the building of bridges in dry places to extort passage money from travelers, or the stretching of ropes across streams to force ships to pay for the right of passage with money or wares. The attempt was vain. The power of the central government fell into the hands of local lords, and was exercised by them without regard to any but selfish and local interests.
66. Variety and number of tolls.—The variety of feudal tolls is almost inconceivable. Attempts by scholars to classify them as we should modern fees and taxes are useless, because no principle underlay the system. A French scholar has made a list of seventeen different kinds of tolls, but this is rough and incomplete. We can say in general that tolls were levied everywhere and on everything. Even a jongleur, the equivalent to the modern organ-grinder, could not pass the gates of Paris without making his monkey show off to pay his own way. A man had to pay toll not only when he went over a bridge; he had to pay a toll when he went under it, and could not escape the toll by going around it.
Places at which tolls were levied are marked by a line across the river, or, when many were levied at one place, by lines drawn near the river. The tolls as shown were established at different times down to the seventeenth century, and affected different wares; so that a merchant did not have to pay all of them at any time. The map of the Hudson is inserted as a help in estimating distances.
In the thirteenth century there were on one side of the Rhone four toll-stations on a stretch of little over thirty miles. In the fourteenth century there were 74 tolls on the Loire, from Roanne to Nantes; 12 on the Allier; 10 on the Sarth; 60 on the Rhone and Saone; 70 on the Garonne or on the land-routes between la Reole and Narbonne; 9 on the Seine between the Grand Pont of Paris and the Roche-Guyon. There were 13 toll-stations on the Rhine between Mainz and Cologne. In a few hours’ walk around Nuremberg one passed 10 stations.
The traveler abroad, whose route follows the line of medieval trade, is struck with the number of feudal castles which he passes. He admires the picturesque ruins, perhaps, without realizing that each castle was once a toll station and without reflecting that the Hudson shows a higher stage of civilization than the Rhine.
67. Abuses of the tolls.—The burden of the tolls was aggravated by the fact, already suggested, that the merchant got nothing in return except the right to look out for himself. The merchants were forced to associate to do what the river lords neglected: keep up the tow-paths, drag the river-bed, build warehouses and wharves. The merchant might pay a lord for a safe-conduct which was supposed to assure him protection in a certain territory, and then be robbed by the lord himself.
According to the feudal theory exemption from tolls must be granted in certain cases. Supplies for the army and navy, for the king and higher officials, for churches, hospitals, and monasteries, should pay no toll. Scholars at the universities enjoyed in theory an immunity which they could not secure in fact. The merchant, however, was always regarded as fair prey, and wares of commerce which were supposed to be exempt, as in France, for instance, wares on their way to Lyons fair, enjoyed only partial immunity. A sixteenth-century French writer instances as an example of the oppression of tolls the case of a merchant who shipped to the East some cloth that was wet on the voyage and had to be sent back to Paris to be redyed; all along the road in France the tolls had to be paid over again. The collectors levied toll even on grain that was being taken to mill, on cattle that were to be used as plow animals, on agricultural implements and manure.
68. Development of the toll system.—With the growth of commerce the toll-stations of course increased in value; and the practice grew up of leasing them to contractors, who paid a high sum for the privilege and had to devise, an old author tells us, “ten thousand new and unusual tyrannies, frauds and exactions” to make any profit for themselves. Many kept taverns, and managed to detain the merchant for days on various pretexts, such as absence of the proper official. Some made the merchant pay to be relieved of the necessity of having his wares unpacked and weighed and measured in detail. Many kept the tariff secret, and extorted what they could on every occasion. Some lived far from the highway, and some put their offices by design on impracticable roads, and fined the merchants heavily who went by another route.
On some routes, as along the middle Rhine, Bingen to Coblenz, it was almost impossible for commerce to be carried on except along the river, and very heavy tolls could be levied here without danger of the merchants escaping; but under other conditions the collectors established wings, as they were called, secondary offices on the side-roads to prevent evasion of the toll. Some collectors established regular pools, to use the modern term applied to railroad combination; twenty-five or thirty of them, representing perhaps five or six separate toll-areas, associated and agreed upon their rates; then they pooled and divided their profits.
69. Constraint of trade by tolls.—The establishment of toll-stations put an artificial constraint on trade, which kept it in the paths most convenient for the collectors, not most suitable to the merchants. Lords would not allow new and better roads to be built, for fear that profits on the old roads would be impaired. The compulsion to follow certain routes (German Strassenzwang) became a serious evil as commerce developed and sought new openings; and the loss to the public was far greater than any gain by the toll receiver.
Peculiarly noxious customs clustered around the rights which feudal lords claimed for themselves in the period when the central government was powerless. The right to a wrecked ship, which had once been the prerogative of the king, could be distorted so that the whole cargo of a Regensburg ship was confiscated in 1396 because a single little cask had fallen off into the Danube. It was an accepted rule in Germany that if a wagon broke down so that the axle touched the ground it became a part of the land and belonged to the lord of the territory; break-downs must have been frequent, in view of the wretched condition of the roads, and it has been suggested that lords sought to cause them by traps and pitfalls.
70. Burden of the tolls on trade.—The most evident effect of the tolls was the additional cost of transportation which must be paid, of course, by the consumer. The price of a ware might rise, within a comparatively short distance, so much that it could not be sold at all. It has been estimated that in the fourteenth century the Rhine tolls merely on the stretch between Bingen and Coblenz amounted to two thirds of the value of the wares. Even in the fifteenth century, and after some reform had been effected in the French tolls, the price of goods was doubled by carriage from Nantes to Orleans on the Loire or from Honfleur to Paris on the Seine.
Besides the loss of money there was the loss of time; a merchant might arrive at his destination too late to find a market for his wares, or might find that they had deteriorated on the road. The monks of Beauvais took three pennyworths from each horse load that passed by, and on fast days they spent so much time in selecting their fish that the rest of the load spoiled before it reached Paris.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Make a study of the roads in your own State, noting (a) the extent of good and of bad roads, (b) the effect on transportation, (c) the system under which the roads are maintained, (d) organized attempts at improvement. Study the system of New Jersey and its effects. [Documents aiding in this study may be obtained from the Department of Agriculture, Washington, and probably from the government of your own State—apply to State Librarian for information.]
2. To what extent is river navigation practised in your State? Was it not more important before the introduction of railways?
3. Estimate the distance between the points named in the text, sect. 62, by land and by water.
4. Have we had in the U. S. in recent times any similar dangers of violence in transportation? [Read the history of gold-mining in California, in H. H. Bancroft or other available books.]
5. Robber knights in medieval Germany. [Baring-Gould, Story, chap. 22.]
6. Read the first part of Shakespeare, Henry IV, about the exploits of Prince Hal and Falstaff on the highway.
7. What would be the effect on trade in your State if tolls were levied on the border of every county, or even inside the counties?
8. Using a good map find from the scale of miles the length of one of the stretches mentioned in sect. 66 (for example, Mainz to Cologne), and insert the toll stations; then transfer this, changing the scale if necessary, to some road or railroad entering the place where you live.
9. Modern railroad officials are sometimes called “robber barons.” Assuming the truth of charges made against them, discuss the appropriateness of the term, indicating points of likeness and of difference with respect to medieval nobles.
10. Compare medieval and modern compulsion in the choice of routes. What is alleged to be the attitude of transcontinental railroads to the construction of the Panama Canal?
11. Using the method suggested in sect. 66 apply the statements in sect. 70 to conditions at home, and show how much medieval tolls would add to the present low charges of transportation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
By far the best reference that can be given is Jusserand, **English wayfaring life. If a library containing older books is available much of interest will be found in Smiles, *Lives of the engineers, London, 1862, vol. 1. A good study will be found also in the Economic Review, vol. 7, July, 1897: Alice Law, English towns and roads in the thirteenth century.
CHAPTER VIII
FAIRS
71. Fairs; the reason for their existence.—The foregoing description of medieval commerce will have shown that trade was far less extensive than it is now, and will suggest the reason for one of the characteristic trading institutions of the time—the fairs.
Every person with wares to sell seeks a purchaser who desires those particular wares and who will give him in exchange something that he himself desires. Nowadays, for instance, a farmer brings his country products to the city, seeks out a produce merchant who will give him money for it, makes his purchases at the dry goods store with the money, and returns contented; he has exchanged his surplus for what he lacks. If there is no special store where he can sell his produce he must seek out buyers by going around to the separate houses, and if there is no general store where he can make his purchases he must again hunt up the individuals who make or sell what he desires. Where exchange is still relatively rare it may be a very troublesome process to find the buyers and sellers of particular wares, and the following device has almost always been adopted to meet the difficulty; people who desire to trade agree to meet at a certain time and place, so that there will be every chance that buyer and seller will find each other and secure that coincidence of supply and demand which exchange implies. The current of trade is dammed for a time as it were; then allowed to flow in much greater volume for a little while, then dammed again.
72. Comparison of fairs with markets and modern exchanges.—Even now the old custom of “market days” persists in some places, and once it was universal; townspeople and country people agreed on a certain day, and met in the market-place then to exchange their wares. A fair is the same kind of institution as a market, and grew up for similar reasons, but it represented a further step of development, for it attracted buyers and sellers from a far greater area, and served the needs of wholesale as well as retail trade. The fair is, of course, much less advanced than the modern exchanges (stock and produce), from the fact that it was intermittent instead of being continuous, as well as for other reasons; but in the Middle Ages it was the means by which commerce grew strong, and the prosperity of commerce could be measured by the prosperity of fairs.
The fairs always attracted people for social as well as business purposes; life in the Middle Ages would be regarded as insufferably dull at the present time, and both townspeople and country people enjoyed the excitement which the fair brought with it. There were “side-shows” in plenty, then; wild animals, trained dogs, and monstrosities, poets and musicians, actors and clowns, dancing and gambling halls; and there was a good opportunity to turn a penny dishonestly as well as honestly. The court roll of the English fairs of St. Ives tells us of a defendant who was caught selling a ring of brass for 51⁄2d., saying “that the ring was of the purest gold, and that he and a one-eyed man found it on the last Sunday in the Church of St. Ives, near the Cross.”
73. Privileges of merchants trading at a fair.—The fair ordinarily grew up under the protection of some feudal lord, secular or ecclesiastical, who endeavored in every way to further its growth that he might increase his revenue from the taxes he imposed on it. The lord of a fair endeavored to attract merchants by guaranteeing them protection on their way, and there were many cases in which the lord took up the cause of merchants of his fair who had been robbed or maltreated by others, and forced restitution. Furthermore, he endeavored to secure exemption from tolls for wares on the way to his fair, and sometimes merchants on their way to a fair were freed from the attachment of the person for debt. Inside the fair a freedom of trade was allowed which was unusual at the time, and various special privileges were granted the merchants. The most important of these was a special court in which cases of breach of contract and the like could be tried. It was called the Court of Pie Powder (Pie, French pied, foot; curia pedis pulverizati, court of dusty foot) from the dusty feet of the merchants, or, as some said, because justice was done as speedily as dust would fall from the foot. At any rate this court did give a rough and ready means of settling commercial disputes by referring them to a committee of traders, which was highly prized because commercial law was still in its infancy, and no justice could be looked for in a manorial or a feudal court.
74. Great fairs in Europe. The fairs of Champagne.—It would be possible to give a long list of fairs, for every country of Europe had them in varying number at different times. The oldest was probably that of St. Denis at Paris, which may have been founded (as its patrons alleged) in the seventh century, and which was certainly in active operation long before the time of Charlemagne. In a later period another Paris fair, that of St. Germain, became more important, and later still the fairs in the French province of Champagne became the most flourishing in Europe. The prosperity of these fairs was due in part to their geographical position, which made them a natural trade center and distributing point when commerce on land was more important than that on sea, but still more, apparently, to the good government and wise policy of the Counts of Champagne. The Counts gave sufficient protection both at home and abroad, maintained regular and reasonable dues, and did everything to stimulate the confidence of the merchant class. They got an enviable reputation by their strictness in forcing the proper execution of contracts made at the fairs, and took such precautions to assure the payment of debts contracted there that some merchants (or bankers) went to the fairs simply to loan money.
