The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 09

by Unknown

THE COMMERCIAL FOREBEARS OF THE VENETIANS

The crowd of barbarian people who inundated the Roman Empire at the end of its existence brought with it the germs of a new life; when Rome had succumbed, these germs began to develop themselves in all parts of Europe—races young and vigorous but still half barbarous came, all at once, into the foreground of history; mingled with the people whom Rome, up till now, had kept under the yoke, they founded new nationalities; it was a general transformation in the state, in society, and in the ways and customs. Nevertheless, this overthrow did not affect all the conditions of the life of the people in the same degree. In the domain of commercial life we do not find, on the threshold of the Middle Ages, any event which approaches in importance the discovery of the sea route to the East Indies and the discovery of America, events which coincide with the beginning of the modern epoch, and which have unexpectedly opened new paths for commerce.

Between antiquity and the Middle Ages the transition was less abrupt; the commercial intercourse and markets remained, generally, the same as of old. Since the conquests of Alexander had brought the civilised people of the West into contact with the remote East, the main currents of commerce set thitherward, for there was the source of production of those articles which had become necessary to the insatiable masters of the world. From the Indies were obtained those spices which the Greeks and Romans put into their food to heighten its flavour, the greater part of the perfumes which they sprinkled on their persons and in their apartments, and the ivory with which they made their precious utensils. China furnished the silk with which the women, and later on, with the growth of luxury, even the men of the imperial epoch loved to clothe themselves; for jewels, the mountains of Persia and India sent their precious stones; the Indian Ocean, its pearls.

Little by little, this commerce increased to such an extent, that in the time of Pliny, the Roman Empire expended each year in Asia, in payment of merchandise obtained from thence, 100,000,000 sesterces (about £800,000), of which India alone absorbed one-half. In the Middle Ages, the Levant was still the principal goal of the merchant of the West. The commodities which later generations brought from America, such as sugar and cotton, were then obtained from Smyrna, Asia Minor, or Cyprus; condiments from India, spices and especially pepper, were some of the most highly appreciated commodities at this period. But if we seek the origin of the delicate fabrics, or the carpets which were used at the courts and among the wealthy burghers of the Middle Ages, we have almost always to go to the East. Thence came the raw material, very often the tissue or the embroidery, and finally the name of the material.

A Venetian Bronze Knocker

As trade followed the same lines as in ancient days, so the great commercial routes remained the same. To obtain the products of the Levant, the merchantmen of the West, not knowing the route by the Cape of Good Hope, confined themselves to the short voyage through the Mediterranean or the waters which communicate directly with it. There they were certain to find, along the shore, markets already famous in ancient times, Alexandria, Tyre, Berytus, Antioch, Byzantium, Trebizond; the creation of a new market was a great exception. Merchandise still arrived at the ports of the Mediterranean or of the Pontus from the remote East by the old ways of the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf; that coming from the centre of Asia overland still followed the route we find already quoted in Greek and Roman geographies from the narratives of the merchants.

The only elements which had changed in commerce were the mediums; Italians, Provençals, and Catalans had taken the place of Greeks and Romans as commercial nations. But, with respect to this, do not let us forget that the transition between antiquity and the Middle Ages was gradual. In fact, when the empire was divided into two parts, the Byzantine half had inherited the commerce of the East as a natural result of its geographical situation. Having survived invasions, it played the part of medium in the commercial relations between the West and the East, until the time when the citizens of the sea-port towns of Italy, southern France, and Spain were grown strong enough to do without one.

We possess a sufficient number of documents dating from the time of Justinian (527-565 A.D.) to make a complete picture of the state of the East at this time, from the commercial point of view. The most remote countries of Asia with which the Greeks of Byzantium maintained a regular commerce were also those which furnished the most precious and choice products. For centuries, the silk industry had flourished in China, but the secret of it had been so well kept that strangers had never been able to learn the process of its manufacture. At length there came a time when another country was able, in its turn, to cultivate this important branch of industry. This good fortune fell to the lot of the small kingdom of Khotan, in the centre of Asia, in consequence of the marriage of its king with a Chinese princess who, it is said, betrayed the secret of her compatriots and, managing to elude the supervision of the custom-house officers, brought silkworms, eggs, and the seeds of the mulberry tree into her new country.

