In 1528 Francis I opened negotiations with Suleiman, and French ships began to compete with those of Venice and Barcelona for spices at Alexandria.[42] The 10 per cent duty which had been exacted by the Mamelukes was presently reduced to 5, and later to 3 per cent.[43] While the Turks despised the Venetians, as men who would endure indignities rather than lose money, they respected the French, and these rapidly gained on the Venetians and in time surpassed them in amount of trade.[44]
In the thirties of the sixteenth century Suleiman undertook two great projects which were evidently designed to open and secure the southern trade-routes.[45] He captured Bagdad and the lands at the head of the Persian Gulf, and he sent a fleet from Suez for an unsuccessful attempt to expel the Portuguese from Diu in Gujarat. Thirty years later Turkish power was extended on the east of the Red Sea to Aden, and another expedition was sent out, which likewise failed to dislodge the Portuguese from Diu. An active trade continued through Alexandria and Aleppo; for instance, about the year 1550 most of the rhubarb used in Europe came through the latter city.[46] It appears that in the last quarter of the century, when Portugal passed into the hands of Philip II of Spain, during an era of high prices, much of the prosperity of the old southern routes returned, and there was a heavy traffic in spices through the Turkish dominions.[47] But the more energetic Dutch and English found their way also round the Cape, and rapidly drew the Western traffic in spices again into that channel. They also opened commercial relations with the Levant, which rivalled their trade with the East. In the latter part of the seventeenth century they began to bring pepper and spices even round Africa to the ports of the Levant.[48] By this time the Venetian trade had fallen greatly,[49] but the French maintained a place of commercial supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean. In the eighteenth century few wares came through from East to West, though silver passed in no small quantities in the opposite direction. The coins of Spain, Germany, and Holland helped to convey to western Europe the products of Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and Persia; and the same coins served again to bring to Turkey and Persia the spices, silks, and precious stones of the East.[50] ‘Short haul’ goods continued to move freely and in large quantities along most of the old routes.[51]
There is evidence to indicate that no one of the shorter routes, had there been no Turks nor any other nation on their lines to take toll upon wares, could have competed for the trade of southern Asia with western Europe against the Cape route. The land transit alone by the Persian Gulf route seems to have cost more than the sea freight from India to Europe.[52] A calculation made about the year 1800 shows that a shipment from India to France by way of the Red Sea would probably make a profit of 4 per cent., whereas the same consignment if sent round the Cape would earn from 36 to 48 per cent.; if a Christian power were in possession of the Red Sea and Egypt the gain by that route would be not more than 10 per cent.[53] The Red Sea is so straight and narrow, and so strewn with rocks and shallows, that sailing-vessels have to wait for favourable winds and waste much time. The Indiamen were not well adapted to this sea, so that transhipment was customary at Aden, Mocha, or Jedda. There was always a transit by land, of some ninety miles at the shortest (from Suez to Cairo), then a passage by small vessel on the Nile, and another transhipment at Alexandria.
On the other hand the time necessary for a voyage between India and Europe averaged not much less by the Cape route than by the Red Sea.[54] Until the invention of the steamship, which could run straight through the Red Sea without reference to the winds, and the excavation of the Suez Canal, which eliminated the land transit, the Cape route seems to have been cheaper than all others for long distance wares.[55]
It appears, then, that in the first of the two views set forth at the beginning of this article, the relation of the Turks to the change of the trade-routes has been misconceived. They were not active agents in deliberately obstructing the routes. They did not by their notorious indifference and conservatism greatly, if at all on the whole, increase the difficulties of the oriental traffic. Nor did they make the discovery of new routes imperative. On the contrary, they lost by the discovery of a new and superior route. Had there been no way around Africa the whole story of the Levant since 1500 might have been very different. In the first place, the Mameluke sultans might have found in their uninterrupted trade sufficient financial support to enable them to resist successfully the attack of the Turks in 1516. But if the Turks had conquered Egypt while the full stream of oriental trade still ran through it, they must either have been deprived far sooner than was actually the case of the control of these routes, or they would have had to accommodate themselves to the great and increasing trade through their dominions. In the latter case they might have been forced into adopting modern ways, and into adding to their wonderful capacity for territorial unification a parallel scheme of organizing their trade. The decay of the lands of the Levant (neglecting the hypothesis of climatic change) might have been arrested and reversed. But there was a Cape route, and for three centuries and a half it took the bulk of the oriental trade. Selim I and Suleiman, the greatest of Ottoman conquerors, were powerless in their efforts to bring back the lucrative flow of Eastern wares. The shifting of the trade-routes was done, not by the Turks, but in their despite and to their disadvantage. The desolation of Egypt and Syria, the decline of the Italian cities, perhaps the very decay of the Ottoman empire itself, are due, not to them, but to the great discoveries, in which, positively or negatively, they had no discernible part.
A. H. Lybyer.
FOOTNOTES:
[*] All rights reserved.
[1] W. Heyd, Le Colonie commerciali degli Italiani in Oriente nel Medio Evo, Venice, 1866-8. ii. 167.