Most of the traffic of the Champagne fairs went North and South, by way of Flanders and of Italy. Merchants from Normandy ascended the river Oise to its junction with the land route. The route of German merchants is unknown, but most of them probably went by way of Bruges.
75. Trade at the Champagne fairs; other continental fairs.—In the thirteenth century, the period of their greatest prosperity, six fairs were held at different places in Champagne, of which Troyes and Provins, southeast of Paris, were the most important. Each lasted over six weeks, and, following in rotation, they supplied an almost continuous market. Here one might find all the wares which formed the objects of commerce in Europe; textiles of silk, wool, and linen; minor manufactures and jewelry; drugs and spices; raw materials like salt and metals; leather, skins, and furs; foods and drinks, live stock and slaves. The bulk of the trading was done by merchants from various parts of France and Flanders (modern Belgium) and by Italians who came up over the Alpine passes; there were also Germans and Spanish, and, in less number, English, Dutch, and Swiss. Wares came from more distant countries, Scandinavia and the eastern Mediterranean, but changed hands on the way.
The fairs declined as heavier dues were imposed, and especially when Champagne was brought directly under the French king, about 1300; wars diverted the merchants from Champagne to Flanders, and the growth of sea-trade favored this same movement. The Champagne fairs dwindled to insignificance, and their place was taken by the fairs of Bruges and Cologne, of Frankfurt on the Main, Geneva, and Lyons.
76. English fairs.—England was near the circumference of trade in this period, instead of being at the center as it now is, and its commerce was not so highly developed as that of some of the Continental countries. The English fairs, therefore, were of less importance, and in most cases did not attract merchants from distant countries. The largest English fair was Stourbridge Fair held about a mile from Cambridge, in an excellent position for trade with the low countries across the Channel, and for the distribution of goods through the thickly populated districts of England. Another great English fair was that of Winchester, held each year for sixteen days, beginning on August 31st. “The hill-top was quickly covered with streets of wooden shops; in one the merchants from Flanders, in another those of Caen or some other Norman town, in another the merchants from Bristol. Here were placed the goldsmiths in a row, and there the drapers; while around the whole was a wooden palisade with guarded entrance,—precautions which did not always prevent enterprising adventurers from escaping payment of toll by digging a way in for themselves under the wall.... All trade was compulsorily suspended at Winchester, and within a ‘seven-league circuit,’ guards being stationed at outlying posts, on bridges and other places of passage, to see that the monopoly was not infringed. At Southhampton, outside the circuit, nothing was to be sold during the fair-time but victuals, and even the very craftsmen of Winchester were bound to transfer themselves to the hill and there carry on their occupation during the fair. There was a graduated scale of tolls and duties; all merchants of London, Winchester, or Wallingford who entered during the first week were free from entrance tolls; after that date newcomers paid tolls, except the members of the merchant gild of Winchester.”
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Following the reasons given in sect. 71 to explain the rise of fairs, show why they have declined in recent times. What effect will the extension of railroads and the development of trade between Asia and Europe have upon the fairs of Nijni Novgorod?
2. Set down all the points of likeness and of difference, so far as they occur to you, of: market, fair, produce or stock exchange.
3. Study the history of fairs in your own State. Did the “county fair” once have more economic importance than it has now?
4. Does a modern stock-exchange seek to attract customers by offering guarantees of special security, as in the case of fairs? [Study the rules of the exchange, and the pains taken to secure honesty and solvency of members.]
5. Study, on a good map, the advantages of location (transportation by land and water, nearness to advanced commercial people) of the Champagne towns; of their successors in commercial importance.
6. Indicate on a sketch map of England the position of medieval fairs. [See the index of Cunningham or Ashley]
7. Write a report on English fairs in the Middle Ages [same reference.]
8. Write a report on one of the following topics:
(a) The great fairs of Europe. [Horne, Harper’s Magazine, vol. 46, p. 376.]
(b) The fair of Nijni Novgorod. [T. Child, Harper’s Magazine, vol. 79, p. 670.]
(c) Kentucky fairs. [James Lane Allen, Harper’s Magazine, vol. 79, p. 553.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gross, Sources, has no separate section on fairs, but includes a number of books on them, to be found by consulting the index. A bibliography will be found also in the article **Fairs, by John Macdonald, in the Encyc. Brit.; this article can be heartily recommended to teacher and student. For modern fairs see Poole’ s Index of Periodical Lit. Bourne, Romance of trade, devotes chap. 3 to fairs.
CHAPTER IX
SEA TRADE
77. Rise of sea commerce. The Scandinavians.—We might suppose, in view of the difficulties and dangers of travel on land, that the trade of Europe would have been forced to the sea during the feudal period. In the last two centuries of the Middle Ages there was, in fact, a growth of maritime commerce which prepared the way for the great discoveries and the oceanic period of modern commerce. Before this period, however, the means of navigation were still so slight that regular and extended commerce on the sea was the exception rather than the rule.
In Northern Europe the Scandinavians were the leaders in the development of navigation. We get an idea of the ships that they used from one which was discovered a few years ago in a burial mound in southern Norway, where it had been preserved since the ninth century, it is supposed. It is an open boat, clinker built, and fashioned to go in either direction; it is about 75 feet long, and has places for 15 oars on each side, but no arrangement for a sail. Similar boats, with the addition of a rudder and hutch at each end, are still used in the Lofoten Islands. They are well suited to carry passengers along the coast, but have small cargo capacity, and, of course, are unfit for long sea voyages. The Scandinavian Vikings, indeed, used them mainly for raiding and piracy, and in them harried for centuries the coasts of western Europe, with a recklessness which accorded with their warlike character. A chronicle speaks of Danes who were tossed about for nearly a month before they made their landing in England. Along with these war vessels the Scandinavians must have had some cargo-ships, the details of which are unknown to us; a modern writer conceives them to have been clumsy and slow, “tub-shaped, round-bowed, and flat-bottomed.” Sailing ships were certainly used from a very early period.
78. Development of shipping in Northern Europe.—The Bayeux tapestry, which pictures the events of the conquest of England by the Normans in 1066, shows what was substantially the Viking type of vessel to have been used in that expedition; the boats were undecked, and several foundered at anchor before starting. A modern writer thinks that few were over 30 tons in size, and that none carried over 40 or 50 men. About two centuries later the seals of Sandwich and Dover show a ship still undecked, but provided with a rudder working over the side, fighting platforms at bow and stern, and a mast with a crow’s-nest at the top. It is doubtful how far we can trust representations such as these on the tapestry and seal, which were often executed by persons unfamiliar with the object and were sure to be conventional. We can, if we choose, follow the statements in the chronicles, which would make the ships much larger, holding a hundred men or even several hundred; the chronicles are notorious, however, for the constant exaggeration in matters of statistics, and the truth lies probably somewhere in between our two sources of information. Down to the fifteenth century the single mast with the square sail was the usual rig. Some vessels, however, carried two masts, one near the center and one toward the bow, and could spread six sails. For shorter trips and for the coasting trade smaller boats were used, sometimes propelled only by oars.
79. Development of shipping in the Mediterranean.—Navigation developed more rapidly in the Mediterranean, especially after the beginning of the Crusades, than in northern Europe. It is hard to believe the statements according to which the Mediterranean ships carried 1,000 or even 1,500 pilgrims, after all allowance is made for the crowding which would be permitted at this time, but the Mediterranean ships undoubtedly surpassed others in size and equipment. Venice presented to France in 1268 some ships which measured 110 by 40 feet, which were 111⁄2 feet deep in the hold and had a height between decks of 61⁄2 feet. These ships carried a complement of over 100 men, and must have measured 400 or 500 tons, while English ships of the period rarely exceeded 50 or 100. Mediterranean shipping regulations of about this date show advanced ideas concerning the construction, the equipment, and the loading of ships; all ships were inspected and none could sail which did not comply with the regulations.
The ship-builders of the Mediterranean ports retained the type of the classical galley, depending mainly upon oars for its propulsion. The hull was much longer than in the northern type of sailing ships and did not rise far above the water; both characteristics depended on the need of placing the oarsmen where they could work to advantage. The three square sails were a comparatively late improvement on the earlier rig, which consisted ordinarily of one sail; a fair wind was utilized for helping the boat on its course, but the chief reliance was placed on the oars.
80. Backwardness of the art of navigation.—The control of a ship is as important as its construction, if it is to serve commerce, and the growth of maritime commerce in the last centuries of the Middle Ages was due as much to improvements in the art of navigation as to superior ship building. During the early Middle Ages, as in ancient times, ship captains took their lives in their hands when they ventured out of sight of a familiar coast. The only means they had for determining their position at sea was “dead-reckoning,” i.e., estimating the distance that they had traveled from a known point, and the course that they had steered; and to know their course they had to rely upon the stars, which of course were obscured in stormy weather, when their help was most wanted. It was customary, on voyages in the open sea, to sail due north or south to the parallel of the destination, then to turn at right angles and sail due east or west; errors in the course of 8 or even 10 degrees were not uncommon. The means of fixing the course in any weather, the mariner’s compass, which was discovered by the Chinese, and is supposed to have been known to the Arabs at this time, was still unknown in Europe.
81. Introduction of the compass, and of navigators’ directories.—The first documentary evidence of acquaintance with the compass in the West dates from a little before 1200; and within fifty years we find it mentioned in nearly a dozen different places, both in the North and South of Europe. It has been suggested that Mediterranean sailors may have been the first to learn of the compass, from the Arabs, but that they could not use it in its early form of a magnetized needle floated on water by a rush or cork, because of the choppy seas; later the needle was balanced, as at present, on a point. In 1300 the compass was in general use. It is possible to exaggerate its importance as a cause of the great maritime explorations; for without it the Northmen had made their distant expeditions to the North and West, and with it the Portuguese crept along the west coast of Africa only slowly and timidly for a considerable period. As a means to regular navigation, however, it was indispensable; and the great extension of commercial voyages in the last two centuries of the Middle Ages is inconceivable without it. Medieval types of “sailing directions” now came into use; these were manuals telling the sailor about the coast, the tides, the bottom, and other features of the route he was to traverse. One of them, written probably before 1400, covered the whole West of Europe from Spain to the mouth of the Finnish gulf, enabling the mariner who was provided with a compass (used for determining the time of tides) to navigate the coast with a fair degree of safety.
82. Limits of early trading voyages.—Maritime voyages were made to suit the conditions of the time. In the first part of the period under discussion (say before 1300), they were attempted only for short distances and in the part of the year when severe storms were rare. “To sail after Martinmas (November 11) is to tempt God,” writes an old chronicler; and in the early days of the Hanseatic League there was a regulation by which ships were not to sail after November 11, and were to be in port if possible before that time. Some time afterwards an amendment was adopted which allowed ships laden with beer, herrings, or dried cod to sail as late as December 6, because the cargo was perishable or was needed for the Lenten market. The extent of the voyage was at first short. The sailors of Bordeaux would go as far as the coast of Brittany and Normandy; the Normans would go as far as England and Flanders; and so the chain of voyages was kept up.
83. Medieval seaports; contrast with modern.—Vessels were so small that they needed no great depth of water in their harbors, and could ascend rivers for a considerable distance. So the English town of Bawtry, lying on the little river Idle, which flows into the Trent, which flows into the Humber, which flows into the North Sea, was called in an official document “the port of Bawtry”; and the town of York, situated on the river Ouse, another branch of the Humber, claimed the right to share in wrecks at sea, as though it were on the seaboard. Ports of this kind were actually preferred to those on the coast which form the great harbors of modern times, for they gave access to the interior markets without the expense of land transportation, and they offered better security not only against tempests but also against pirates. Towns like Rouen on the Seine, Nantes on the Loire, Bordeaux on the Garonne, Narbonne and Aigues Mortes (“Dead waters”), on lagoons of the Mediterranean coast, were the great French ports of the early period.