We cannot say with certainty whether, in the seventh century, the manufacture of silk had already spread from the East to the West, and passed beyond the borders of Khotan, but we may assume that the greater part of the silk which the western merchants received came from China. The Chinese exported their products themselves; but at this time, with rare exceptions, their ships only conveyed them as far as Ceylon, and their caravans did not go beyond the frontiers of Turkestan. There other nations received the precious wares and carried them farther west. But it is difficult to make a distinction, for the ancient classical writers, and those of the Byzantine epoch after them, gave the name of Seres, not only to the producers of silk, but also to the various peoples engaged in its distribution.

Such a silk-trading nation were the inhabitants of Sogdiana, in the lowlands of Bokhara, a race distinguished from the remotest times for their taste and aptitude for commerce. The silk was brought to them by caravans from China, and they, in their turn, conveyed it either to the markets of the north of Iran, or to those south of the Caspian Sea. Our sources of information do not, indeed, positively state this as a fact. In his chronicle, Theophanes of Byzantium

j relates that the markets and ports frequented by the silk merchants had changed masters three times at short intervals; having originally been in the possession of the Persians, they were taken from them by the so-called White Huns (the Yue-thsi or Yuechi of the Chinese), and finally were occupied by the Turks.

By whatever route the silk was conveyed, the Persians always endeavoured to receive it first, and they watched jealously that it did not reach the Romans of the East by any other route than that which traversed their country or by any other hands than theirs. Nevertheless, a certain portion of the silk was despatched from China to Ceylon by sea; there it was transhipped and reached the Persian Gulf by the west coast of India and the south coast of Carmania. It is obvious that when Chinese wares followed the sea route, they might escape the Persians, for from Ceylon it was possible to take them by the south of Arabia and Ethiopia. Herein lay a danger to the Persian monopoly which the emperor Justinian contrived to turn to his advantage. The Byzantines found it a great hardship to be reduced to having no other intermediaries for these, to them indispensable, articles than the Persians. There was no other nation with whom they were so frequently at war, and how could they see with indifference their own merchants supplying their enemies with enormous sums in payment for the silks they purchased; or how bear patiently the frequent interruptions to trade due to a state of warfare?

With a view to remedying these inconveniences, the emperor Justinian attempted in the year 532 to open a road for the silk trade through Ethiopia; the Ethiopians could, he thought, purchase the silk from the Indians, and sell it to the Byzantines. Their king, an ally of Byzantium, allured by the prospect of gain, entered into the emperor’s views. But when his subjects arrived at the ports which the vessels from India had just entered, they found the Persians masters of the situation in their double capacity of neighbours and ancient clients; they were forced to return empty-handed, and the Persians remained, for the nonce, in uncontested possession of their monopoly.

When it was proved that the Ethiopians were neither strong nor enterprising enough to wrest the silk trade from the hands of the Persians, the problem seemed, for an instant, insoluble. Happily Justinian succeeded in securing some silkworms’ eggs, brought back by missionary monks who had penetrated to the heart of the countries which produced them, probably to Khotan (about the year 552). Thus it is that the manufacture of silk was introduced into the Grecian Empire, and from the year 568 Justin II, the successor to Justinian, was able to show it in full activity to a Turkish ambassador who happened to be at his court. Many years elapsed, it is true, before sufficient raw silk was produced in Greece to satisfy the demands of the native industry. For a long time the greater part of the raw material and the better qualities of silk had to be brought from China, and the exorbitant claims of the Persian middlemen to be endured.

But the Persians were not merely transmitters, they were manufacturers also. Hwen Tsang, who traversed the eastern frontier of Persia at the beginning of the seventh century, says that the Persians were skilled in the weaving of silken or woollen stuffs and carpets, and that products of their industry were highly prized in the neighbouring kingdoms. They were assisted by foreign workmen, who came to settle in Persia voluntarily or under coercion from the Asiatic countries subject to Byzantium. By the adoption of an unwise system of monopoly ruinous to the silk-weavers of his country, Justinian promoted their emigration in large numbers to Persia, others were brought there by force by King Sapor II as part of the spoils he brought back from his victorious campaign in Mesopotamia and Syria. A tradition current several generations later traced the origin of the silk manufacture in Tuster, Susa, and other Persian cities, to the colonies of Greek craftsmen.

