Beginnings of the American People | Page 5

Church to guard the Holy Sepulchre, while Italian
cities reaped a rich harvest from the plunder of Constantinople and the
Levantine trade.
The Latin Empire and the Kingdom of Jerusalem did not outlast the
thirteenth century, but the extension of commercial activity was a
permanent result of vital importance for the relations of Orient and
Occident. The swelling volume of Mediterranean trade which
accompanied the crusading movement depended upon the growing
demand in the West for the products of the East. Europe could provide

the necessities for a simple and monotonous life, without adornment or
display. But the rise of a burgher aristocracy, the growth of an elaborate
and symbolic ritualism in religious worship, the desire for that pomp
and display which is half the divinity of kings, created a demand for
commodities which only the East could supply,--spices for flavoring
coarse food, "notemege to putte in ale," fragrant woods and dyes and
frankincense, precious stones for personal adornment or royal regalia or
religious shrines, rich tapestries for bare interiors, "cloths of silk and
gold."
All these products, and many more besides, so attractive to the unjaded
mind of Europe, celebrated in chronicle and romance from the
thirteenth to the fifteenth century, were to be found in those cities of the
Levant--in Constantinople, in Antioch or Jaffa or Alexandria--which
were the western termini to long established trade routes to the Far East.
Wares of China and Japan and the spices of the southern Moluccas
were carried in Chinese or Malay junks to Malacca, and thence by Arab
or Indian merchants to Paulicut or Calicut in southern India. To these
ports came also ginger, brazil-wood, sandal-wood, and aloe, above all
the precious stones of India and Persia, diamonds from Golconda,
rubies, topaz, sapphires, and pearls. From India, the direct southern
route lay across the Indian Ocean to Aden and up the Red Sea to Cairo
or Alexandria. The middle route followed the Persian Gulf and the
Tigris River to Bagdad, and thence to the coast cities of Damascus,
Jaffa, Laodicea, and Antioch. And by the overland northern route from
Peking, by painful and dangerous stages through Turkestan to Yarkand,
Bokhara, and Tabriz came the products of China and Persia,--silks and
fabrics, rich tapestries and priceless rugs.
From the twelfth century Italian cities grew rich and powerful on the
carrying trade between western Europe and the Levant. Venice and
Genoa, Marseilles and Barcelona, whose merchants had permanent
quarters in Eastern cities, became the distributing centers for western
Europe. Each year until 1560, a Venetian trading fleet, passing through
the Straits of Gibraltar, touching at Spanish and Portuguese ports, at
Southampton or London, finally reached the Netherlands at Bruges.
But the main lines to the north were the river highways: from

Marseilles up the Rhone to Lyons and down the Seine to Paris and
Rouen; from Venice through the passes of the Alps to the great
southern German cities of Augsburg and Nuremburg, and thence
northward along the Elbe to the Hanse towns of Hamburg or Lubec; or
from Milan across the St. Gothard to Basle and westward into France at
Chalons. The main carriers from the North of the Alps were the
merchants of South Germany; while the Hanse merchants, buying in
southern Germany, or in the Netherlands at Bruges and Antwerp, sold
in England and France, in the Baltic cities, and as far east as Poland and
Russia.
II
Before the middle of the thirteenth century no Italian merchant could
have told you anything of the "isles where the spices grow," or of the
countries which produced the rich fabrics in which he trafficked: he
knew only that they came to Alexandria or Damascus from Far Eastern
lands. For from time immemorial the Orient had been the enemy's
country, little known beyond the bounds of Syria, a half-mythical land
of alien races, of curious customs and infidel faiths, a land of
interminable distances, rich and populous, doubtless, certainly
dangerous and inaccessible. But in the thirteenth century the veil which
had long shrouded Asia in mystery was lifted, discovering to European
eyes countries so rich in hoarded treasure and the products of industry
that the gems and spices which found their way to the West were seen
to be but the refuse of their accumulated stores.
The discovery of Asia in the thirteenth century was the direct result of
the Mongol conquest. Before the death of Jenghis Khan in 1227, the
Tartar rule was established in northern China or Cathay, and in central
Asia from India to the Caspian; while within half a century the
successors of the first emperor were dominant to the Euphrates and the
Dniester on the west, and as far south as Delhi, Burma, and Cochin
China. The earlier conquests were conducted with incredible ferocity;
but the influence of Chinese