84. Decline of medieval seaports in later times.—Occasionally a medieval port would keep its importance later; from the list above we can select Bordeaux, and there are a number of other examples in Europe—London, Antwerp, and Hamburg, for instance. Often, however, the port was superseded by another on the same river but nearer the sea; the trade of Rouen went to Havre; the trade of the Humber river system has gone to Hull; the commerce of Bremen has gone to Bremerhafen. The town of Bruges, in Flanders (modern Belgium), once the most important port in Europe, is situated at a distance of seven miles from the sea, and this might be seven hundred as far as its present oceanic commerce is concerned. Its trade has been taken by seaports giving easy access to large vessels; in the same way the trade of Narbonne and Aigues Mortes has passed to Marseilles.
85. Development of maritime commerce; persistence of medieval ideas.—After about 1300 the distances covered by sea voyages grew much greater. Galleys were sailed and rowed from Venice all the way to Bruges, and met there vessels from the far North and East of Europe; English sailors traded regularly with southern France, Spain, and the Scandinavian countries. The expense of transportation by sea, however, was still great. The price of spices was in Bruges two or three fold what it was in Venice; and English wool transported to Florence sold there for two to twelve times as much as it brought at home. It is hard for us, in modern times, to realize such facts, but the student should note them carefully, for they go far toward explaining the slight development of commerce even in the latter part of the Middle Ages.
The high cost of transportation is itself a fact demanding explanation. Inefficient ship-building and navigation would account for it in large part, but other factors are still to be considered. These distant voyages were carried on in the face not only of real dangers serious enough, but also of far greater dangers imagined by ignorant and credulous men. An English chronicler says that in 1406, when English ships were going to Bordeaux, they entered an unfrequented sea, and four vessels from Lynn were engulfed in a whirlpool which swallowed up the flood and vomited it forth again three times a day. The Arabian Nights have been called sober and realistic in comparison with the ideas held by the medieval mariner of the wonders and dangers of the unknown parts of the world.
86. Piracy.—At sea, as on land, the merchant faced dangers of violence which were probably as serious an obstacle to the growth of commerce as the physical difficulties of navigation. Ships went always armed, and sailed when possible in fleets for better protection. Sometimes one that had ventured out alone could beat off its enemies, as in the case of a trading ship from Stralsund which was attacked in 1391 but won a complete victory, and brought back (it is said) 100 pirates, packed in casks with only the heads sticking out, for a bloody punishment. Pirates came from every source. An ordinary merchantman would turn pirate if it met a weaker vessel from some town which was so far distant or so weak that reprisals need not be feared. A mariner of Winchelsea in England, who had seized and plundered a vessel owned by Dorsetshire merchants, became mayor of Winchelsea a few years later, and in the fifteenth century a Canterbury abbot was convicted of plundering a wine ship and was forced to make restitution. Even ships sent out by the public authorities for protection against pirates attacked and plundered ships not only of other nationalities but of their own too. Six ships which had been organized in 1316 to protect Berwick from freebooters harried the English coast to the south, and the fleet of the Cinque Ports (five towns on the English Channel), used its spare time in preying on English commerce and attacking English towns.
87. Organized piracy; privateering.—Piracy became a regular profession, in which partners organized for greater efficiency. The “Victual Brothers” formed an organization, modeled after that of the Knights Templars, for carrying on piracy; their motto was “God’s friend and all the world’s enemy.” They had a stronghold at Gotland, in the Baltic Sea, and were long a terror to traders and fishermen; their power was broken in 1394 only by a fleet of thirty-five ships sent against them. A fleet of Venetian galleys on their way north were attacked off Lisbon in 1485 by a piratical expedition of six ships, which killed and wounded over four hundred men and took enormous booty; it is said that the discoverer Christopher Columbus was one of the corsairs. War at sea was carried on even more barbarously than war on land. Crews and passengers of captured merchant vessels, whether taken after resistance or not, were frequently tossed overboard, sometimes with their hands tied behind their backs, or were hung to the yards, or murdered on the deck in cold blood.
An appearance of legitimacy was given to the attack on merchant vessels in time of war; “letters of marque” were not considered necessary to justify attacks by private vessels against merchant vessels of the enemy, and as war was the rule rather than the exception in Europe privateering was nearly constant. During the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, in spite of booms and chains, watches and beacons, almost every town on the south coast of England was sacked and burnt by French privateers. Even at London the streets which opened on the river were defended by chains, to hinder a landing within the city, and the people thought of building high stone towers on both sides of the river, with a chain stretched between them, to defend the shipping from night attacks.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Ships and exploits of the Vikings. [Beazley, Prince Henry, chap. 2; C. F. Keary, The Vikings in western Christendom, N. Y., 1891, chaps. 5, 6, 9.]
2. In connection with the small vessels of the early Middle Ages the reader is reminded of the exploits of various “captains” of the present day who cross the ocean alone, and he might profitably hunt up a description of one of the boats employed and compare it with the description in the text. A ton is 100 cubic feet of internal volume.
3. If the reader lives at a trading port he should ascertain the tonnage and rig of the vessels ordinarily employed, and thus prepare himself to understand the conditions of medieval navigation.
4. Compare the medieval galley with the ancient galley described in classical histories. [Beware of pictures given in the text-books; many are pure products of the imagination.]
5. Write a report on the history of the compass. [Encyclopædia Britannica; consult Poole’s Index for articles in recent periodicals.]
6. Measure distances in sect. 82, and apply them to the sea- or lake-coast of the U. S.
7. Indicate on an outline map of Europe the position of the ports named, in sect. 82, using the conventional signs of death (†) and birth (*) to show those that declined and those that gained in importance.
8. Write a report on the credulity of early sailors. [Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor in the Arabian Nights, a popular romance of the Indian trade in the ninth century; Voyages of Sir John de Mandeville, N. Y., Macmillan, 1900, $1.50; Selections in Cassell’s Library, paper, $.10.]
9. What is the difference between a government war-vessel, a privateer, and a pirate? [Dictionary and encyclopedia, or some manual of international law.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Articles and bibliographies by *Clowes in Traill’s Social England; John Fiske, *Discovery of America; Alice Law, Notes on English medieval shipping, in the Economic Review, 1898, vol. 8; Cornewall-Jones, The British merchant service; Lindsay, History, vol. 2.
CHAPTER X
THE LEVANT TRADE
88. Wares of the Levant trade. Slaves.—The “colonial products” of the modern world (tea, coffee, spices, etc.) have familiarized us with a class of wares which cannot be produced at home and are imported from distant countries. In the commerce of medieval Europe there were wares like these which could not be produced near the place where they were to be consumed, because of the severe climate, or the lack of technical skill, and yet which were eagerly desired by the upper classes. These wares were obtained from Asia, and formed the basis for an Oriental trade which was one of the most important branches of medieval commerce. There was one ware of Oriental trade in which there was a reciprocal exchange; this was slaves. Slaves were exported from Europe to the great market at Cairo in Egypt, and were imported from western Asia and Africa. At the very end of the fifteenth century there were said to be 3,000 slaves in the single city of Venice. Most of the wares, however, flowed in only one direction; and to give an idea of the character and importance of the trade we shall preface our narrative of its development by a description of the chief products imported into Europe.
89. Spices.—Among the raw materials a very important place was taken by spices, the product of tropical plants and trees which thrive only in a few parts of the world even now. The food of the common people in the Middle Ages would seem intolerably coarse and monotonous to a modern laborer, on whose table appear regularly products from all parts of the world; and even the diet of the rich needed a great deal of condiment if it was to be palatable. A staple import, then, was pepper, the berry of a vine growing in India and in the islands of Asia, which was used in Europe by all who could afford the luxury of a seasoning. For common use the price was prohibitive. Cloves, from the Molucca Islands, were even more expensive, costing two and three times as much as pepper; they were used for seasoning food and drink, and also as medicine. Cinnamon, nutmegs, and mace served similar purpose, and ginger took a place among medieval luxuries of this kind second only to pepper.
90. Drugs; perfumes; sugar.—Beside the spices which were employed in medicine by medieval apothecaries many wares were imported which served solely or mainly for drugs. Among them were rhubarb, aloes, balsam, borax, gum tragacanth, gum benzoin, cubebs, cardamoms, camphor, etc.
Sugar belongs in this list of wares, on the border-line between medicines and table delicacies. It was far too costly to be an article of common consumption, and the gift of a small piece of loaf sugar implied far more devotion than would be evidenced now by a present of the finest confectionery. It found its main employment in medicine, therefore, and though it was used in increasing quantities for sweetening food and drink and for preserving, native honey was the medium commonly used.
91. Precious stones; preponderance in general of luxuries over articles of general utility.—Another category of wares, which found a ready market among the upper classes of medieval Europe was precious stones. The part of Europe which now produces a considerable quantity of these, the region of the Ural Mountains, was still unexplored; the source of supply in the New World was of course unknown; and Europe looked entirely to Asia and Egypt for its supply. Diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, lapis lazuli, etc., were collected in various parts of the East, passed through innumerable hands, and finally found a resting-place among the jewels of some great lord or lady of the West. Pearls came from the Indian Ocean, and ivory from Africa, through the hands of Asiatic traders. Europe was able to make a return in kind from the Mediterranean coral fisheries; the greater part of European coral was exported to meet the demand in the East, being carried to Egypt by Spanish or Italian ships, and distributed from there to India and China.
The reader who has followed thus far this category of eastern products must be struck by the preponderance in it of costly luxuries over articles of general consumption. The expenses of transportation over great distances and through dangerous districts were, in fact, so great that most of the Eastern wares had necessarily to comprise great value in a small bulk, and sought their market only among the upper classes of Europe, who could afford to pay well to gratify their desires.
92. Dyestuffs; alum.—Among the raw material brought from the East there was only one important class of wares which served manufacturing industries, the dyestuffs. Indigo (Greek, Indikon, Indian) came from the East as its name implies, the chief staple for it being Bagdad. It gives a fast and deep blue and had been imported in Europe even in ancient times; with the revival of commerce after the Crusades it became again an article of commerce, and was used constantly thereafter as a dyestuff, in spite of the attempt to substitute for it the native woad, an herb of the mustard family. Some of the red dyes were produced in Europe, notably madder, mentioned in one of Charlemagne’s laws, and the scarlet or carmine obtained from the kermes insect in Southern France and Spain. Both of these dyes were imported to some extent, however, and another red dye which was an important import was Brazil-wood. The name suggests an American origin, but was given it in fact because its redness made it seem like glowing coals (cf. English brazier), and the South American country received its name later from the tree found growing in it. Brazil-wood was brought to Europe in blocks and was then ground up for use in dyeing and painting. A common yellow dye of the Middle Ages, saffron, was also imported when the best quality was desired, and yellow arsenic (orpiment) was used as a pigment. Lac (shellac) was used for a dye as well as for varnish. More important than any of the separate dyes was alum, which came to be regarded as indispensable for fixing the color when wool or silk had been dyed in the piece. This was procured mainly in Asia Minor, and was one of the most highly prized products of the eastern trade.
93. Other raw materials of industry.—In comparison with the dyes most other raw materials of industry were unimportant as objects of trade. Cotton (Arabic kotn) was imported both in its finished form and as a raw material. The cotton manufacture in Europe had, of course, nothing like its present importance, but it was already well established in Germany, where a staple cloth was made out of a mixture of cotton and flax, and it required more of the raw cotton than the plantations of southern Europe could supply. Small amounts of flax were imported from Egypt, because of the superior quality of the product.
Silk was, however, the only textile material which was a very important ware in its raw form. The culture of the silkworm, which had been carried on for centuries in China, but so far as possible had been kept a secret from other peoples, spread gradually to the West and was introduced into Europe by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century. The Arabians introduced mulberry plantations and the raising of silkworms into Sicily and Spain, and the culture thrived so far as to leave a surplus for export after supplying the home manufactures. Christian peoples, however, did not succeed so well in the culture; France could as yet furnish no appreciable quantity of raw silk, and the output in Italy was unsatisfactory both in respect to quality and quantity. The growing silk manufacture in Europe had therefore to meet its deficiency by trade with the East, getting part of its supply of raw material from China and Persia, but the bulk from the countries about the Caspian Sea.
