VENICE IN THE LEVANT
After the fall of the Eastern Empire, Venice became mistress of nearly all the maritime points of that empire, and had immense advantages in all the Levant markets. Her merchants there enjoyed all the privileges of the natives, and in every port her ships found not only free harbourage but special protection. For eight centuries, that is from the epoch when the Venetians wanted to become conquerors over the Italian lands, legislation and politics had for their principal object the prosperity of commerce. Privileges from the foreigner, assured safety with them, facilities for the moving about of men, goods, and capital, the establishment of banks, perfecting of money, encouragement of industrial manufactures, a vigilant but not officious policy, a religious tolerance little known among other nations, all concurred to make for Venetian commercial greatness.
If to these advantages one adds the possibility of obtaining civic rights, and considers that a share in sovereignty was attached to this title, one can imagine what an influx of strangers augmented the population of Venice and increased its prosperity by bringing capital and new industries. One can conceive also how citizens of such a state would be attached to their country, and what would be the strength and resources of this government. One would feel at the same time that the republic would lose with regard to all these things when she adopted, or rather submitted to, an aristocratic government. It has been said that those of the citizens who arrogated all authority compensated the others by abandoning to them all the advantages resulting from commerce. Indeed, this has been given as a mark of disinterestedness and moderation from the aristocratic classes. But this is an error. It is evident that, in spite of a prohibitive law, the nobles continued to be merchants until that epoch when the republic was already shorn of its power and commerce of its splendour. Instances of this are to be found at every step in history.
If one reflects on the influence that habits of work, emulation, riches, travel, and association with foreigners must necessarily have had on the manners of a people and the development of their intellectual faculties, one may guess that the Venetians must already have become a polished nation when other peoples, whom nature seemed to have placed in a different rank, were still barbarians. One is not surprised to read in the history of Charlemagne that the lords who composed his court were astonished to see, at the Pavia fair, valuable carpets, silken stuffs, gold tissues, pearls, and precious stones spread out by Venetian merchants. Doubtless these lofty barons very much despised the merchants and their business, but their pride would be lowered somewhat when Pepin was beaten by these same men; when European kings found themselves obliged to ask for Venetian ships to get into Palestine; and when the Baldwins, the Montmorencies, and the counts of Champagne and of Montfort contracted alliance with these merchants to conquer and share the empire of Constantinople.
This superiority of the Venetians over other European peoples—we except the Tuscans, whose literary glory gives them an infinite ascendency—was maintained until well into the fifteenth century. All French, German, and English towns were a formless mass of houses without architecture or monuments. The lords of these countries lived in melancholy fortresses, and hardly knew the meaning of luxury and art. At this epoch there was neither letters nor elegance except in Italy and the part of Spain occupied by the Moors. It would hardly be just to make out that all these advantages were derived from one sole cause. Venice no doubt owed her prosperity partly to the good fortune of having a regular government long before other nations. But this government which watched over the preservation of public fortune was not the cause of national wealth; that was entirely due to commerce. From the eighth century, the commerce of Venice with the East was sufficiently important to determine her to remain in alliance with the emperor Nicephorus, in spite of Charlemagne’s threats.
While, however, the Venetians enjoyed that opulence which is the just fruit of labour, they were kept by their sumptuary laws within the bounds of a wise economy—an economy which alone conserves the capital which feeds commerce and is sole regulator of the price of handiwork. Commerce has relations with the constitution. In the government of a despot it is founded on luxury, its only object being to procure the nation all that can minister to its pride, its luxuries, its fancies; in the government of many it is generally founded on economy. Standing between the voluptuous peoples of the East and the uncultivated European nations, the Venetians imitated the industry of the one and preserved the simplicity of the other.
During the first centuries of the Venetian Republic, all Europe was in an uncultured condition. Art had left ancient Italy to pass over to the empire and ornament the new capital of the world. But when Fortune arrived unexpectedly with gifts, she found no man ready to receive them. The peoples to whom Constantine had transported his throne had a taste for voluptuousness rather than a genius for activity. In this neighbourhood, a people of high antiquity, enlightened long before the barbarians of the West, owed to its traditions, its activity, its conquests, that variety of knowledge and works which distinguished civilised nations. The Venetians were continually changing the products of the East against merchandise from all Europe; to form such a chain of communication was much for a population of fishers. But they carried their industry even further. They saw that the Grecian Empire received many useful things from far-off countries and from peoples almost unknown, but also a multitude of superfluities which were becoming needful for a society more refined. They established themselves as near as they could to the source of these objects, and such was the success of their activity and courage that they became first the carriers and then the commercial masters of pleasure-loving Constantinople.
The peninsula of the Tauric Chersonese, situated at the end of the Black Sea, had long been for the great cities of the Hellespont and the Greek seas what Sicily had been for Rome—an inexhaustible storehouse assuring subsistence to the population. This peninsula fed Athens, and paid an annual tribute of 180,000 measures of wheat to Mithridates. It had abundant salt beds and furnished wools and hides. These objects of first necessity acquired a new value through the vicinity of a town like Constantinople. Marco Polo, the Venetian, speaks of a journey made on this coast by his father towards the middle of the thirteenth century.
The abundance of sequins throughout the East proves that the Venetians had great commerce there—that their coin was taken confidently, and that they were obliged to pay for a part of their purchases in ready money. There is another fact by which one can judge of the great number of Venetians spread through the Greek Empire. When Manuel Comnenus, imitating the example of Mithridates, arrested in one day all subjects of the republic found in the state, the prisons could hardly suffice to contain them; they had to fill the churches and monasteries. The difficulty of protecting their establishments in Asia, the jealousy of the Genoese, and the revolutions of the Eastern Empire, obliged the Venetians many times to seek new routes to re-establish their constantly interrupted commercial relations.
The story of the vicissitudes which have changed so often the course of commerce—that commerce which like a river pours continually into the West, is one well worthy of attention. It seemed that Europe could not suffice for herself. The activity of its inhabitants exhausted itself in a thousand ways which produced needs foreign to its welfare. From all time they counted eastern merchandise among objects of the first necessity, and this commerce has occupied the industry of several peoples more or less fortunately placed.[g]
Let us go back to Roman times, and trace briefly the development of trade routes.