Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe by Pirenne Henri;Clegg Ivy E.;

Author:Pirenne, Henri;Clegg, Ivy E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barakaldo Books
Published: 2020-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER V — INTERNATIONAL TRADE TO THE END OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

I. COMMODITIES AND DIRECTIONS OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE{137}

STRANGE though it may seem, medieval commerce developed from the beginning under the influence not of local but of export trade. It was this alone which gave birth to that class of professional merchants which was the chief instrument of the economic revival of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In both parts of Europe Where it started, Northern Italy and the Low Countries, the story is the same. The impetus was given by long-distance trade.{138} This is clear directly we examine the nature of the goods carried, for all were of foreign origin, and indeed early medieval commerce bears a certain resemblance to colonial trade.

Spices were the first objects of this trade and never ceased to occupy the chief place in it down to the very end. They created the wealth not only of Venice, but of all the great ports of the Western Mediterranean. Directly navigation was re-established between the Tyrrhenian Sea, Africa and the ports of the Levant in the course of the eleventh century, they were the cargo par excellence of merchant ships. Syria, to which quantities were brought by caravans coming from Arabia, India and China, was the principal objective of European ships, until the day when the discovery of new maritime routes enabled the Portuguese to supply themselves direct. Everything combined to give spices pre-eminence, both the ease with which they were shipped and the high prices they commanded. Thus medieval trade began as a trade in luxury goods, that is to say, a trade bringing in big profits at a relatively small cost, and this character it preserved, as we shall see, almost to the end of its history. Heavy consignments of raw materials or of articles of common consumption, with the enormous freight charges and the huge accumulations of capital which they imply, were unknown in those days, and here is to be found the most striking contrast between medieval and modern trade. The equipment of a medieval port consisted of modest wooden quays, provided with one or two cranes, alongside which ships of 200 to 600 tons could he. This was all that was needed for the handling, loading and shipment of some hundreds of tons of pepper, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, sugar-cane, etc., which formed the precious cargo of the merchant ships.

The Western peoples who, from the end of the Merovingian era, had left off using spices, welcomed them with growing eagerness. They soon recovered their place in the diet of the upper classes of society, and the more commerce exported them north of the Alps, the more the demand for them increased. However fast and often the cargoes arrived, there was no risk of a lack of buyers; no medieval shipowner had to fear an accumulation of stocks, or a ruinous fall of prices, for every merchant ship returning to its port of register brought with it the certainty of high profits. But there

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