94. Textile imports; exports from Europe.—Among manufactures imported from the East textiles held the most important place. Europe was strong enough in the manufacture of linen and woolen goods to export them in considerable quantities to Asia, but it lacked in the manufacture of cotton and silk not only raw material but the technical skill to compete with the artisans of the East; and imported large quantities of finished cloth. Dignitaries of the church and the merchant princes of the late Middle Ages demanded for clothing and for furniture fabrics of finer quality and of greater quantity than the looms established by the Mohammedans in Spain and Sicily could supply, and sought them chiefly in the countries bordering the eastern end of the Mediterranean. From this district came a great variety of silks, woven often as brocades with gold or silver threads, and the early types of velvet and satin. Silk goods formed the chief but not the sole constituent of the textile imports; with them came fine cottons from India, cloth made from the hair of camels and other animals, and linen from Egypt and Syria, which surpassed all of western make. Europe depended also on the East for fine china and glass.
Before the end of the Middle Ages the Italian silk manufacture had grown strong enough to turn the tide, and to export to the East. Through the greater part of this period, however, the only European textiles exported to Asia were the woolens and common linens which were produced in England, Flanders, and other of the more advanced countries. Besides these manufactures the main exports consisted of raw materials: wool, hides, metals (gold, silver, and tin), and food stuffs.
95. Revival of Oriental trade about 1000, under the leadership of Italians.—As commerce with the East had lasted throughout the period of Roman rule, and had cultivated tastes among rich Romans and provincials which could only be satisfied by its continuance, we find evidence even in the Dark Ages that it was still carried on. A document dated 716 shows that the rich monastery of Corby in northern France received pepper, cloves, and other spices from southern France; and Marseilles maintained its commercial relations with the East. The trade in this period, however, was carried on almost entirely by Syrians and Jews; the peoples of western Europe had not yet learned to profit by active participation in it, and it had sunk to comparative insignificance. The revival came about the year 1000 with the general awakening of economic life in Europe which had for its most striking feature the growth of towns. As the possibilities for trade became greater, and the demand for luxuries kept pace with them, the eastern trade felt a powerful stimulus, and grew rapidly in importance. It was now carried on mainly by the people who were destined to control it until the great discoveries left them outside the path of progress,—the Italians. A group of towns in the far south of the Italian peninsula, Bari, Trani, Brindisi, and Taranto, took advantage of their nearness to the Levant (the eastern end of the Mediterranean) to establish commercial relations which returned large profits and developed into a considerable trade. Another group of towns near the Bay of Naples, of which Amalfi was the chief, shared in the profits of this trade, and still another town, standing alone near the head of the Adriatic Sea, Venice, began already to assume the commanding position in the Oriental trade which she was destined to make good against all rivals.
96. Routes between Asia and Europe.—The main routes serving as the paths of trade between Asia and Europe during the Middle Ages were three in number. The central route, the oldest and for much of this period the most important, began at the head of the Persian Gulf; after the foundation of Bagdad near the site of ancient Babylon (about 750 A.D.) it found there its first important stopping-place. Thence a caravan route led around and through the desert to Damascus, where it branched off to the coast of ancient Phœnicia in one direction, to Egypt in the other. Aside from partial interruptions this route was used steadily until near the close of the Middle Ages, when it was partially blocked and commerce was forced to the south.
TRADE ROUTES BETWEEN ASIA AND EUROPE
The map shows only the chief lines of trade, omitting side routes for the sake of clearness. See the text, sect. 96, for description of the uses to which the routes were put.
The southern route, reaching Europe through Egypt, was mainly maritime. It had to contend with two great difficulties: the great stretch of open water presented by the Indian Ocean, and the difficulty of navigation in the Red Sea, on the west coast of which strong north winds blow through much of the year. The first of these difficulties became less serious in the Christian era, as navigators learned to time their voyages to suit the monsoons, the winds blowing at regular seasons in the Indian Ocean. Vessels could leave an Egyptian port in July and reach India by the southwest monsoon in little over two months. The second difficulty was obviated by starting for the East not from the Gulf of Suez but from a point part way down the coast (Berenice), reached by a trip on the Nile and by caravan. This route became of greatest importance at the close of the Middle Ages.
The third route, entirely overland, led from India across the mountains to the River Oxus, where it was joined by a caravan route from China. Branching near Bokhara, one part led to the Caspian Sea and up the Volga, another left the Caspian to the north and reached Europe at the Black Sea (Trebizond, Constantinople). This route traversed high mountain passes and long desert stretches, and was suitable only for the carriage of valuable articles of small bulk. For about two centuries after 1250 it was kept open by the Mongols or Tartars, who lived on good terms with the Christians; then it was blocked by the Turks.
97. Character of the crusades; number of crusaders.—To assign to economic motives the chief part in the crusades would be a distortion of the great movement which marked the life of Europe in the two centuries following 1100. Not hope of gain but vague ideals of this life and the life to come drove hundreds of thousands of men to the perilous journey to the Holy Land from which so few returned. Indirectly commerce had its share in this movement; it had drawn the peoples closer together, stimulated curiosity and broadened interests. Men sought an outlet for their surplus energy, and a relief from the monotony of medieval life; ascetic ideals imposed upon them holy tasks which they could fulfil to the benefit of their souls. The effect can be traced in an increase in the pilgrimages of individuals to holy places. The people of Europe needed only organization and a leader to unite their scattered forces; they found their organization in the church, their leader in the Pope and his delegates, their goal in the delivery of the Holy Sepulcher from the hands of the infidels who were abusing Christian pilgrims.
Any estimate of the numbers who engaged in the crusades must be pure guesswork. The statistics of medieval chronicles, always notoriously inaccurate, seem to reach the acme of unreliability in the figures of the crusaders engaged in the different expeditions. The main body of the first crusade, which started in 1095, was compared in number with the sands of the seashore or the stars in heaven; even moderate contemporaries made it 600,000 or at least 300,000 strong; perhaps it was really 100,000. There were six or eight separate expeditions lasting down to 1270, and we may say that a million men, roughly speaking, and probably many less rather than more, took part.
98. Commercial aspect of the crusades.—Even the transportation of this number of men, with their baggage and equipment, must have been a great stimulus to the growth of Mediterranean shipping. The first crusade went almost entirely by land, but the sufferings and losses were so great that crusaders were driven to the sea route, and this became gradually the regular way of reaching the Holy Land. Italian merchants accompanied the expedition from the beginning, not as real crusaders but as contractors for transportation and supplies, turning both the needs and the successes of the crusaders to their commercial profit. A fleet from Genoa and Pisa accompanied the first crusade along the coast of Syria, selling provisions. The Venetians waited until Jerusalem had been taken; then fitted out a fleet which fought the Pisans, quarreled with the Greeks, and in return for very slight services rendered to the crusaders demanded that in every city captured they should have a market, church, and freedom from taxes. “Whilst the warriors of Christendom were fighting for glory, for kingdoms, or for the tomb of Christ, the merchants of Venice fought for counting-houses, stores, or commercial privileges.” “The other crusaders obeyed the new impulse, the Venetians utilized it.”
The fourth crusade, starting soon after 1200, was fairly captured by the Venetians and turned into a commercial expedition for their profit. When the time for starting came, the feudal knights, improvident as ever, could not pay the sum agreed on for their transportation, and Venice used her power over them as debtors to force them to aid her, first to capture Zara on the Adriatic, a Christian city but a commercial rival, then to take Constantinople itself, the key to the trade of the Black Sea. The crusade accomplished nothing against the infidels; it was merely a means by which Venice built up her commercial and colonial empire at the expense of other Christians.
99. Effect of the crusades on knowledge of the East and of eastern wares.—Aside from the help which the crusades gave the Italians in building up their fleets and in establishing trading posts or colonies in the East, they were of no less importance in extending the market for eastern wares in Europe. The crusaders lost their provincialism, and acquired new fashions (shaving the beard and bathing); they became acquainted with fine stuffs and dyes and were no longer satisfied with the coarse products of home. The European vocabulary was not large enough to give names to the new acquisitions, and we can trace back to this period many words which were borrowed from Arabic, the common language of the Mohammedans: alcove, sofa, mattress, talisman, elixir; many of commercial significance, bazar, tariff, corvette, barracks. Not only the words but the things themselves became native in many cases; the crusades spread in Europe the cultivation of the lemon, apricot, watermelon, rice, and sugar cane. European literature described the marvels of the Orient, the silks of Syria, the tapestries of Persia, the precious stones and perfumes of Arabia; the names of eastern countries became familiar and knowledge of geography widened rapidly.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Selecting any one among the more important wares, sects. 88-94, write a report on its production, uses, value, and history as an article of commerce. [Encyclopedia; commercial geographies; encyclopedias of commerce and of manufactures, as those by McCulloch, Waterston, Homans, Ure.]
2. Taking British India as a characteristic source for the Eastern wares, contrast the exports then and now. [Statesman’s Year-Book, index, India, exports.]
3. What seaports of those named in sect. 95 are still of importance? [Statesman’s Year-Book, index, Italy, shipping.]
4. What evidences have the other ports left of their former greatness? [Encyc.; *Baedeker’s guide-books.]
5. Which one of the three routes, sect. 96, is now the most important?
6. What railways have been constructed or proposed along the line of ancient routes? [See a good atlas, and note the proposed railway from Asia Minor through the Mesopotamian valley to the Persian gulf. What effect may this railway have on the importance of Constantinople?]
7. Read a description of one of the ancient centers of trade in modern times. [Consult books by modern travelers in south-western Asia.]
8. Where now can be found pilgrimages like those of the Christians to Jerusalem? What is their commercial influence? [See Mecca in the encyclopedia; and in Poole’s Index.]
9. How does the average number of crusaders going per year to Palestine compare with the number of Americans going abroad?
10. Prepare, from descriptions in the current history manuals or from a historical atlas (Droysen’s, for example), a map showing the route of each crusade; number each route that the development of the sea-route may be more apparent.
11. Show the development of Venice in the period of the crusades, by comparing her commerce and power at the two dates limiting the period. [References in next chapter.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aside from the current manuals of the history of commerce very little has appeared in English on the routes and wares of the Levant trade. Lincoln Hutchinson, *Oriental trade and the rise of the Lombard Communes, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1901-2, 16: 413-432 (esp. 415-421), can be recommended; and Cheyney, **Eur. background, has two excellent chapters on the subject (Levant wares in chap. 1; routes in chap. 2).
The reader will have to rely largely on accounts of the crusades, in which there are incidental references to commerce: Adams, *Civ.; Robinson (* bibliography); Emerton, Med. Eur. (bibliog.); etc.
CHAPTER XI
COMMERCE OF SOUTHERN EUROPE
100. Position of Venice; early history.—The course of the eastern trade can best be followed in connection with the fortunes of the city of Venice which still shows, in the splendid palaces lining its canals, the evidence of its former greatness.
The beginnings of the city are traced back to the period of barbarian invasions when fugitives from the mainland sought shelter on the islands a short distance from shore. The inhabitants, thus protected from the unending wars of the feudal period, were at the same time forced to seek their living on the sea, first as fishermen but more and more as merchants. The Italian conquests of the Emperor Justinian (about 500 A.D.), brought them into relations with Constantinople which were maintained by trade and frequent embassies. Even before the year 1000 the Venetians had won a secure position in Constantinople by an imperial charter which granted them, among other privileges, freedom from the vexatious tolls and delays imposed by subordinate customs officers. Still more important was a charter of 1082, which granted lands and buildings in Constantinople for a special Venetian quarter, which freed the Venetians from all taxes and at the same time required their trade rivals, the Amalfitani, to pay taxes to them for the right to trade.
