CHAP. I.]

TRADE OF BARCELONA, VENICE, ETC.

19

insurance, and established, in 1401, a bank of exchange and deposit called Taula de Cambi, or table of exchange.28 The bank of Venice, to which we shall have occasion to advert further on, had indeed been established before this date, but on quite a different principle. The bank of Genoa, or chamber of St. George, dates from 1407, and was, like that of Venice, originally designed to manage the capital of the public debt, though it afterwards became also a trading company. The bank of Barcelona soon rose to be a great commercial authority, and in 1404 we find it appealed to by the magistrates of Bruges, respecting the usage of bills of exchange.29 But one of the greatest services rendered to the commercial world by Barcelona was its maritime laws, to which we shall have occasion to advert further on.

The principal trading cities of the Mediterranean, besides Barcelona, were Venice and Genoa. After the Florentines had acquired the port of Leghorn in 1425, they also began to compete with the Venetians in the eastern trade carried on through Alexandria, in which the Medici were deeply concerned.30 But of all these cities, Venice, by the extent of its traffic, stood conspicuously at the head.

Previously to the fourteenth century the route for Indian commodities had lain through Bagdad to Antioch and Licia, on the Mediterranean; and according to Marino Sanuto, a noble Venetian, in his work entitled Libri Secretorum Fidelium Crucis 31, addressed to the Pope in 1321, its path, for bulky goods at least, was first diverted in his time to Alexandria, in which it continued down to the latest period. Some idea of the wealth and commerce of the Queen of the Adriatic, in the early part of the fifteenth century, is afforded by a speech of the Doge Tommas Mocenigo, in 1418. He states the estimated value of the exports at ten million ducats, the profits on which were reckoned at four millions. One of the chief articles of Venetian export was the cloth of Florence, which they distributed to the rest of Italy and to the East; while the Florentines took in return the goods imported by the Vene

The marine of Venice consisted of 3000 small vessels, carrying 17,000 seamen, or on an average something under six each; 300 ships carrying 8000 men, or about 27 each; and 45 galleys of various sizes, formidable vessels, with crews of 11,000 men, or on an average of 244 each. The houses in Venice were estimated

28 Capmany, Memorias Historicas de Barcelona, ap. Macpherson, vol. i. p. 612. "Ibid. p. 615.

30 Roscoe, Lorenzo de Medici, vol. i.

p. 136.

31 Published in the Gesta Dei per Francos, edited by Bongarsius, tom. ii. Hanov. 1611.

20

20

DESTRUCTION OF OVERLAND TRADE.

[BOOK III.

32

at seven million ducats, and their rents at half a million.3 These particulars show an accuracy of statistical details in the Venetian government, which at that early period might perhaps be sought elsewhere in vain.33

As the overland transit of Indian commodities not only involved great expense in itself, but was also further burthened by the customs demanded by the sovereigns of Egypt, it is easy to see how great a blow the discovery of the maritime passage must have inflicted on Venetian commerce. It continued, however, to exist, though in a declining state. After the conquest of Egypt by Selim I., in 1517, the Turkish Sultans obtained a direct interest in this trade, which they in fact commanded; and it has been remarked by the Abbé Raynal that, but for the route by the Cape of Good Hope, they would have grown so great by that monopoly as to become altogether irresistible. After Selim's conquest, the Venetians hastened to conclude with him a commercial treaty, the principal object of which was to ruin the Portuguese, by laying heavy duties on their commodities, while the privileges of the Venetians were extended. This method, however, availed but little against the advantages enjoyed by the Portuguese, and the Venetians endeavoured to effect a compromise by offering King Emmanuel of Portugal, in 1521, to buy at a fixed price all the spices over and above what was required for the home consumption of that kingdom: but the Portuguese government was too prudent to sacrifice the advantage which it had acquired. In 1538, Sultan Solyman fitted out a formidable fleet in the Red Sea to drive the Portuguese from their new settlement in India; but the enterprise failed. It appears from the computation of a merchant named Munn 34 that the Venetians could not sell goods brought by the overland route at much less than three times their original cost, while the freight by the Cape of Good Hope would not be much more than half their first value: from which it follows that the Portuguese would be able to sell the commodities of India at half the price required by the Venetians; a state of things which was necessarily followed by a decline of the Venetian trade. There were other causes that acted in favour of the Portuguese. The settlements which they founded in India enabled them to command its markets and thus to forestall the Venetians. These settlements, indeed, it took some time to establish; but the Portuguese forts and factories were ultimately dotted along the coasts

92 Sanuto, Vite de' Duchi, in Muratori, Scripp. t. xxii. p. 959.

33 The principal work on Venetian commerce is Marini, Storia civile e politica

del Commercio de' Veneziani, published in 1789.

34 Apud Robertson, Hist. Disquisition on Anc. India, § iv.

CHAP. I.]

DECLINE OF VENICE.

21

from the Cape of Good Hope to the Canton River, and in many of the islands from Madagascar to the Moluccas. Nor must we overlook the severe wound inflicted on Venice by the wars which followed the League of Cambray.

By the commercial revolution produced through these events, the general interests of Europe were undoubtedly promoted; yet the decline of Venice was in some respects to be lamented. At the close of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, that republic was the centre of liberal ideas, which there found their best home. Yet in spite of this tolerance, the strength of the Venetian government offered a model for the study even of despotic princes; and it was this quality rather than its liberality which procured it the praises of Machiavel and La Boétie.35

The liberality of Venice was also displayed in the encouragement of the press. Printing had not been invented many years when, in 1469, the Venetians invited to their city the printers Wendelin of Spires, John of Cologne, and Nicholas Janson. Twenty years later Aldus Manutius began his labours, who effected a revolution in the book trade by discarding the pedantic folio for the more convenient octavo, of which only few had been printed before, and thus rendering literature more popular. Venetian books soon became an article of trade, but before the end of the fifteenth century, the English printers had begun to compete with them, as appears from the following colophon to a Latin translation of the Epistles of Phalaris published at Oxford in 1485:

Celatos, Veneti, nobis transmittere libros

Cedite; nos aliis vendimus, O Veneti.