To satisfy the luxury of the Sassanidian court, quantities of stuffs of great value were necessary. When the victorious Greek army, led by the emperor Heraclius against the Persians, took possession of the royal castle of Dastagerd, in the year 627, they found there a quantity of raw silk and piles of silken garments, embroidered carpets, and other articles of this kind. It is permissible to suppose that they were of native manufacture. The spoil gained on this occasion comprised other things worthy of note. Large quantities of spices, evidently of Indian origin, pepper, ginger, aloes, and aloe-wood (agallochum) fell into the hands of the victors; they were consigned to the flames with the rest, as it was impossible to carry everything off. Let us add that in the year 636-637, at the storming of Madain (Ctesiphon), the capital of the Sassanid Empire, by the Arabs, there were found large supplies of musk, amber, sandalwood, and enough camphor to freight a ship; this last produced nowhere but in the islands beyond India. The Arabs were so ignorant of its uses, that they proposed to use it to flavour their bread. All this proves to us that the luxury of the Sassanidian court was one of the principal causes which turned the stream of Levantine commerce towards Persia.

After the Persians had levied their supplies on the merchandise in transit, there yet remained enormous quantities which passed directly into the Byzantine Empire.[h] These goods were brought across Lake Aral or down the Oxus into the Caspian Sea. From this sea they entered the Volga, which flows into it, and thence were carried as far as that place, which is eighteen miles from the Tanaïs. Man had even tried to dig a canal of communication between the two rivers. Arrived in the Tanaïs, Asiatic productions thence descended into the Palus-Mæotis, crossed the Black Sea, and went to fill the stores of Constantinople, then the most flourishing town in the world. An Armenian king thought of shortening this journey by avoiding the Volga, Tanaïs, and Palus-Mæotis. He established direct communication between the Cyrus, which flows into the Caspian Sea, and the Phasis, which runs towards the end of the Pontus-Euxinus. The crossing by land was only fifteen leagues. One hundred and twenty bridges were thrown between the mountains to make this route practicable for commerce, and these still witness to the greatness, utility, and difficulties of the enterprise.

So long as commerce followed this route it enriched the maritime towns of Kaffa, Trebizond, Sinope, and Byzantium, on the Black Sea. The greed of the Tatars multiplied dangers on this route; they diverted towards Lake Aral the Gihon and the Sihun, two rivers which discharged into the Caspian Sea, and thus destroyed one of the communications between India and Europe. Saracen industry reopened communication with the Red Sea, Egypt, and Alexandria, and all the Syrian ports became marts for oriental merchandise. This furnished the opportunity to the Venetian trader. Never did people destined to rise to such great commercial enterprise begin under narrower circumstances. The Venetians had no territory. They were tributary to their neighbours for all necessaries of life, and had nothing to offer in exchange save fish and salt—natural products, of which man could not considerably augment the value. Yet, inasmuch as the profits of this commerce were mediocre, so it was important to extend them. To increase the consumption of fish, it was necessary to prepare it in such a way that it would keep; and to have no rivals in the sale of salt, it was imperative to sell at the lowest price.

The very poor profits that the islanders could make on these two objects furnished them the means of buying larger products from the neighbouring coasts. Wood from Dalmatia they made into boats, their islands became dockyards that provided means of navigation on the neighbouring rivers and ports. In proportion as the towns of Aquila, Padua, and Ravenna acquired prosperity, so handicraft became dearer, and the inhabitants more disdainful of this kind of work. Thus to the Venetians there resulted not only the advantage of selling objects augmented in value by their labour, but the still greater one of perfecting themselves in the art of naval construction, while other peoples did not make similar progress. Moreover, they always found plenty of material, and could consequently always increase their marine. Their commerce becoming more profitable, they transported into their isles other rough products, higher priced and capable of receiving a still greater value when worked; flax and hemp to make naval equipage, iron to forge anchors and arms. These were the things which they bartered for the coveted products of the East. Growing still richer, they exercised their talents on things more valuable—wool, cotton, silk, silver, gold, even making a high-priced ware of such common material as glass.[g]

Indeed, the manufacture of ornamental glass vessels became so distinctively a Venetian specialty, and one carried to such unrivalled perfection, that a more detailed reference to this branch of manufacture may well occupy our attention.[a]