101. Expansion of Venetian empire during the crusades.—Before the crusades, therefore, Venice had a commanding position in the eastern trade. It confirmed this position by a series of bitter struggles with its rivals, especially the cities of Genoa and Pisa which were rising to great prominence. These cities imperiled for a time Venetian control of the Black Sea trade at Constantinople; but the outcome of the fourth crusade (1204), was a victory for Venice which left her supremacy for the time unquestioned.
THE VENETIAN EMPIRE
In the share taken by them in the partition of the Eastern Empire the Venetians showed that common sense which is always found at the bottom of all their actions. They left to the crusaders the inland provinces and took for themselves the coast-towns and islands which promised the best commercial returns and were easiest to defend. In Constantinople itself they took a large part of the city, in which their podestat ruled almost as an independent sovereign. At places commanding the all-important sea route to the East, in the Peloponnesus or Morea, in Crete and in Eubœa, naval stations were established under the control of officers sent out by the home government. The strict rules by which these officers were governed gives an insight into the discipline which existed in the Venetian foreign service. In every place in which the Venetians founded a principality their capital was surrounded by Italian colonies; there where one found formerly only nests of pirates, the terror of Venetian commerce, one found now friendly ports, refuges fortified and secure, where Venetian captains and merchants, certain of a good reception, could ask asylum and protection.
102. Extent of Venetian commerce.—Thanks to the colonial empire which they established the Venetians controlled the trade of the eastern Mediterranean more efficiently than Great Britain has controlled the world commerce of the nineteenth century; the field of operations was narrower, and “trade followed the flag” in those early times as it has never done since. Foreigners might trade if they would pay sufficiently for the privilege; without this recognition of their inferiority they were public enemies to be given short shrift.
Venice established her colonies or trading factories not only along the shore of the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea; Venetian merchants penetrated deep into Russia, and into Central Asia through the Crimea. So bold were their enterprises that the home government, fearful for its interests, passed a law to limit their extent. “Dalmatia, Albania, Romania, Greece, Trebizond, Syria, Armenia, Egypt, Cyprus, Candia, Apulia, Sicily and other countries, kingdoms and islands were the fruitful gardens, the proud castles of our people, where they found again profit, pleasure, security.” The old chronicler names but one side of the equation of trade; the products from all these countries and from the far East behind them were brought to Venice to be exchanged for the products of the West. Martino da Canale says of an earlier period what must at any rate have been true of his own (thirteenth century): “The Venetians went about the sea here and there, and across the sea and in all places, and bought merchandise and brought it to Venice from every side. Then there came to Venice Germans and Bavarians, French and Lombards, Tuscans and Hungarians, and every people that lives by merchandise, and they took it to their countries.”
103. Development of the institutions of commerce in Venice.—Reference has been made in an earlier chapter to the Venetian regulations on the building, rigging, and manning of ships, which anticipated by many centuries similar legislation in the countries of northern Europe. The extent of her commercial relations led Venice to a development of book-keeping and banking which made her in these important branches the instructor of Europe, to whom the sons of wealthy merchants in other countries were sent to school. The reader will appreciate how great is the debt of other countries to Italy when he reflects on the number of Italian words having to do with commerce and banking which have become current in general commercial use; among them are conto, conto corrente, porto, risico, disconto, brutto, netto, deposito, folio, bilanza, etc.
104. Venetian commercial policy.—The Venetian commercial policy may be described briefly as the maintenance of as strict a monopoly as possible in the trade east of Italy, and the regulation of trade between Venice and the North or West which would give the Venetians the greatest advantage when they sold their Oriental wares to other Europeans. This policy, as well as the material character of the commerce, can be studied in connection with the two great branches of Venetian trade in Europe, the overland commerce with Germany, and the sea commerce with northwestern Europe.
TRADE ROUTES BETWEEN GERMANY AND ITALY
The different routes varied in importance at different periods, and some routes were used besides those indicated on the map. The Brenner Pass was always of great importance to Venetian trade; the St. Gothard Pass was not opened until the thirteenth century.
105. Overland trade with Germany.—As the Venetians were essentially a sea-faring people, and as it was easier to reach the large cities of central and southern Germany by land than by sea, they took the passive part in their German trade, staying at home and allowing the Germans to come to them for wares. The trip overland from central Germany took roughly two weeks or a little less; trade letters of the fifteenth century were a month or more on the way between Venice and Bruges. Different routes were chosen according to the starting-point of the journey. The chief route was that leading over the Brenner, one of the lowest of the great Alpine passes, lying between Augsburg in Germany and Verona in Italy; but very often the merchant struck off to the East before reaching Verona into the valley of the Drave or the Brenta. Coming from the East, from Vienna, for instance, the Semmering pass was commonly chosen.
106. Strict control over German merchants in Venice.—On reaching Venice the merchant was put at once under strict supervision. He could not choose his own lodgings, but must stay at the “Fondaco dei Tedeschi” (German factory, using that word in its earlier sense of a trading post). This was a building (in its later form a handsome palace now used as a government office) which belonged to the city, and which served at once as a hotel, a warehouse, and an office for controlling the trade. When a merchant arrived he was disarmed and given a room; a careful list was made of all his wares, which served as a basis for the government dues; and an inspector was assigned to him. This inspector acted as an interpreter and as a broker, helping the merchant make his bargains, but it would be a great mistake to suppose that he was appointed mainly to serve the merchant’s convenience; his main business was to “shadow” the merchant constantly, to see that he broke none of the numerous regulations designed to assure to the government its dues and to the Venetian people their profits. Germans could bring to Venice only the wares of their own country and of northeastern Europe, because the Venetians wanted to carry on themselves the trade with Flanders; Germans could trade with no other foreigners in Venice, and could not trade even among themselves, in order that the Venetians might have the sole market; they must sell out their whole stock in Venice, without the option of withdrawing part of it and carrying it further. One is tempted to ask why the Germans came to Venice at all, to submit to such severe restrictions. The answer is easy; they had no other place to go to, for the wares they wanted. Thanks to her position and to her skill in trade and war Venice had a monopoly of Oriental wares which enabled her for some time to make what regulations she pleased without fear of losing her customers.
107. Importance of the trade between Venice and Germany.—The German trade in Venice amounted, according to an estimate of the fifteenth century, to a million ducats a year, and the ducat of this period was worth considerably more than the modern dollar. It supplied Germany with the coveted eastern wares which we have already enumerated, and, moreover, with some of the products of Venetian manufactures, which were then highly developed and which were stimulated by protective tariffs. These manufactures included glass, which is even now a specialty of the city, fine textiles, weapons, paper, etc. The Venetian trade, on the other hand, furnished to Germany a market for her metals (gold, silver, iron, copper, lead, tin), furs, twine, rosaries, and manufactures of leather and horn, and the coarser textiles.
108. Commerce by sea with northwestern Europe.—With the countries west of Germany Venice carried on an “active” commerce; that is, instead of waiting for foreigners to come to her she brought the wares to them, as she could well do by the sea route. The crusade of 1204, to which we have already referred as a turning-point in Venetian development, was composed in large part of knights from northwestern Europe, and the relations established then with Flanders, Champagne, and neighboring districts, were continued by trade. The first reference to Venice discovered in English documents is dated 1201, but before the close of the thirteenth century a brisk commerce with England had grown up; at one time in the reign of Edward I over 2,000 sacks of wool were found in the possession of Italian trading companies. The trade followed at first the land route across France, but soon took to the sea, and though the land traffic was never wholly abandoned it became less important and was discouraged by special dues.
109. Regulation of this commerce; the Flanders galleys.—Soon after 1300 the government took charge of this trade and regulated it on principles which were followed for the two hundred years during which it remained important. Separate voyages were, as a rule, prevented, and Venetian merchants who wished to participate in the trade must join in the fleet of “Flanders galleys” which sailed at intervals (usually once a year), as the opportunity for trade seemed favorable. On these occasions the Venetian senate voted a certain number of galleys for the voyage, and auctioned off the right to freight them. Each galley was propelled by 180 oarsmen, and carried for its protection a force of archers commanded by four young patricians who were sent out that in this way they might see the world and learn to serve their native city. The cargo was carried on the account of private merchants, but the supreme control of the fleet was vested in a captain appointed by the Venetian government, and bound to follow its instructions. The voyage to Flanders and back occupied the greater part of a year, as the galleys touched and traded at many ports along the way. The route generally taken included the following stopping-places: Capo d’Istria (Pola), Corfu, Otranto, Syracuse, Messina, Naples, Majorca, the principal ports of Spain and Morocco, and Lisbon. In the English Channel the fleet divided, some galleys going to Southampton or London, others to Sluys (the port of Bruges, connected with it by a short canal), Middelburg, and Antwerp. The chief objective was the city of Bruges, the great market where the trade of northern Europe, in the hands of the Hanseatic merchants, and the trade of southern Europe in the hands of the Venetians, came together.
110. Development of other cities in Italy; freedom and vigor of their policy.—Space forbids the consideration in detail of the history and policy of other Italian cities, of which some rose to the first rank in commerce, though none attained to the greatness of Venice. The lack of a central government in the peninsula enabled each city to frame its policy solely with an eye to its own interests. The Italian cities were able to free themselves from the laws and customs that had been necessary in an earlier time, but which lay like fetters on developing trade and industry. The city of Florence, for instance, showed a liberality in its policy regarding land tenure, industry, domestic and foreign commerce, which was strikingly modern. The result was an extraordinarily rapid development in commerce, manufacture and finance, but also, unfortunately, a jealous rivalry between the cities, which expressed itself not only in commercial competition but also in destructive wars.
111. Genoa.—Genoa, situated in a position corresponding to that of Venice on the other side of the Italian peninsula, grew great like her in the course of the crusades. In conflict with Pisa, which had become a threatening commercial rival, Genoa was a complete victor by the naval victory of Maloria in 1284. Against Venice the city was not so fortunate. Genoa recovered in part from the blow dealt her by Venice in the fourth crusade, when the Greek empire was re-established at Constantinople (1261), and won some important naval victories in the constant succession of wars culminating in the battle of Chioggia in 1380. The Genoese managed always to secure a share of the Oriental trade; they helped to establish the system of joint stock companies; and contributed to the development of banking and public finance. They lacked, however, the advantages of the Venetian situation, both as regarded their opportunity for trade and their capacity for defence. They were drawn into the net of continental politics, and as at home they had never shown the ability of the Venetians to pacify or to crush rival factions, their force was wasted in useless political conflicts.
112. Inland cities; Florence.—Besides the two great seaports of Venice and Genoa other cities of northern Italy grew rich by industry and commerce at this period, notably Milan. The chief commercial city in the interior, however, was Florence in central Italy. Though Florence had no seaport of its own until after 1400, when it overpowered Pisa and Leghorn, it carried on an extensive commerce in its chief product, wool and silk textiles. Great trading houses bought up the raw material through agents settled in markets like Bruges, or traveling for years at a time, and sold the finished product through a similar network of agencies. The amount of manufacturing and commerce in the city stimulated the development of banking institutions, and Florentine bankers gained not only a regal position at home, but also a commanding voice in international politics.
113. Other Mediterranean cities; Marseilles, Barcelona.—On the Mediterranean coast of France the only great port at this period was Marseilles, which had developed rapidly in the course of the crusades. It exported to Italy and the East French textiles (woolen and linen), wood, metals, wine, oil, soap, etc.
In Spain the Arabs had developed the arts of civilization to a point which was far above that of the contemporary Christian states. Toward the close of the Middle Ages, however, the contest between them and the Christian kings for the supremacy of the peninsula absorbed the best energies of both parties, and caused an actual decline in material civilization. One city, however, Barcelona, carried on a very extensive commerce, and was one of the most important ports of the Mediterranean. Its inhabitants enjoyed unusual freedom under the kings of Aragon and were reputed to be among the best sailors of their time; they had trading stations along the coast of the Mediterranean as far as Egypt and Syria, and as merchants or pirates frequented the Grecian archipelago.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Study: (a) the position of Venice in the Mediterranean; (b) the peculiarities of the site of the city; and write a report on the influence of these factors on the history of Venice in its different periods. [Encyclopedia.]
