venice and the spice trade

Thus began the era of great explorers like Columbus or da Gama. The commercial decline of Venice, with specific regard to spices, is traditionally associated with the agreement made between Vasco da Gama and the sultans of Cochin Cananor in Calicut (Kerala, India), which guaranteed the supply of the most precious varieties of spices to the Portuguese merchants, making Lisbon the new capital of this trade. Pepper, along with other spices such as cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, were hot commodities that drove European nations to sail across oceans searching for new routes to the spice-rich Orient. [43] Christian missionaries, such as Saint Francis Xavier, were instrumental in the spread of Christianity in the East. Venice relied on the Ottomans for wheat, spices, raw silk, cotton, leather, and calcified ashes for the Murano glass industry. Spices Trade and the Merchants of Venice Between the period 9 -15th century, the Republic of Venice held the monopoly of European trade including spices with the Middle East. [48] Conversely, Southeast Asian cuisine and crops was also introduced to India and Sri Lanka, where rice cakes and coconut milk-based dishes are still dominant. The spices were mostly harvested by slaves, and then sailed or paddled in tiny Venice lost monopoly in spice trade and suffered losses in their economy. [51] Opium was a part of the spice trade, and some people involved in the spice trade were driven by opium addiction. Europe used brutal tactics in India and Southeast Asia in efforts to get in on the spice trade. As early as the 13th century a group of traders from Germany were given permission to build a warehouse on the Grand Canal. In Alexandria spices were bought by the Venetians and the Genoese and then shipped to Europe. Realizing that Venice was strong, the other regions started working on establishing new routes to venture into the spice trade. A global spice route had been created: from Manila in the Philippines (Asia) to Seville in Spain (Europe), via Acapulco in Mexico (North America). He was finally able to repay his creditors—not in cash, but in pepper. Its colonies across the Mediterranean secured a second flow of income for the Doge and his naval fleet. The trade enriched these tribes. The bags of spices were transported to Cairo and then went onto the Italian trading settlements in Alexandria, Egypt. After Magellan's death in the Philippines, navigator Juan Sebastian Elcano took command of the expedition and drove it across the Indian Ocean and back to Spain, where they arrived in 1522 aboard the last remaining ship, the Victoria. As Peter Ackroyd (2009) writes in Venice: Pure City, ‘ The city of masks must, in any case, also be the city of secrets.’ 24. Venice, which is situated at the far end of the Adriatic Sea, was once the richest and most powerful centre of Europe for hundreds of years. Spices such as cinnamon, cassia, cardamom, ginger, pepper, and turmeric were known and used in antiquity and traded in the Eastern World. On October 21, 1520, his expedition crossed the Strait of Magellan in the southern tip of South America, opening the Pacific to European exploration. [46] The colonial pepper trade drastically changed the experience of modernity in Europe, and in Kerala and it brought, along with colonialism, early capitalism to India's Malabar Coast, changing cultures of work and caste. Both luxury goods and daily necessities were exchanged in the markets of Venice, from salt and grain to porcelain and pearl. [1] The rise of Islam brought a significant change to the trade as Radhanite Jewish and Arab merchants, particularly from Egypt, eventually took over conveying goods via the Levant to Europe. Keep up-to-date on: © 2021 Smithsonian Magazine. [1] The first true maritime trade network in the Indian Ocean was by the Austronesian peoples of Island Southeast Asia,[8] who built the first ocean-going ships. In the year 1173 a bankrupt Venetian merchant by the name of Romano Mairano went looking for a way out of financial ruin. The sea route in the Red Sea was from Bab-el-Mandeb to Berenike, from there by land to the Nile, and then by boats to Alexandria. the Mediterranean spice trade” (Braudel 1972: 543), but rather that there was a recovery in the eastern Mediterranean’s share of that trade, particularly after 1550 or so. The Western Europeans,[which?] Venice had important connections with Northern Europe. [20] Chinese traveler Xuanzang mentions the town of Puri where "merchants depart for distant countries."[22]. Since the capture of Constantinople by the Turks on May 29th, 1453, Venice had seen its commercial positions in the Black Sea deteriorate. The reason being that it gained large scale profit of the adjacent middle European markets. In due course, a few decades after the pope’s envoy had dropped his bombshell, the Venetian galleys were once again loading their precious cargoes of spice at Alexandria. More from the Venice Issue of the Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly. As they moved between the jungles of South and Southeast Asia, where they were harvested, to their final points of sale in Europe, the value of spices mounted exponentially. And its status as a trading market also caused Venice to become a major financial centre in Europe, including the development of futures, credit letters and early bank notes. Chief among them was shipbuilding—and boy did Venice build ships. [43] Christianity competed with Islam to become the dominant religion of the Moluccas. Venice’s ability to find excellent labor, raw materials, and capital contributed to their success in trading desirable woolen textiles in exchange for eastern goods. The overland route to Hormuz was also considered risky because of robbers and plunderers. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. The effect on the trade routes was mainly around the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. The win contributed greatly to the prosperity of Venice as it made huge profits from the trade of spices they had with buyer-distributors from western and northern Europe. These goods were then transported by land towards the Mediterranean and the Greco-Roman world via the incense route and the Roman–India routes by Indian and Persian traders. By the year 1000, Venice opened another route to the Orient by concluding treaties with the Muslim rulers of Egypt and the Levant, safeguarding the position of its merchants in Islamic lands. Bad news came in 1501, however, when word reached Venetian merchants that the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama had sailed around Africa to India, bypassing the Mediterranean and—so it was feared—diverting the flow of pepper away from Venice. Eventually, in the mid-13th century, Venice emerged as the primary trade port for spices bound for western and northern Europe. They had to outmaneuver Venice’s perennial enemies and competitors, the Genoese. Spices were among the most expensive and in-demand products of the Middle Ages, used in medicine as well as in the kitchen. Today, the city is known as Istanbul. Realizing that Venice was strong, the other regions started working on establishing new routes to venture into the spice trade. https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/.../2014/06/21/spice-trade-in-india Venice itself received regular visits from Ottoman dignitaries, as numerous documents attest. The Italians, particularly the Duchy of Venice, thrived off the trade that moved overland from the Far East and India. Learning the secret location of the Spice Islands, mainly the Banda Islands, then the world source of nutmeg, he sent an expedition led by António de Abreu to Banda, where they were the first Europeans to arrive, in early 1512. From the 8th until the 15th century, the Republic of Venice and neighboring maritime republics held the monopoly of European trade with the Middle East. Venice’s lucrative pilgrim and spice trade supported a host of other ancillary industries. The massive spice trade met the demands of medieval palates. The sea trade was in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. VENICE was a city built on trade, goods flooded in and out of the city, bringing tremendous wealth to the merchants of Venice. [9] They established trade routes with Southern India and Sri Lanka as early as 1500 BC, ushering an exchange of material culture (like catamarans, outrigger boats, lashed-lug and sewn-plank boats, and paan) and cultigens (like coconuts, sandalwood, bananas, and sugarcane), as well as connecting the material cultures of India and China. [28] They include bananas,[29] Pacific domesticated coconuts,[30][31] Dioscorea yams,[32] wetland rice,[29] sandalwood,[33] giant taro,[34] Polynesian arrowroot,[35] ginger,[36] lengkuas,[28] tailed pepper,[37] betel,[38] areca nut,[38] and sugarcane. Discover Venice anew, from its rich history and many cultural quirks to its delightful, present-day customs and excursions. Venice was the major centre of trade with the Arabs and indirectly the Indians in the Middle Ages. The lagoon city had close trade ties with many European and far eastern countries, so many foods and spices came into Venice that were not seen in other parts of the country. Merchants ran the risk of attacks by pirates, and they were at the mercy of the volatile, violent politics of the age. The islands of cloves are called Maluku ....."[19], Moluccan products were shipped to trading emporiums in India, passing through ports like Kozhikode in Kerala and through Sri Lanka. In due course Byzantium’s energies faltered, and the relationship with Venice became increasingly hostile. [18] Arab traders — mainly descendants of sailors from Yemen and Oman — dominated maritime routes throughout the Indian Ocean, tapping source regions in the Far East and linking to the secret "spice islands" (Maluku Islands and Banda Islands). The aspect of the trade was dominated by the Austronesian peoples in Southeast Asia who established the precursor trade routes from Southeast Asia (and later China) to Sri Lanka and India by at least 1500 BC. Numerous wars had been fought between 1456 and 1490, pitching the Republic against the Ottomans, with the consequence of Venice losing more pieces of her commercial empire (inherited from the 4th Crusade in 1204) in the Aegean Sea and in Greece … Venice’s hold of the trade route earned it massive profits which made it strong, powerful and well-developed. Venice became extremely prosperous by charging huge tariffs, and without direct access to Middle Eastern sources, the European people could do little else but pay the exorbitant prices they were charged. When the French saint Gerald of Aurillac passed through the northern Italian town of Pavia around 894, he met a small group of Venetian merchants selling cloths and spices from Byzantium. The largely ad hoc voyages of Mairano’s day gave way to a regular system of convoys known as the muda, or state-subsidized galleys auctioned out to the highest bidder. He could count himself lucky to be alive: Two years earlier, he had escaped a massacre of his compatriots in Constantinople, fleeing as his ships and goods were burned or confiscated.

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