CHAP xili. TRADE WITH ASIA. 349 



CHAPTER XIII. 



On the interchange of the precious metals between the eastern 

 and western parts of the civilized world in the period be- 

 tween the dissolution of the western Roman empire and 

 the discovery of America. 



IT would lead far from the immediate purpose 

 of this inquiry to enter into the consideration 

 of that extensive subject, the commerce between 

 Asia and Europe in the period in question. It 

 would lead still farther to take a view of the poli- 

 tical events of the period. They both had, how- 

 ever, a considerable influence on the locality of 

 the metallic money, as they removed it from one 

 part of the world to another, though they did not 

 produce any great effect on the increase or de- 

 crease of the whole quantity. The crusades, which 

 occupied a long and stirring space, and which 

 carried the population and wealth of the western 

 world to the boundaries of Asia, must have 

 made the precious metals more abundant in the 

 Greek empire, contracted as it then was, and in 

 the territories under the dominion of the Maho- 

 metans ; but the commerce carried on by the 

 Venetians, the Genoese, and the Pisans must 

 have brought some portion of it back again to 



