[32] See the price averages, above, p. 680, note [12]. The absence of marked influence upon prices exerted by the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks deserves special attention, since that conquest has been imagined to have closed the routes of the Levant to such an extent as to force the western Europeans to seek now routes. If this had been the case the price of spices must have shown a marked increase between 1453 and 1498, which it did not do. Nor was it the agencies engaged in the Mediterranean trade which sought the new routes, but Atlantic powers in no relation with the Turks. It is not even certain that the desire to profit from a more direct spice trade emerged in the consciousness of western Europeans before 1490 (see H. Vignaud, Histoire critique de la Grande Entreprise de Christophe Colomb, Paris, 1911, i. 213). The entire hypothesis seems to be a legend of recent date, developed out of the catastrophic theory which made the fall of Constantinople an event of primary importance in the history of mankind. The great discoveries had their origin in a separate chain of causes, into which the influence of the Moslems of Spain, North Africa, and the Mameluke empire entered, but not that of the Ottoman Turks.
[33] R. Fulin, Diarii e Diaristi Veneziani, Venice, 1881, pp. 155 ff. (Dal Diario di Girolamo Priuli, 1494-1512); Marino Sanuto, Diarii, 1496-1533, Venice, 1879-1903; passim.
[34] Fulin, pp. 165, 173, 175.
[35] Faria E. Souza, as epitomized by J. Briggs in his History of the Rise of the Mohamedan Power in India, London, 1829, iv. 501 ff. Of 114 ships sent in the first ten years 55 returned; Heyd, Colonie commerciali, ii. 277.
[36] Albuquerque took Ormuz in 1507, and made an attempt on Aden in 1513. Lorenzo Almeida was killed while fighting the Mameluke fleet in 1508, and his father destroyed the Egyptian fleet in 1509. Thus began a long struggle; in which the Portuguese tried to stifle the direct trade between India and the Levant. See, for a general statement, Heyd, Colonie commerciali, ii. 273.
[37] Fulin, pp. 160, 164 ff.
[38] Marino Sanuto, op. cit., xxiv. 22-36.
[39] Sec above, note 23.
[40] A. Vandal, in his Voyages da Marquis de Nointel (1076-80), Paris, 1900, p. 12, says: ‘La Mer Rouge se ferma totalement vers 1630 et l’Égypte devint une impasse.’ P. Masson, Histoire du Commerce français dans le Levant au XVIIe Siècle, Paris, 1896, pp. i, 386 and 411, refers to the continuance of this trade (as late as 1670), but he finds no mention in the records at Marseilles of the importation of spices from Aleppo and Cairo after 1700. Nevertheless a number of pieces of evidence can be adduced to show that the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf were far from being closed, and that if Indian wares rarely passed through to Europe, this was only because it was not profitable to purchase them at Cairo and the Syrian entrepôts and ship them westward in competition with the Cape route. See, for example, Pierre Belon du Mans, Observations, 1555, pp. 121a, 158b; Travels of P. Teixeira (translated), London, 1852 (Hakluyt Society), pp. 118 ff. et passim (the Venetians bought at Aleppo in 1605, among other wares, cinnamon, cloves, nutmegs, and mace); J. de Thévenot (translated), Travels into the Levant, London, 1686, part i, pp. 152 ff., part ii. pp. 72 ff. F. Vansleb (translated), The Present State of Egypt, London, 1678, pp. 118-27, gives a long list of commodities exchanged between Europe and Egypt, with their prices, and mentions all the ordinary spices as purchasable by Europeans in Egypt in 1673. Hasselquist, writing on the Levant about 1749, describes the caravan trade which was bringing Indian stuffs and spices from Mecca to Egypt, North Africa, and Syria (i. 124 ff.), and the Indian trade by the Red Sea and Persian Gulf into Turkey (ii. 101, 124). Baron de Tott, in his Mémoires, Amsterdam, 1784-5, part iv, pp. 54 ff., found Cairo a great entrepôt between East and West: ‘le choc des ballots marqués à Madras & à Marseille semble fixer un centre à l’univers.’ C. T. Volney in his Voyage en Syrie et en Égypte, published 1783-5 (i. 189 ff., ii. 138 ff.), describes the same trade in some detail. G. A. Olivier in his Voyage dans l’Empire Othoman, l’Égypte, et la Perse, Paris, an XII, iii. 327 ff., iv. 273 ff., finds the same double trade active and flourishing, and he states that after 1498 all the products of the Orient for the use of the Moslems continued to come through Bagdad and Egypt (iv. 430).
[41] Heyd merely states that no gain accrued to the trade of Syria and Egypt from the Turkish conquest (Commerce du Levant, ii. 546). Thorold Rogers (op. cit., iv. 653-7) affirms that before the Portuguese discoveries the Turks ‘appear to have blocked every passage but one’, and that ‘their conquest of Egypt proceeded to block the only remaining road’, It has been shown that they ‘blocked’ no roads, that two (through Syria and Egypt) were out of their power until 1516 and 1517, and that they were actually desirous of keeping these roads open. Rogers finds confirmation of his view in the rise of the prices of oriental wares after 1520. At first sight he might seem justified. By twenty-year periods the price of a dozen pounds of pepper in England in the sixteenth century was 16, 23, 26, and 39 shillings. But the price of a quarter of wheat, by his own figures, was 6, 7-1/2, 13, and 15 shillings for the same periods. The fact is that pepper and other oriental wares rose with the general rise of prices in the sixteenth century, almost certainly caused by the addition to the European stock of gold and silver from the Americas. The evidence of price cannot be said to indicate disturbance from the Turkish conquest of Egypt; indeed it shows singularly little from the doubling of the Cape, which might be presumed to have caused a noticeable fall in prices.