174 THE HISTORY OF COMMERCE. 
traffic between Europe and ihe East to an extraordinary degree ; and 
whilst they continued, Venice and Genoa through their maritime power 
and enterprising spirit became renowned. They carried in their ships a 
number of Crusaders to the East, and found it convenient to establish 
new connections for their traffic, obtaining also permission to preserve 
for themselves many colonies for their extensive employes, so that at 
length the commerce of the Levant, of India and China, and of all 
countries at that time known came into their hands. 
Venice, for a long time in possession of Constantinople, but dis- 
possessed of this place through its powerful rival the Genoese, em- 
braced the commerce of Syria and Egypt, where its warehouses were at 
Ptolemais or Acre and Alexandria ; Venice had Cyprus, Rhodes, Samos, 
Chios, Canclia, Negropont, several tracts of coast on the Morea, the Ionian 
Islands, and Dalmatia, and had gained important points in the Archi- 
pelago and the Adriatic Sea ; whilst Genoa drew to herself the commerce 
of Constantinople, Asia Minor, and the Black sea ; Genoa had taken into 
her possession the peninsular of Taurus or the Crimea, and had made the 
seaport Kaffa a magnificent commercial depot, into which, by caravans, 
Russian, Persian, and Indian merchandise flowed, and the merchandise 
of the Levant by Constantinople arrived from the West. Each city en- 
deavoured by emulation and persecution to obtain the riches and domi- 
nion of the sea, till at length, after many years' fighting, Venice was 
overpowered by Genoa, — the dominion of Lombardy and the Mediter- 
ranean was decided. 
Since then, the caravan traffic from the East through Russia to the 
Baltic has diminished, and Italians carried the Eastern and Indian 
wares, at the same time with their own products and rich fabrics, in 
silk, wool, paper, glass, looking-glasses, silver, steel, and many articles 
of luxury, whose manufacture they had learned in the East, not only to 
the North West of Europe as far as the Netherlands, where, under the 
Lombard name, they were seen by the whole of Northern Europe. The 
Italians also erected large warehouses and fairs at Bruges, Ghent, 
Brussels and Antwerp ; but they sent goods to Southern Germany, 
and indeed from the Black Sea, along the Danube to Vienna and 
Ratisbon, as also from Italy to Augsburg, which cities first at this time 
became noted as depots for Italian Levantic commerce. 
About this period the Italian cities formed for themselves a mari- 
time law, which was confirmed by Rhodes in the South, already in early 
times renowned for navigation and commerce, by Wisby in the North, 
and later by Barcelona, Marseilles and Venice, so also in the thirteenth 
century exchange laws originated at Florence, next to which also for 
the relief of commercial business in the twelfth century the first Giro- 
bank was established at Venice. 
Whilst these things were going forward in Italy, through brisk 
commercial traffic several cities had sprung up in Germany, and this 
would have been yet more the case, had not in those rough times the 
