much dexterity that they succeeded in making treaties with them by which they were allowed to occupy certain trading posts where the goods ordered might accumulate and their own wares be exchanged for the productions of Russia, Tartary, and Persia. The wily Genoese had bought from a Tartar prince, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, a small piece of land on the south-eastern shore of the Crimea on which to build a factory. Only a few rude cabins were raised at first, for stores and the dwellings of their agents; but the traffic soon brought together a large population, sumptuous palaces were erected, a strong and lofty wall was built around, and Kaffa[32] became one of the most opulent colonies of the republic, with a population at one time of 80,000.
The rival Venetians had their great deposit at the city of Azov, on the banks of the Don, twenty miles from its mouth. They were not the proprietors, and, although they received numerous favors from the Tartar governor, they were obliged to share them with the Genoese, Florentines, and others, who also did a flourishing business. The amount of goods collected there was so immense and the value so considerable, that when, as sometimes happened, a destructive fire broke out or the place was plundered, the loss was felt as a shock to commerce throughout the whole of Europe.
All along the coast of the Black Sea the Italians plied a profitable trade, and many merchants were settled at Trebizond, from which
vantage-ground they had an important communication open with Armenia, whose people, being united by religion to the Latins, granted them very valuable commercial privileges. The Venetians were favored above the rest. They had churches, magazines, and inns, coined money, and in all matters in dispute were tried by judges chosen among their countrymen, or rather their own fellow-citizens. They could introduce their goods without paying duty, freely traverse the kingdom, and monopolize the exportation of camel’s hair, which was an important article of traffic. The Genoese were no less enterprising than their rivals, and restored in the port of Trebizond a mole that had been built by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. Large quantities of India goods, and especially spiceries, were stored by Italian merchants in the warehouses of Trebizond, Damascus, and Alexandria. There were several overland routes by which this merchandise was transported, but none of them was safe, on account of the frequent revolutions in the countries through which they ran. Some of the caravans that brought the commodities of India and China passed through Balkh, the Baetria of the ancients and at one time the commercial centre of eastern Asia, then up to Bokhara, whence they descended the Oxus for a distance, touched at Khiva, and, traversing the Caspian Sea, ascended the river Kour (the Cyrus of Strabo, xi. p. 509) for seventy miles to its junction with the Aras (the Araxes of Herodotus, iv. 40), from which they crossed by a journey of four or five days into the historical Phasis at Sharapan and down to the Euxine. Another beaten track entered Syria by the Tigris and the Euphrates, and diverged towards the several
ports of Palestine and Asia Minor. It passed through Bagdad, which was a great commercial emporium during the middle ages and an entrepôt for the commodities of eastern and western Asia. A memorial of those days when Frank merchants, mingling with Persians, Arabs, Turks, Hindoos, Koords, and Armenians, ransacked her splendid bazaars, remains in our language in the word Baldachin, because canopies made of costly stuff interwoven with gold thread were manufactured in this city, which was known to the Italians as Baldacca, and in the adjective form Baldacchino. Much trade was also done by way of the Red Sea, Cairo, and Alexandria.
In all the ports of the Euxine and Mediterranean the Italians had shops and warehouses, and every rich company kept a number of factors, who despatched goods as they got orders and maintained the interests of their principals. An officer called a consul, who was appointed by the government at home, resided in each of these foreign sea-ports, to defend the rights of his countrymen, and decide differences among themselves, or between them and strangers. Consuls were recognized as official personages by the sovereign in whose territory they resided, and were honored as public magistrates by their own people, from whom they received certain fees for their support, according to the quality and amount of business they were called upon to perform.
The maritime republics of Italy were very fortunate in having transported the Crusaders to the Holy Land in their ships, for by this they acquired many rich establishments in the Levant, and it was not long before the dissolute and degraded
Greeks, who would neither take counsel in peace nor could defend themselves in war, became subject to the imperious will of the Italians.
The Venetians obtained in 1204 the fertile island of Candia, which became the centre of their extensive Egyptian and Asiatic trade. They also had a quarter in Constantinople, which they surrounded by a wall, the gates of which were guarded by their own soldiers, and a distinct anchorage for their own vessels in the Golden Horn. A senate and bailiff representing the doge held authority in this settlement, and exercised jurisdiction over the minor establishments of the republic in Roumelia.
The Genoese were still more powerful at the capital, and the Emperor Michael Palæologus, who was indebted to them for his return to the throne, had given them the beautiful suburbs of Pera and Galata, on an elevated plateau, which they made still more secure, under the elder Andronicus, by a moat and triple row of walls. To these places they transferred their stores and stock; nor was it long before the churches, palaces, warehouses, and public buildings of Pera vied in magnificence with those of the metropolis itself. The island of Chios, where gum-mastic was collected and the finest wine produced, was another of their colonies. These were all ruled by a podestà annually sent from Genoa. The Genoese and Venetians had also factories in Barbary, through which they drove a brisk trade with the interior of Africa. To them more than to any others was it due that for three hundred years the commerce of Italy was famous from the Straits of Gibraltar to the remotest gulf in the Euxine.