2. Compare the policy pursued by Venice toward Amalfi in Constantinople to the early policy of the Standard Oil Company. [See the account of railroad rebates in accounts of the Standard Oil Company by Lloyd or Tarbell.]
3. Compare the Venetian and the Athenian sea-empires in respect to (a) extent, (b) duration, (c) policy. [See chapter 2, and for further information on Venetian history see Brown.]
4. Make a map showing Venetian trade relations in the fifteenth century. [Falkner, Statistical Documents, V.]
5. Summarize the account of commercial transactions at that period. [Same.]
6. Write a report on the contributions of the Italians to book-keeping. [Cf. Beckmann, Hist. of inventions, Bohn’s Library, vol. 1, pp. 1-5.]
7. Write a similar report on their contributions to banking. [Encyc., Palgrave’s Dict., or some history of banking.]
8. Write out the English equivalents of the Italian words in sect. 103.
9. What resemblance can you find between Venetian policy toward Germans, and Boer policy toward English in the South African Republic? [See one of the many accounts of conditions preceding the war in South Africa.]
10. From the description in sect. 109 draw on an outline map the route of the Flanders galleys.
11. Write a report on the political conditions in Italy in the last centuries of the Middle Ages. [Current manuals of European history; Burckhardt, Civilisation of the Renaissance, London, 1878.]
12. Write a report on the rivalry of Venice and Genoa. [Brown, Venice.]
13. Write a report on the chief periods in the history of Genoa. [Encyclopedia.]
14. Study the history of the Medici family as showing the character of commercial and political life in Florence. [Encyclopedia; various biographies.]
15. Write a brief report on the commercial history of Marseilles or of Barcelona. [Encyclopedia.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A bibliography of the history of Venice is given by Brown, pp. xix-xxiii. A good brief survey of Venetian history, with a description of the modern city and a map, will be found in the Encyc. Brit. The history in the Story of the Nations series cannot be recommended. The best book for our purposes is Horatio F. Brown, *Venice, N. Y., Putnam, 1893. The history of other Italian cities is treated, with some attention to commerce, in Bella Duffy, The Tuscan republics with Genoa, N. Y., Putnam, 1893.
CHAPTER XII
COMMERCE OF NORTHERN EUROPE
114. Development of commerce in South and North.—Medieval commerce reached its highest development on opposite sides of the continent of Europe, in the Levant trade of the South and in the trade carried on by the Hanseatic cities of the North. Commerce was, of course, not confined to these localities. We have seen already how German merchants and the Flanders galleys united the North and South of Europe; and every one of the present European countries took a greater or less share in the exchange of wares. We have already described, however, the general character of commerce in the medieval period, and must refer the reader to that description for some idea of the commerce of countries which are not treated in detail in this sketch.
115. Conditions and wares of the Baltic trade.—The wares of the northern trade present a contrast to those which furnished the material of eastern commerce. In the first place the countries of central Europe found in Scandinavia and the Northeast, which formed the trading ground, peoples who were their industrial inferiors; these peoples were glad to receive manufactures instead of supplying them. Secondly, the cost of carriage was much less in the North than in the South, not only because transportation was almost entirely by sea and over a shorter route, but also because the tolls on trade were much less than in the Asiatic countries. It was possible, therefore, to trade in bulky articles of comparatively small value.
The luxuries which formed so large a part of the eastern exports were scarcely represented in the northern trade. Amber can be put in this class, though the trade in it was of no great importance; this was a fossilized resin which was found on the coast of the Baltic, and which was used for ornaments. Wax was a far more considerable item of export, which may, perhaps, be regarded as a luxury, since it found its chief employment in the form of candles used in church services.
116. Exports from the Baltic, mainly raw materials.—Most of the exports from northeastern Europe were raw materials serving the simpler needs of man. Among the foodstuffs fish took the first place. Until the fifteenth century the herring, which does not now range outside the waters of the North Sea and the open ocean, came each year in late summer to the Swedish and German coasts of the Baltic; and the trade in dried and salted fish, especially herring, was one of the chief branches of northern commerce. The whole population of western Europe was at this time Roman Catholic, and the consumption of fish was of course stimulated by the rules of the church. Other foodstuffs exported were honey, butter, and salt meat.
The Northeast had no textiles to offer to the rest of Europe, but in its furs it had a substitute for them which was most highly prized. The furs included not only the finer varieties, the use of which was restricted to the upper classes, but also common grades that were desired as much for their warmth as for their appearance. Houses were so poorly heated that comfort was impossible without thick clothing. We can understand, therefore, the complaint of a German bishop who said that “we strive as hard to come into the possession of a marten skin as if it were everlasting salvation.”
Other raw materials exported were skins and tallow from animal industry, and forestry products which were destined to be the mainstay of the Baltic trade in later times, various forms of timber and the group of products known later as “naval stores,” including pitch, tar, and turpentine.
117. Exports from the West to the Baltic countries.—In return for its imports western Europe sent to Russia and Scandinavia its manufactures and the raw products which could not be obtained in the Northeast. The list includes wheat, wine, salt, and metals, and, among the manufactures, especially cloth and beer. The merchants of the West conducted the trade not only between their home districts and the less developed countries, but also between these countries; they carried herrings, for instance, from Scandinavia to Russia.
118. Contrast of the history of the commercial cities in Italy and in Germany.—The cities of Germany, which took advantage of the opportunities for trade in the North, were like those of Italy in their freedom from royal authority. There seems, therefore, a chance that they might fight among themselves for the trade, and that one of them might get a commanding position as did Venice in the South. No one of them, however, had the peculiar advantages of the geographical position and the freedom from attacks by land which Venice enjoyed. They were too evenly matched to settle quickly the question of supremacy, and they ran such dangers from the attacks of feudal lords that they could not afford to quarrel among themselves. Instead of competing they united, in the Hansa or Hanseatic League, which was the most remarkable commercial association of the medieval period.
119. Rise of the Hanseatic League.—The word “hanse” meant in early German a society, a band of men, and was applied to a number of commercial associations besides the particular league to which we apply it here. This league grew up gradually in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The merchants of various German cities found it necessary to unite for the protection of their interests abroad, and the beginnings of the association are found in the island of Gotland, in the Baltic and in the city of London, where Germans carried on a considerable trade. After a while the cities at home took up the association which their merchants had started in foreign countries, and in the fourteenth century a great league grew up, centering in the cities at the southwestern corner of the Baltic, of which Lübeck was the chief. Sailors were still afraid to navigate the waters around Denmark, because of the dangerous currents and shoals, so Baltic wares were carried across the isthmus, and cities like Lübeck grew great on this trade and on that which came down the Elbe valley.
120. Extent and organization of the League.—“When the ambassadors of the Hanseatic League in England in 1376 were asked for a list of the members who made up their vast association, they answered scornfully that surely even they themselves could not be supposed to remember the countless names of towns, big and little in all kingdoms, in whose name they spoke.” The league was in fact very extensive, for it included not only the chief German seaports, but also towns in the interior and some towns outside of Germany altogether. The number varied from time to time; in the period of greatest power it was nearly 100, stretching from Dinant in modern Belgium to Krakau and Reval in the East, and including towns as far inland as Göttingen in Germany. The towns never formed a very close union, but sent their representatives every year or so to a meeting-place where they could discuss matters of common interest, decide upon the policy to be followed, and raise what resources they could for carrying the policy through.
121. Control of the commerce of northern Europe by the League.—The aim in general was the protection of commerce from the attacks of pirates and feudal lords and the negotiation of commercial treaties which would extend the privileges of members and preserve their monopoly of trade. The League was so successful that it obtained in the closing centuries of the Middle Ages a predominance in the commerce of northern Europe comparable to that of the Dutch and of the English in later times. In the West it had to share its trade with other peoples. In this direction Bruges was the terminus of many of the voyages; at that port the Hanseatics met the Venetians, coming in the Flanders galleys, and secured also many wares from western Europe. This was by no means, however, the limit of their western voyages. They had an important trading station in England, with a great group of buildings, the “Steelyard” near London bridge, and invested their capital in English tin mines; one of their favorite voyages was to Bourgneuf, south of the Loire, on the western coast of France; and they sent their ships in some periods as far as Spain and Portugal.
THE HANSEATIC COMMERCIAL EMPIRE ABOUT 1400
The North and East of Europe were, however, the field of their greatest success. In Scandinavia (including Iceland) and Russia, they gained a complete monopoly of commerce; the peoples of those countries were so backward that they permitted the Germans to do the most important part of their trading for them, and the governments were weak and were easily forced to grant the privileges desired.
122. Methods of trading; factories.—The methods which the Hanseatics employed in their trade are worthy of special attention, because they were characteristic of the time, being very similar to those of the Venetians in the East, and because they have been employed under similar conditions in later periods. They established “factories” in the sense of trading posts (not manufactories), where most of the trade was carried on. A factory was, in the first place, a fortress where the merchants could be safe from attacks by the natives; at Novgorod, for instance, the group of buildings was enclosed and was carefully guarded by men and by great watch-dogs both day and night. The factory was, moreover, a place where the trade could be regulated, and where the merchants could be kept under supervision. To let a man trade as he pleased would have subjected not only himself but all his compatriots to danger, for the natives made little distinction between foreigners and would readily have punished one merchant for the fault of another. The factories were centers of social life, with their rough initiations and their games, and they were useful in training young men in commerce; but they were kept under such strict discipline and minute regulation that they seem like garrisons in the enemy’s country.
The map follows a contemporary description of the wares which were brought for sale to Bruges and Flanders, omitting some of the less important and those difficult to identify. Of the countries left blank on the map, Italy excelled in manufactures (textiles and glass), and France had a notable export trade in wine.
123. Flanders and Bruges.—Between the regions under the commercial control of the Hanseatics on one side and the Venetians on the other lay a sort of neutral zone where both parties met, centering in the region about modern Belgium. This district was favored not only by the junction in it of the northern and southern trade; it had other advantages of position in that it lay near the mouths of great rivers, the Scheldt, Meuse, and Rhine, and was also at the crossing of important land routes. It had enjoyed an early development of industry in its towns, and had been liberally treated by its feudal rulers.
At different periods the great commerce which flowed to and through this district chose different points for its concentration. In the fourteenth century the favored spot was Bruges (the Flemish word meaning bridges), the greatest market in northern Europe, vying even with Venice. Here could be found Scandinavians, Germans, English, French, Portuguese, Spaniards, and Italians, exchanging the wares from different sources; a contemporary writer names 30 different countries, both Christian and Mohammedan, which fed the market of Bruges with their commodities. The natives were content to let foreigners carry on the business of transportation; they stayed at home and grew rich from the wares, money and credit instruments which commerce brought to their doors.
124. Decline of Bruges in the fifteenth century; rise of Antwerp.—Partly because of this passive part which they assumed, partly because of the practice of medieval countries in diverting their trade from one place to another, the people of Bruges had but a precarious hold on their commerce, and lost it in the fifteenth century. The silting up of its harbors, making these unfit to hold the larger ships now coming into use, explains in part the decline of Bruges, but political forces were at work also to divert commerce to another center. In the fifteenth century the place of Bruges as the great market of northern Europe was taken by Antwerp, which had fought its way up against all rivals, and which held the leadership now for one hundred years.
