The Story of Geographical Discovery: How the World Became Known

by Joseph Jacobs

These are only a few selections from Barrett's list, but will sufficiently indicate what a large number of household luxuries, and even necessities, were derived from Asia in the Middle Ages. The Arabs had practically the monopoly of this trade, and as Europe had scarcely anything to offer in exchange except its gold and silver coins, there was a continuous drain of the precious metals from West to East, rendering the Sultans and Caliphs continuously richer, and culminating in the splendours of Solomon the Magnificent. Alexandria was practically the centre of all this trade, and most of the nations of Europe found it necessary to establish factories in that city, to safeguard the interests of their merchants, who all sought for Eastern luxuries in its port Benjamin of Tudela, a Jew, who visited it about 1172, gives the following description of it:—

"The city is very mercantile, and affords an excellent market to all nations. People from all Christian kingdoms resort to Alexandria, from Valencia, Tuscany, Lombardy, Apulia, Amalfi, Sicilia, Raguvia, Catalonia, Spain, Roussillon, Germany, Saxony, Denmark, England, Flandres, Hainault, Normandy, France, Poitou, Anjou, Burgundy, Mediana, Provence, Genoa, Pisa, Gascony, Arragon, and Navarre. From the West you meet Mohammedans from Andalusia, Algarve, Africa, and Arabia, as well as from the countries towards India, Savila, Abyssinia, Nubia, Yemen, Mesopotamia, and Syria, besides Greeks and Turks. From India they import all sorts of spices, which are bought by Christian merchants. The city is full of bustle, and every nation has its own fonteccho (or hostelry) there."

Of all these nations, the Italians had the shortest voyage to make before reaching Alexandria, and the Eastern trade practically fell into their hands before the end of the thirteenth century. At first Amalfi and Pisa were the chief ports, and, as we have seen, it was at Amalfi that the mariner's compass was perfected; but soon the two maritime towns at the heads of the two seas surrounding Italy came to the front, owing to the advantages of their natural position. Genoa and Venice for a long time competed with one another for the monopoly of this trade, but the voyage from Venice was more direct, and after a time Genoa had to content itself with the trade with Constantinople and the northern overland route from China. From Venice the spices, the jewels, the perfumes, and stuffs of the East were transmitted north through Augsburg and Nürnberg to Antwerp and Bruges and the Hanse Towns, receiving from them the gold they had gained by their fisheries and textile goods. England sent her wool to Italy, in order to tickle her palate and her nose with the condiments and perfumes of the East.

The wealth and importance of Venice were due almost entirely to this monopoly of the lucrative Eastern trade. By the fifteenth century she had extended her dominions all along the lower valley of the Po, into Dalmatia, parts of the Morea, and in Crete, till at last, in 1489, she obtained possession of Cyprus, and thus had stations all the way from Aleppo or Alexandria to the north of the Adriatic. But just as she seemed to have reached the height of her prosperity—when the Aldi were the chief printers in Europe, and the Bellini were starting the great Venetian school of painting—a formidable rival came to the front, who had been slowly preparing a novel method of competition in the Eastern trade for nearly the whole of the fifteenth century. With that method begins the great epoch of modern geographical discovery.

[Authorities: Heyd, Commerce du Levant, 2 vols., 1878.]

CHAPTER VI

TO THE INDIES EASTWARD—PRINCE HENRY AND VASCO DA GAMA

Up to the fifteenth century the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula were chiefly occupied in slowly moving back the tide of Mohammedan conquest, which had spread nearly throughout the country from 711 onwards. The last sigh of the Moor in Spain was to be uttered in 1492—an epoch-making year, both in history and in geography. But Portugal, the western side of the peninsula, had got rid of her Moors at a much earlier date—more that 200 years before—though she found it difficult to preserve her independence from the neighbouring kingdom of Castile. The attempt of King Juan of Castile to conquer the country was repelled by João, a natural son of the preceding king of Portugal, and in 1385 he became king, and freed Portugal from any danger on the side of Castile by his victory at Aljubarrota. He married Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt; and his third son, Henry, was destined to be the means of revolutionising men's views of the inhabited globe. He first showed his mettle in the capture of Ceuta, opposite Gibraltar, at the time of the battle of Agincourt, 1415, and by this means he first planted the Portuguese banner on the Moorish coast. This contact with the Moors may possibly have first suggested to Prince Henry the idea of planting similar factory-fortresses among the Mussulmans of India; but, whatever the cause, he began, from about the year 1418, to devote all his thoughts and attention to the possibility of reaching India otherwise than through the known routes, and for that purpose established himself on the rocky promontory of Sagres, almost the most western spot on the continent of Europe.

Here he established an observatory, and a seminary for the training of theoretical and practical navigators. He summoned thither astronomers and cartographers and skilled seamen, while he caused stouter and larger vessels to be built for the express purpose of exploration. He perfected the astrolabe (the clumsy predecessor of the modern sextant) by which the latitude could be with some accuracy determined; and he equipped all his ships with the compass, by which their steering was entirely determined. He brought from Majorca (which, as we have seen, was the centre of practical map-making in the fourteenth century) one Mestre Jacme, "a man very skilful in the art of navigation, and in the making of maps and instruments." With his aid, and doubtless that of others, he set himself to study the problem of the possibility of a sea voyage to India round the coast of Africa.