August 8, 1907] 



NA TURE 



567 



the following century. Florence, indeed, depended on 

 England, Spain, and Portugal for wools of fine quality, 

 its own and other wools of Italy being of very inferior 

 value, so that when four bales of English wool were 

 worth in Florence 240 gold tlorins the same quantity of 

 wool of Garfagna dell' Aquila was worth only 40 florins.' 

 The author of this work adds that he has found no 

 indication of the prices of the wools of Spain and Portugal 

 in Florence. Besides manufacturing cloths from the raw 

 material " Florence carried on a large trade in dressing 

 and finishing woollens manufactured in Flanders and 

 Brabant, and brought to Florence either by way of Paris 

 and the Saone-Rhone valley or by way of Germany and 

 across the Alps. In the time of Mocenigo many of these 

 products of Florentine industry came to Venice for export. 

 In the address already referred to Florence is said to have 

 sent to Venice every year 16,000 pieces of cloth, which 

 were sold to Aquila, Sicily, Syria, Candia, the Morea, 

 and Istria. 



It will be noticed that in the address above quoted 

 Mocenigo lays no special stress on the spice trade, but 

 there is not the slightest doubt that spices were amongst 

 the most important commodities with which the Venetians 

 provided a large part of the western world. Just as 

 nowadays the large trade of Britain in bulky goods makes 

 of this country a great entrepot for the more valuable and 

 less bulky, so in Venetian times the exceptionally large 

 population behind Venice receiving and supplying the bulky 

 goods thus fed the shipping which brought to Venice a 

 much larger proportion of the more valuable goods of the 

 East than was brought to other ports. But there is 

 plenty of direct evidence of the importance of Indian trade 

 to Italy in the Middle Ages. It is to be remembered that 

 of necessity this trade enriched other countries before it 

 reached V'enice, and in proof of its importance in the 

 Mediterranean generally one may call attention to the 

 investigations of the Venetian Marin Sanuto Torcello about 

 the end of the thirteenth century, who, we are told, saw 

 with indignation that the defeats of the Christians in 

 Palestine were specially due to the power of the Soldans 

 of Egypt, and perceiving that their great power derived 

 its nourishment from the commerce with the Indies, based 

 on that observation the projects which he urged on 

 Christendom for the overthrow of that power. It is 

 further significant that a sea way to India should have 

 been sought by Genoese as early as 1291," and even more 

 significant that a century later Venice should have found 

 it worth while to maintain a consul in Siam.' 



But the clearest evidence of the supreme importance of 

 the Indian trade to the Italian cities is to be found in 

 the results of the discovery which finally diverted from 

 Venice and the Mediterranean the great bulk of the Indian 

 trade until that trade had lost all the special significance 

 which it had retained for thousands of years. It need 

 hardly be said that I refer to the discovery of the sea 

 way to India by the Portuguese in 1407-9. Of the feel- 

 ing aroused in V'enice by this discovery Romanin has re- 

 produced,'' from the " Diarii " of Priuli, an interesting 

 contemporary record, written with reference to a despatch 

 to the Doge probably from Pietro Pasqualigo, a Venetian 

 envoy at Lisbon at the time of the return of the second 

 Portuguese voyage to India under Cabral. The letter is 

 stated to have reached Venice on July 24, 1501. After 

 giving the letter, in which we are told, among other 

 things, how the Portuguese had charged their ships at 

 Cochin with spices at a price which the writer feared to 

 mention, Priuli adds : " On the arrival of this news at 

 Venice all the city was deeply moved and remained 

 stupefied, and the wisest held it for the worst news that 

 could reach them. For, it being recognised that Venice 

 had risen to so high a degree of renown and wealth 

 solely by the commerce of the sea and by navigation, by 

 means of which every year a great quantity of spices was 

 brought thither, which foreigners then flocked together to 

 acquire, and that by their presence and the traffic they 

 obtained immense advantages, now by this new voyage the 



1 Il,:,l . vol. ii., p. OS. _ 



- See the account of this attempt and its results so far as they are known 

 In G. H. Perl7, " Der alteste Versuch zur Entdeckung des Seeweges nach 

 O-tindifn ■■ (Berlin, iSsq). 



3 Rom.anin, as ahove, vol. iii.. p. 335, note (5). 



'^ As above, vol. iv., p. 461. 