125. Conditions of commerce in England.—England lay on the outside of the great currents of medieval commerce. It had an advantage which it had enjoyed since pre-Roman times, the practical monopoly of tin production in Europe; and added to this in the latter part of the Middle Ages a still more important monopoly, that of wool production. Sheep were raised, of course, in other parts of Europe, and the merinos of Spain yielded a finer grade of wool than could be produced in England. For some reason, however, the sheep industry did not prosper elsewhere as it did in England. Possibly the constant wars and raids which disturbed the feudal states of the continent may have prevented the production of a commodity which could be so easily destroyed or carried off as booty. At any rate, the more settled political conditions in England, where internal war became soon a rare exception, favored the development of all the national resources. Aided by the prevalence of peace at home, and by the disappearance of feudal tolls on trade, the English advanced rapidly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and instead of exporting the raw wool began to make it into cloth and to export the finished product. Trade was furthered also by the continental conquests of English kings, which brought England and the South of France into close relationship, and built up a large import trade in French wines.
126. English trade passive until the close of the Middle Ages.—Most of the trade in English wares, however, was in the hands of foreigners until the very close of the Middle Ages. The English kings showed more interest in the development of their resources by the encouragement of alien merchants than they showed in the extension of commerce carried on by natives. Hanseatics and Venetians fetched and carried the wares of distant countries for the English; and the “Merchants of the Staple,” a society composed largely of aliens, enjoyed a legal monopoly of the export of the most important raw materials which England supplied to European commerce—wool and sheepskins, leather, tin, and lead.
English merchants became restive in the inferior position assigned to them both at home and abroad, and before the end of the Middle Ages began to fight for equal rights or for privileges, but they did not secure final and complete victory until the beginning of the modern period, in the sixteenth century.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Pursue on sects. 114-117 studies similar to those suggested above (sects. 88-94) for the Levant wares. For the character of the Baltic trade at present consult the Statesman’s Year-Book, index, Norway or Sweden. The history of the trade in amber may be made an interesting study, as the article has been an object of commerce since prehistoric times.
2. Origin of the Hanseatic League. [Zimmern, pp. 11-29.]
3. What place does Lübeck hold in the commerce of modern Germany? [Statesman’s Year-Book, Germany, last table in section on commerce.]
4. What effect may the Elbe-Trave Canal, opened June 16, 1900, have upon the future of the city? [See U. S. Consular reports and newspapers about that date.]
5. Contrast the organization of the Hanseatic League and of the Venetian empire.
6. Report in detail on the organization of the League, and its weaknesses. [Zimmern, 202-220.]
7. Write an essay on the life in a Hanseatic factory. [Zimmern, 137-147, Bergen; 179-201, London.]
8. Compare the Hanseatic factory with an Indian trading post. [Descriptions of such posts can be found in histories of the Hudson’s Bay Company.]
9. Write a report on the rise and fall of Bruges or of Antwerp as a commercial center. [Encyclopedia.]
10. Write a report on one of the following topics in English medieval commerce:
(a) Exports.
(b) Imports.
(c) Shipping.
(d) Attitude of the king.
(e) Institution of the Staple.
[Sufficient material on all these points may be found in Cunningham, Growth, and if the student is able to use a book like that he will get far more benefit than in abstracting the summaries (often inaccurate or misleading) in the smaller manuals.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
For general bibliography consult Gross, Sources, and Palgrave’s Dictionary.
General accounts will be found in Encyc. Brit., article Hanseatic League, and in Zimmern, **Hansa Towns, a book which can be strongly recommended. It includes a map and illustrations, but has no bibliography.
For descriptions of English commerce in this period see Cunningham, ** Growth, or the articles in Traill’s Social England. Briefer accounts are, of course, to be sought in manuals already mentioned.
CHAPTER XIII
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MEDIEVAL ORGANIZATION OF COMMERCE
127. Types of medieval traders; pedler, shopkeeper.—Enough has already been said to guard the reader against the idea that great wholesale merchants of the modern type were common in the Middle Ages. The regular type of trader was the artisan who manufactured the goods he sold, or the pedler who collected a stock of goods in a town and carried them about in a pack for sale. The pedler’s stock was not unlike that which he would carry around the country nowadays,—sewing materials, toilet articles, etc. An illumination in a manuscript of the fourteenth century, representing monkeys opening a pedler’s box, shows vests, caps, gloves, musical instruments, purses, girdles, hats, cutlasses, pewter pots, and other articles. An English statute of the fourteenth century, describing a similar stock in trade, mentions rabbit skins as one of the articles which the pedlers took in exchange for their wares, and an English author of the period accuses them of catching cats for their skins. The petty shopkeeper stood a step above the pedler. He had a regular shop in a town, where he displayed his wares, and often went on trips to the markets of other towns, where he set up a booth and carried on such trade as the town regulations allowed.
128. Merchants.—Still another step above the shopkeeper was the real merchant, who had his warehouse, from which he supplied the retail traders, and who bought up considerable quantities of goods at the great fairs at home and abroad. It is doubtful whether we can find in this class in northern Europe any men who devoted themselves entirely to wholesale trade; and merchants had not yet specialized so that each would devote himself exclusively to the trade in a particular ware. We can illustrate the point by a German merchant, whose account books have been preserved so that it is possible to follow his business operations exactly. Vicko von Geldersen was a draper of Hamburg, where he rose to wealth and a high position. He imported cloth wholesale, and sold it both wholesale and retail. But he made use of his connection with Bruges, which was the great cloth market, to send there for sale iron, honey, meat, butter, etc., and to import such wares as oil, spices, figs, and almonds, which he sold to smaller dealers in many cities of Germany.
See section 128 for a description of the trade of this merchant. The map shows only his German business, and indicates roughly, by the size of the circle, the importance of each town in his commercial dealings. Note how trade tended to the water routes.
Members of the class to which Vicko belonged were the leaders of commerce in the North of Europe during the Middle Ages; they accumulated wealth which seemed great at the time, and formed an aristocratic class in social and political life. Their sons were brought up to follow the family business, and often trained to it by extensive study and residence in foreign countries.
129. Development of commercial association in the Middle Ages.—In the Middle Ages we find the beginnings of that process of association which can be traced step by step to the formation of the great “trusts” of the present day, and which forms one of the most important features in the development of commerce. To point out the various advantages which arise from the association of laborers and of capitalists would lead us into political economy; and to describe in detail the development of the various forms of association would require an excursion into legal history equally out of place. We must content ourselves with indicating some of the main features which are easily intelligible.
The need of association was felt especially in the Middle Ages because it was necessary that a merchant or his representative should accompany his wares on the road. It was often difficult for a merchant to look after a commercial venture in person; he could not trust it to a hireling; and the slight development of the carrying and commission profession made it impossible for him to leave it to a class of persons who nowadays make it their business to attend to such matters. The merchant, therefore, would associate with him some one who could represent his interests; and a modern author asserts that in comparison with the amount of business many more commercial companies were formed then than at present. The merchant would choose by preference a member of his family, and family partnerships were the prevailing form of association at first. With the growth of commerce, however, greater freedom of association was demanded, and the group ceased to be limited by considerations of relationship.
130. Advantages of association.—By joining together, two or more men could follow different lines; one would stay at home while another could accompany the wares, and perhaps still another could attend to sales in a distant city. The advantages of this are apparent, and of not less importance are the benefits arising from the better utilization of capital. A person who had accumulated wealth, but who on account of advanced age, physical disability, or other circumstance could not himself employ it in commerce, would join with him a man who contributed to the enterprise the necessary business activity.
Capitalists gained also in another way, for they were enabled by association to share the risks of an enterprise. A man who put all his money into one ship or cargo ran the risk of being ruined; and foregoing paragraphs have shown that the dangers in the path of commerce were by no means slight. By distributing his capital in a number of enterprises, however, as could easily be done if he entered into association with others, he could hope to make up for any probable loss by the profits of his successful ventures, and can be regarded as insuring himself. We find, in fact, that the shipping business was for the most part carried on in this way.
131. Forms of association; partnership.—Commercial association took ordinarily the form of a “commenda” (Latin commendare, entrust). The “commendator” contributed capital in the form of money, wares or a ship, while the other party, called the “tractator” contributed only his personal services to the enterprise; of the profits one fourth went to the tractator and the remainder to the commendator. The tractator who saved his earnings could in time also contribute capital, and was given a greater share of the profits and more freedom in conducting the business.
The commenda, corresponding to a “silent partnership,” was older and of more importance in commercial undertakings than the ordinary partnership of the present day; but the latter form of association grew up also at this time, and was used in commerce as well as in industry. The joint-stock corporation belongs in its important applications to a later period.
132. Spread of the practice of association from Italy.—The different forms of partnership developed especially in Italy in the last few centuries of the Middle Ages, when the growth of commerce was most rapid, and they became extraordinarily extensive and important. They secured the union of capital and executive ability which enabled far greater enterprises to be carried on than would have been possible without them. The Italian commercial house of the Peruzzi, for instance, had fourteen branches and one hundred and fifty factors or agents. Even the assistants in the business, who did not themselves contribute capital to it, were interested in its success by a system of profit sharing. From Italy the practice of association spread to the North of Europe, and it became practically universal in commercial undertakings. Each of the larger firms had its characteristic trade-mark, distinguishing its bales of goods.
133. Position of the Jews in medieval commerce.—The Jews held a peculiar position in medieval Europe. They were distrusted and disliked by the Christians, because of their difference in religion, and because of their business ability, which made competition with them a difficult matter. Though they were scattered throughout Europe they kept touch with each other, and so enjoyed exceptional advantages in the pursuit of commerce and the extension of business relations. In the early part of the Middle Ages they were indispensable; Christians were not educated up to their level in business, and had to leave to them the major part of the slight commerce of the times. As Christian peoples developed, however, they demanded for themselves the place which the Jews had won; and by a long series of restrictions and persecutions they forced the Jews into some particular branches of business where the Christians could not follow them. The church taught for a time that it was wrong to lend money at interest, and discouraged Christians from seeking gain by this means. The Jews, therefore, seized the opportunity which was denied to Christians, and became money-lenders. Their position was always precarious, for the law gave them no protection, and they were subject constantly to robbery by feudal princes and by the people, who believed everything evil of them. From England they were banished altogether, for several centuries. They showed astonishing skill and fortitude, but in the last centuries of the Middle Ages they lost their position even as leaders in credit operations. The church then permitted money-lending if the terms were not extortionate; and Christians from southern Europe, “Caursines” (named from Cahors, in the south of France) and “Lombards,” succeeded the Jews as the money-lenders of Europe.
134. Character of currency in the Middle Ages.—One of the serious obstacles to the development of commerce was the character of the currency in the various countries of Europe. Assuming that the reader appreciates the importance of money as facilitating the operations of exchange, and knows the qualities of good money, we may confine ourselves to pointing out some of the characteristic faults of medieval currency.
(1) Merchants could not rely upon the government to maintain the standard of value. In many countries the kings debased the coinage again and again, to secure the means of carrying on war or paying public expenses of other kinds. Every debasement, as it left the coins with less pure metal, lowered their purchasing power and raised prices; many innocent people suffered and everybody grew reluctant to make bargains and contracts.
(2) In many countries, especially those on the Continent, the privileges of the great feudal lords included the right to keep a mint and to issue coins. The central government restricted this right, as it grew stronger, but in general the currency of medieval Europe was made up of a vast variety of coins of standards even less reliable than that of the king’s coinage. There was danger that a coin, even if it was of good weight, could not be passed at its full value outside the locality where it was minted.
(3) Even in countries like England, where feudal coinage was put down and where debasement by the government was exceptional, counterfeits were not rare, and the clipping of coin was very common.
These characteristics of medieval currency made the money-changer a necessary figure in the commercial world; he was to be found everywhere, even in the small towns, buying and selling the various coins in circulation.
135. Difficulty in making payments in distant places.—While the money-changer facilitated payments in any given place, he was not of much assistance to a merchant desirous of making a payment in a distant town or country. The merchant, it is true, could buy from him foreign money with which to make the payment; but the transportation of the actual coin was not only dangerous and expensive, but also subject to legal restriction, and was to be avoided if possible. The merchant would probably prefer to send instead of money some ware, which he could sell to advantage at the destination, and then with the proceeds make his payment. For example, when Michael Behaim of the Nuremberg Company wanted to send 1,000 gulden from Breslau to Nuremberg, he found it expedient to buy an amount of wax which he could sell in Nuremberg for the required sum, and he shipped that instead of money.
