Chapter 2

34Fulin, pp. 165, 173, 175.

35Faria E. Souza, as epitomized by J. Briggs in hisHistory of the Rise of the Mohamedan Power in India, London, 1829, iv. 501 ff. Of 114 ships sent in the first ten years 55 returned; Heyd,Colonie commerciali, ii. 277.

36Albuquerque took Ormuz in 1507, and made an attempt on Aden in 1513. Lorenzo Almeida was killed while fighting the Mameluke fleet in 1508, and his father destroyed the Egyptian fleet in 1509. Thus began a long struggle; in which the Portuguese tried to stifle the direct trade between India and the Levant. See, for a general statement, Heyd,Colonie commerciali, ii. 273.

37Fulin, pp. 160, 164 ff.

38Marino Sanuto,op. cit., xxiv. 22-36.

39Sec above, note 23.

40A. Vandal, in hisVoyages da Marquis de Nointel (1076-80), Paris, 1900, p. 12, says: ‘La Mer Rouge se ferma totalement vers 1630 et l’Égypte devint une impasse.’ P. Masson,Histoire du Commerce français dans le Levant au XVIIeSiècle, Paris, 1896, pp. i, 386 and 411, refers to the continuance of this trade (as late as 1670), but he finds no mention in the records at Marseilles of the importation of spices from Aleppo and Cairo after 1700. Nevertheless a number of pieces of evidence can be adduced to show that the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf were far from being closed, and that if Indian wares rarely passed through to Europe, this was only because it was not profitable to purchase them at Cairo and the Syrian entrepôts and ship them westward in competition with the Cape route. See, for example, Pierre Belon du Mans, Observations, 1555, pp. 121a, 158b;Travels of P. Teixeira(translated), London, 1852 (Hakluyt Society), pp. 118 ff. et passim (the Venetians bought at Aleppo in 1605, among other wares, cinnamon, cloves, nutmegs, and mace); J. de Thévenot (translated),Travels into the Levant, London, 1686, part i, pp. 152 ff., part ii. pp. 72 ff. F. Vansleb (translated),The Present State of Egypt, London, 1678, pp. 118-27, gives a long list of commodities exchanged between Europe and Egypt, with their prices, and mentions all the ordinary spices as purchasable by Europeans in Egypt in 1673. Hasselquist, writing on the Levant about 1749, describes the caravan trade which was bringing Indian stuffs and spices from Mecca to Egypt, North Africa, and Syria (i. 124 ff.), and the Indian trade by the Red Sea and Persian Gulf into Turkey (ii. 101, 124). Baron de Tott, in hisMémoires, Amsterdam, 1784-5, part iv, pp. 54 ff., found Cairo a great entrepôt between East and West: ‘le choc des ballots marqués à Madras & à Marseille semble fixer un centre à l’univers.’ C. T. Volney in hisVoyage en Syrie et en Égypte, published 1783-5 (i. 189 ff., ii. 138 ff.), describes the same trade in some detail. G. A. Olivier in hisVoyage dans l’Empire Othoman, l’Égypte, et la Perse, Paris, an XII, iii. 327 ff., iv. 273 ff., finds the same double trade active and flourishing, and he states that after 1498 all the products of the Orient for the use of the Moslems continued to come through Bagdad and Egypt (iv. 430).

41Heyd merely states that no gain accrued to the trade of Syria and Egypt from the Turkish conquest (Commerce du Levant, ii. 546). Thorold Rogers (op. cit., iv. 653-7) affirms that before the Portuguese discoveries the Turks ‘appear to have blocked every passage but one’, and that ‘their conquest of Egypt proceeded to block the only remaining road’, It has been shown that they ‘blocked’ no roads, that two (through Syria and Egypt) were out of their power until 1516 and 1517, and that they were actually desirous of keeping these roads open. Rogers finds confirmation of his view in the rise of the prices of oriental wares after 1520. At first sight he might seem justified. By twenty-year periods the price of a dozen pounds of pepper in England in the sixteenth century was 16, 23, 26, and 39 shillings. But the price of a quarter of wheat, by his own figures, was 6, 7-1/2, 13, and 15 shillings for the same periods. The fact is that pepper and other oriental wares rose with the general rise of prices in the sixteenth century, almost certainly caused by the addition to the European stock of gold and silver from the Americas. The evidence of price cannot be said to indicate disturbance from the Turkish conquest of Egypt; indeed it shows singularly little from the doubling of the Cape, which might be presumed to have caused a noticeable fall in prices.

42For light on the beginnings of French trade at this time see Marino Sanuto, lvii. 267, 436, 503; lviii. col. 86, &c.

43Depping, ii. 247.

44Masson, pp. xii ff.

45Heyd, in hisCommerce du Levant, ii. 546, says that Suleiman purposed to centre the spice trade of the world at Constantinople.

46Belon du Mans, p. 158 b.

47Masson, p. xvi.

48Ibid., p. 374, shows that the English took pepper and spices to Alexandretta in 1681. See also pp. 412, 505.

49Berchet, pp. 21, 25, explains the causes of this decline.

50For this drainage of the precious metals eastward see Masson, pp. xxxii, 371, 374, 487; Savary,op. cit., p. 835; Vansleb,op. cit., pp. 110, 127, 128; Thévenot,op. cit., ii. 77, 156. Thévenot says (p. 77), ‘it may be said of Persia, that it is a Kervanserai that serves for passage to the money that goes out of Europe and Turkey to the Indies; and to the Stuffs and Spices that come from the Indies, into Turkey and Europe, whereof it makes some small profit in the passage.’ See also Olivier, iv. 434, and P. Blancard,Manuel du Commerce des Indes, Paris, 1806, pp. 70, 106.

51In fact, it may be said that the great discoveries displaced approximately only about one-third of the traffic along the old routes through the Levant. Except for the precious metals, the Cape route finally took practically all of the through exchanges between southern and eastern Asia and western Europe. But the ‘short haul’ trade between western Europe and the Moslem lands and between the Moslem lands and India nearly all passed as before. Masson says, p. ii, note 1, that about 1682 the Levant trade of England and Holland was almost equally important with their East Indian trade, while that of France was her most extensive foreign trade. For the new trade in Arabian coffee, seeibid., 410; Blancard, p. 82 (the coffee that was carried round Africa was damaged on the long voyage); Olivier, iii. 326. Silks and other Persian products were brought across Turkey by caravan to Mediterranean ports; Berchet, 15; Masson,op. cit., and Savary,passim; Olivier, v. 320.

52Masson, p. 543.

53Blancard, pp. 520 ff.

54Blancard, pp. 525, 526, estimates 17-1/2 months for the round trip via Suez and 20 months via the Cape.

55Heyd,Commerce de Levant, ii. 552.

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