NO. 107 I, VOL. 76] 



spices would be brought from the Indies to Lisbon, where 

 Hungarians, Germans, Flemings, and French ' would seek 

 to acquire them, being able to get them there cheaply ; 

 and that because the spices that came to Venice passed 

 through the whole of Syria and the countries of the Soldan, 

 paying in every place exorbitant duties, so that at their 

 arrival at Venice they were so weighted that what at 

 first was of the value of a single ducat was raised in the 

 end to sixty and even a hundred ducats ; from which 

 vexations, the voyage by sea being exempt, it resulted 

 that Portugal could give them at a much lower price." 

 So said the wisest, but it is interesting also to note what 

 was said by the less wise. Priuli goes on : " And while 

 the wisest saw that, others refused to believe the story 

 [these, I presume, were the least wise], and others again 

 said that the King of Portugal would not be able to con- 

 tinue this navigation to Calicut, since of thirteen caravels 

 only si.x had returned safe, the loss would be greater than 

 the advantage, and that it would not be so easy to find 

 men who would consent to risk their lives in so long and 

 perilous a navigation ; that the Sultan of Alexandria, 

 seeing the loss of so fine a profit as that obtained by the 

 passage of the spices through his lands, would see to 

 that." 



But in this case it happened that the wisest were right. 

 The effects of this discovery were not long in making 

 themselves felt in the notable diminution in the sales of 

 spices at Venice. Under the date February, 1504, Priuli 

 enters in his diary, " The galleys of .Alexandria have 

 entered into harbour empty: a thing never before seen." 

 In the following month the same thing happened in the 

 case of the galleys from Beirut.^ Under August, 1506, it 

 is stated that the Germans at the fair of tJie preceding 

 month had bought very little. Various remedies for these 

 evils were thought of, and among these it is interesting 

 to note that in 1504 the Council of Ten seriously dis- 

 cussed a proposal to empower an envoy to the Sultan of 

 F.gypt to come to an agreement with him, if possible, for 

 the cutting of a canal through the Isthmus of Suez.' But 

 the proposal was not adopted. Other efforts to avert the 

 results of the great achievement of the Portuguese wore 

 vain. Other disasters befell the republic about the same 

 time. Not only was commerce taking another direction, 

 but, says Romanin, " the wars of Italy were emptying 

 the treasury, the Turkish power was despoiling the re- 

 public step by step of its possessions beyond the sea, and 

 Venice was beginning to descend that incline which was 

 to reduce it to a subordinate position among the powers 

 of Europe."* North Italy generally suffered at the same 

 time. The withdrawal of the greater part of the spice 

 trade, by diminishing the growth of wealth among the 

 inhabitants, made that part of the world a less important 

 market for manufactured goods. Countries outside of 

 Italy, where rival manufactures had already started, were 

 increasing their wealth more rapidly, and thus imparting 

 an increasing stimulus to their manufactures, and these 

 increased while those of Italy declined. In 1338 the 

 number of woollen factories in Florence is given at 200, 

 making in all 70,000 to 80,000 pieces of cloth in the year ; 

 in 1472 the number of shops or factories had risen to 

 270, but no estimate is given of the quantity of the pro- 

 duct; in 1529, however, the number of shops is said to 

 have sunk to 150, and the quantity of cloth manufactured 

 to 23,000 pieces per annum, and in the time of the editor 

 of Balducci Pegolotti the quantity was only about 3000 

 pieces annually.* 



Before going further, however, there is one point in 

 the comments on the discovery of the sea way to India 

 quoted above from the " Diarii " of Priuli which calls 

 for notice. Hungarians, Germans, Flemings, and French, 

 he observes, will in future go to Lisbon to get the spices 

 of India more cheaply than at Venice. This remark 

 illustrates the difficulty of shifting the geographical point 

 of view according to circumstances, a difficulty of which 

 at all times abundant illustrations can be offered. The 



1 We muiit recognise, wiih due humility, that the English are of little 

 account in Venetian eyes in 1 toi. 



- G. Goen, " Le Orandi Strade del Commercio Internazionale proposte 

 fino dal Sec. XVI " (Leghorn, 1888), p. 71. 



^ Coen, as ahovCj pp. 82-3. 



^ .'^s above, vol. iv., p. 466. 



5 " Delia Decima," as above, vol. ii., pp. 64, 105. 