136. Introduction of the bill of exchange.—It might not, however, always be convenient for a man to meet his obligations in this way; he might not have the commercial knowledge, or perhaps he might have no good opportunity to ship a ware. Behaim, in the case cited, had in fact resorted to the wax shipment only from necessity, after he found it impossible to make his payment by the means of remittance now become general, the bill of exchange.
Suppose that B. in Breslau owed the 1,000 gulden, to A. in Nuremberg, for spice; and suppose that D. in Breslau was the creditor of another Nuremberg merchant C, to the extent of 1,000 gulden, perhaps for furs. It would be absurd for B to ship the money or to go out of his way to ship wax to A, and for C to ship the same value to D, when the payments could be made to cancel each other. Why should not B pay to D in Breslau the 1,000 guldens due him, and tell C to pay the same amount to A in Nuremberg? This could be accomplished by means of bills of exchange; D could write out an order to C directing him to pay the money, and sell it to B, who would thus have the means of paying his debt in Nuremberg to A.
Such an operation implies, however, not only regular commerce of considerable volume but also mutual confidence among the participants. How could B know whether D actually had a correspondent in a distant place who would meet his obligations promptly? It was not, in fact, until the thirteenth century that bills of exchange were used to any considerable extent; then they were developed in Italy, and spread from there.
137. Development of banking in Italy.—In Italy, also, the money-changers developed other forms of banking. As they were dealers in money, business men in want of capital for their operations naturally sought it of them. The money-changers might lend it from their own stock or act as brokers and secure the money from some man who had a surplus. The short step from this to the common form of modern banking was made when merchants deposited their surplus cash with the money-changer, and he had thus a considerable stock, which he could lend so long as he kept sufficient reserve to meet the demands of depositors. It soon became unnecessary for money to pass at all in large transactions; a man could get a loan from a bank simply by having a deposit ascribed to him on the books, and could assign this loan to others as he chose to pay it out. The characteristic danger of banking, the attempt to make a great deal of credit out of a little capital, appears early in Italy, with its results of failures and crises. The advantages of the banking system, however, the economizing of time and money and the facilitating of business operations, were so clear that banking kept its place, and spread toward the close of the Middle Ages from Italy to other countries.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
There is, in the history of commerce, no topic more difficult and none more important than the development of the organization. The student who has learned the facts has made only a beginning; he must grasp the significance of the facts if he is to gain anything from his study. The teacher is advised, therefore, to enlarge on the advantages of association and cooperation, as they are treated, from one point of view, in Adam Smith’s celebrated discussion of the division of labor, and in many manuals of economics.
So much depends on the degree of advancement of the pupil, and on his particular environment in country, town or city, that it is difficult to suggest specific questions or topics. In general, the teacher should suggest the meaning of earlier development by constant reference to the present organization. Why have pedlers disappeared in so many districts, where do they still remain, and why? What is the proportion of retail and wholesale merchants in your city; how far has the specialization of wholesale trade progressed? Answers may perhaps be found in a business directory. The student who is competent to work out the history of business organization in his own town will not fail to get new light on the history of earlier development; and a report on the history of some particular branch of trade at home should be an excellent exercise to be worked out. Another exercise would be the history of the different forms of association (partnerships, joint-stock companies), and a study of the reasons lying behind the rise and fall of a particular form. The choice of questions and topics here must be left to the ingenuity and discretion of the teacher.
The history of the currency in England [see Cunningham] is an easier topic.
On the rise of credit instruments (bills of exchange, banking), the student will probably be best prepared if he is given reading, either in review or in anticipation, in some general manual which will enable him to appreciate the importance of credit institutions now, and will hence interest him in their origin. [Cf. Usher, The origin of the bill of exchange, Journal of Pol. Econ., Chicago, June, 1914, 22: 566-576.]
An exercise which should be profitable and rather easy is a report by the student on the life of some English merchant. [See Fox Bourne, or consult the Dictionary of National Biography on names like Richard Whittington, William Canynges, William de la Pole, etc. Further biographical material is provided by Alice Law, Some notable “King’s Merchants,” Economic Review, 1902, 12: 309 ff.; 1903, 13: 411 ff.]
If Bourne’s Romance of trade is available the student may prepare an abstract of chap. 1 (the Jews) or chap. 4 (money and credit).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The student will find bibliographies of some of the topics treated in this chapter by consulting the appropriate articles in Palgrave’s Dictionary. Most of the best literature is foreign. The best references in English are to **Ashley and *Cunningham.
The important and difficult subject of the development of capitalistic organization is treated by John A. Hobson, *Evolution of modern capitalism, new ed., 1916, chap. 1, W. Sombart, **The quintessence of capitalism: a study of the history and psychology of the modern business man, London, 1915, and by Pirenne, *The stages in the social history of capitalism, American Hist. Rev., Apr. 1914, 19: 494-515. One aspect of the subject is covered by Arthur H. Woolf, Short history of accountants and accountancy, London, 1912.
CHAPTER XIV
COMMERCE AND POLITICS IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES
138. Development of the modern political system in the later Middle Ages.—Toward the close of the Middle Ages the feudal system of government gave place gradually to a system more like that which the Romans had established and with which we are familiar now. As trade and intercommunication increased, and towns grew up holding a population of considerable wealth, the kings found it possible to make into a reality the position of nominal headship which tradition and the church conferred upon them. They found in the mercantile and manufacturing classes people who could afford to pay taxes, and who were willing to pay large sums to be relieved from the oppressions of the feudal lords. It became possible once more to transport supplies and to send troops to distant localities, and the kings devised means by which they could keep in touch with their officials, and hold them to loyal service. The result was a great increase in the power of the central government, at the expense of the feudal lords.
139. Variety of development in different countries.—The development, as sketched above, was very different in the different countries. It came early in England, and local lords lost practically all of their independence. In France it was a very gradual process, extending over the last four centuries of the Middle Ages. Even in the sixteenth century and later, the kings, though they seemed to enjoy great power, did not abolish all the remnants of feudalism, which continued down to the French Revolution in 1789, to the great harm of industrial development. In Spain the union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon just before 1500 completed the process, by establishing nearly absolute royal authority over the greater part of the peninsula. In Germany and Italy the result was different. The same man, who called himself the Emperor of the Romans, claimed the royal power in both countries, but in attempting too much he lost everything. He wasted the royal resources in vain attempt to establish his authority, and became a mere figure-head. The control of government passed in those countries to local authorities; but it is important to note that these included not only feudal lords, but also cities which had become strong enough to throw off feudal authority and to establish for themselves almost complete independence.
140. Effect on commerce of a strong and of a weak central government.—In a country in which the cities established complete independence they seemed for a time to have gained by throwing off the royal power. Each city could control its affairs and shape its policy to suit local interests; and the great cities of Italy and Germany before the close of the Middle Ages were the most advanced and prosperous parts of Europe. Though they controlled only small areas of land they had great resources from their commerce, and even in war could hold their own with the feudal lords fighting in the old-fashioned way.
They were strong enough to fight a feudal lord; they were not, however, strong enough to fight a modern king. While they were building up their power at the expense of rival cities and at the expense of the country districts, the kings of lands to the west of them were quietly engaged in uniting all the cities and the country districts, too, under one rule. The cities in France and England seemed for a time to lose, because they were forced by the kings to make concessions to each other and to the country districts. When, however, they had become used to consider themselves as only parts of a bigger whole, the nation, they found that their sovereign was far better fitted to represent their interests and further their progress than any one of them was individually. The struggle of the independent cities of Italy and Germany against the national states of England, Spain, and France was not decided until after the discovery of America and the sea-route to Asia, when the national organization proved decisively its superiority to the municipal.
141. Rise of a national commercial policy.—The rise in power of the central government in countries like England and France is proved by the appearance, toward the close of the Middle Ages, of a national commercial policy. The reader will remember that even in these countries the towns were at first so independent that each adopted a commercial policy of its own; as though, nowadays, for instance, Boston and New York and Philadelphia should each have its own independent tariff and set of commercial regulations. A merchant of Dover was a foreigner in Southampton, and if he wanted to collect a debt due him from a Southampton merchant he would appeal, not to the central government and the law of the land, but to the Dover government; and the Dover government would put pressure on the Southampton government, perhaps by arresting any merchant from Southampton and holding his goods, until the debt was paid. About 1300 the English king was at last strong enough to make general regulations in matters like this of the collection of debts, and about the same time he established a national tariff at the ports, as a regular system, and forced the various towns to give up the right to levy what dues they pleased. A similar change took place in France at nearly the same time; the idea grew strong that the general interest of all Frenchmen was superior to the particular interests of any town or individual, and the people of France began to look to the king instead of to the local authorities for protection and control.
142. Medieval ideas on commerce.—When commerce was undeveloped and only an incidental feature in the economic life of peoples, those high in authority in church and state held ideas of it which have faded away as commerce has proved its power and shown its benefits. Many kinds of commerce, including some forms of money-lending now considered legitimate, were prohibited because they seemed to give a man something for nothing. In ordinary trade one man was thought to make his profit at the expense of another, and government was always vigilant to protect the weaker party. A government, moreover, looked on foreign commerce rather as a privilege of its citizens than as their right, and used it freely as a political weapon instead of considering it an economic necessity. The ports of the kingdom were the “king’s gates,” which he could open or close at his pleasure, to further his royal policy.
143. Characteristic features of commercial policy.—Among the characteristic features of national economic policy in the later centuries of the Middle Ages we find the following:
(1) Export and import could be carried on only by favor of royal license, which was granted to and withdrawn from groups of natives and foreigners as suited the king’s ideas.
(2) The export of necessaries was frequently prohibited (as had previously been the custom with the towns), to increase the supplies of the kingdom and keep an enemy from getting the good of them.
(3) The export of money, as a specially valuable asset of the kingdom, was prohibited and its importation was favored.
(4) The growth of native industries was stimulated by a variety of regulations. The English cloth manufacture was protected, for instance, in the following ways: the export of raw material (wool, teasles, etc.) was forbidden from time to time, that the home manufacturer might supply himself more cheaply; the import of foreign cloth was restricted; and the wearing of fur was limited to certain classes, that the home market for woolen manufacture might be larger. Among the protected industries was shipping. “Navigation acts,” requiring the use of native ships, were common, though they ordinarily remained in force but a short time and had not yet hardened into a system.
(5) The foreign trade of a country was not only restricted, as at present, to certain points on the frontier where duties could be collected, but was often concentrated in one or more special places, the “staples.” The government could then oversee the trade more easily, could collect its dues, insure good quality, and protect merchants more readily, and it could also make better use of trade as a weapon of policy, directing the stream of goods where it pleased, and so rewarding or punishing other states.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Review the sections on feudalism, and see how the modern system of government grew up from feudalism as the forces which had created feudalism were reversed. [Cf. Seebohm, Prot. Rev., pp. 15-21.]
2. Write a report on the rise or decline in power of the central government in one of the following countries, in the period 1100-1500: France, England, Germany, Italy, Spain. [Consult the current history manuals, or the encyclopedia.]
3. In connection with sect. 140 read the sections in a later part of the book, describing the advantages which have come to Germany and Italy in recent times by their union under strong central governments.
4. Write a report on medieval doctrines on one of the following subjects:
(a) Loans at interest.
(b) Profits in trade.
[Cunningham, Growth, or Ashley, vol. 1, chap. 3; vol. 2, chap. 6.]
5. Write a report on “protection” in the medieval state. [See Cunningham or Ashley on commercial policy, or read J. S. Nicholson, The English corn laws.]
6. What has been the history of the meaning of the word staple? [Dictionaries, especially Murray’s New English Dict.; Cunningham.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The subject of this short chapter takes the reader within the bounds of political history, and he is referred to the many history manuals for further reading and references. The growth of the French monarchy has been well treated by Adams, Civilization, chap. xiii, or Growth of the French nation.