We have already alluded to the bank of Venice. In the twelfth century the republic having contracted a large debt through its wars, the Doge Vitale Michel II. forced a loan from its most opulent citizens, which was funded at four per cent. interest, and a "Chamber of Loans established. This is the earliest instance of the funding system. The creditors became subsequently incorporated into a company, and by the increase of commerce was gradually developed, about 1171, the Bank of Venice.37

In the middle ages there had been a considerable overland traffic between Venice and Germany, yet always subject to many casualties and interruptions. The Scalas often seized the goods which passed through the Veronese, in order that the merchants might be compelled to purchase a free transit for them; and the

Michelet, Renaissance, p. 150. 25 Middleton's Origin of Printing in England, p. 11.

37 Macpherson, Annals of Commerce, vol. i. p. 341.

22

22

GERMAN COMMERCE.

[Book III. Tyrolese Government had a regular commissary at Augsburg to collect customs dues, which were also sometimes exacted by the Emperor.

The great rise of prices observed in Germany between the years 1516 and 1522 excited universal discontent. The price of some of the best India spices was quadrupled. Various causes were assigned for this rise; the increased demand for such articles, the Venetian war, which had broken up old connections, the fall in the value of money consequent on the importation of gold and silver from America, and above all the monopolies by which the trade of Germany was conducted. In 1522 the Diet passed a resolution forbidding associations with a larger capital than 50,000 florins, in order that the smaller houses might be able to compete. At the same time a comprehensive plan was formed of an Imperial customs system, by which the frontiers of the empire, in which the Netherlands were included, were to be enclosed in a line of custom houses. Articles of the first necessity, as corn, wine, beer, cattle, &c., were to be left untaxed, and all other exports or imports were to pay an ad valorem duty of four per cent. But this grand plan of centralisation by the Imperial council was opposed by the German cities, who sent an embassy to Charles at Valladolid in 1523, and persuaded him to withhold his assent to it.38

The German commercial league of the Hansa continued to exist, though in a declining state, through the whole of the sixteenth century, till it was at last demolished by the Thirty Years' War. In the middle of the sixteenth century it still comprehended between sixty and seventy towns. The Hansa was divided into four districts or regions, at the head of which stood Lubeck, Cologne, Brunswick, and Dantzic. Lubeck was the head of the league, which in the early part of the century was still vigorous enough to make war on neighbouring states. In 1509 some of its towns engaged in hostilities with John, King of Denmark, captured his fleet at Helsingör, and carried off his bells, which they hung in their chapels. In 1511 the Lubeck fleet returned into harbour with eighteen Dutch ships which they had captured. The Lubeckers also frequently seized many a robber knight in the midst of his court.

The Hansa had factories in foreign countries, of which the principal were London, Bruges, Novogorod in Russia, and Bergen in Norway. After the Thirty Years' War, only Lubeck, Hamburg, and Bremen again united. Such a league could only be necessary

Ranke, Deutsche Gesch. B. ii. S. 127 f.

CHAP. I.]

TRADE OF THE NETHERLANDS.

23

in the infancy of commerce to protect it against feudalism; but it had answered a good purpose in its time, and it may be remarked that in Germany, as elsewhere, the Hanse, or commercial towns, and especially Nuremberg, were the great centres of liberal opinions, as well as of literature and art.39

The Austrian possessions in the Netherlands opened an outlet for German maritime trade, carried on by the great commercial houses in Augsburg and Nuremberg, which engaged in the East India, and afterwards in the West India trade. Hence, in part, the rise of Antwerp.40 But the Netherlands had owed their first prosperity chiefly to manufactures, drawing the raw materials from other countries,-silk from Italy, wool from England, - and dispersing through Europe their manufactured goods. Bruges, though smaller than Ghent, was more splendid, and the seat of a greater trade. During the middle ages the great manufacturing and trading cities of Flanders were far from being under the absolute control of the Earl, and often acted as independent communities. They sometimes entered into separate treaties for themselves, as for instance Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres, with King Edward II. in 1325; and the Earl frequently required them to be parties to treaties which he made with other Sovereigns." Charles V. struck a fatal blow at Ghent when he deprived it of its liberties. After the discovery of the maritime route to India, both that city and Bruges yielded to the rising prosperity of Antwerp, which throve upon its great trade with Lisbon. The latter metropolis, although the staple for East Indian commodities, neglected to push the advantage which she had thus acquired by becoming the distributor of them through Europe. Other nations were obliged to fetch from Lisbon, in their own vessels, the goods which they needed; a circumstance detrimental to the Portuguese by discouraging their own marine, and awakening the competition of foreigners. In the course of the fifteenth century Amsterdam had also risen to considerable importance, chiefly through the herring fishery; but its great transmarine commerce did not commence till the following century. William Benkels, or Benkelens, of Biervliet, in Flanders, who died about 1447, has enjoyed the reputation of having first cured herrings; and Charles V. and his sister Mary are said to have paid a visit to his tomb, and to have offered up prayers for his soul as a benefactor of his country. 40 Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte, B. i. S. 212.

The principal work on the Hanseatic League is that of Sartorius, Urkundliche Geschichte des Ursprunges der Deutschen Hansa, edited by Lappenberg, Hamburg,

1830.