A
HISTORY OF COMMERCE

BY

CLIVE DAY, Ph.D.

KNOX PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN YALE UNIVERSITY

REVISED AND ENLARGED

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
55 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
TORONTO, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA AND MADRAS
1925

Copyright, 1907, by
Longmans, Green, and Co.
Copyright, 1914, by
Longmans, Green, and Co.
Copyright, 1922, by
Longmans, Green, and Co.

First Edition, May, 1907
Reprinted, April, 1908; June, 1909; August, 1910
August, 1912
New Edition, June, 1914
Reprinted, February, 1916; April, 1917
August, 1919
September, 1920
August, 1921
New Edition thoroughly revised, September, 1922
Reprinted, February, 1923; January, 1924,
May, 1925

MADE IN THE UNITED STATES

To
E. L. D.

PREFACE

The year 1914 marks one of the great turning points in history. I have accordingly revised the part of this book covering the recent period to close the narrative at that date, and have added another part, covering the history of commerce in the war and in the two or three years of peace immediately following. The commerce of the great nations of the world has departed since 1914 far from its accustomed paths and forms. In my attempt to make intelligible the commercial changes of the time I have had to take account of matters in public finance, currency and foreign exchange which are usually treated apart from the history of international trade. I have thought it better, by touching on these outside subjects, to show the reasons for the course which commerce has followed, rather than to omit the reasons because they are hard for the student of the history of commerce to understand.

Clive Day

CONTENTS

A HISTORY OF COMMERCE

PART I.—ANCIENT COMMERCE

CHAPTER I
GENERAL CONDITIONS

1. The purposes of commerce.—The reader will follow more intelligently the history of commerce if he will stop a moment at the start to consider the purposes of commerce and the difficulties which must be overcome if it is to be successfully carried on.

As to the purposes we may be brief. The largest part of the time and energy of the ordinary man is consumed in getting the material things which furnish him with the means of subsistence and of culture. We are accustomed to think of the farmer and the manufacturer as charged especially with supplying our material wants, but a little reflection will show that the work of these classes, without the aid of another class, would be of little use to us. The food and clothing and tools and other desirable articles which they produce are valuable only when they are put into the hands of a man who wants them and can use them. Articles which we all should pronounce desirable, the ripe fruit of the farmer and the finished product of the manufacturer, have still only the possibility of good in them; and this possibility is realized only when they are put in the place where they are wanted at the time when they are wanted. It is the business of the merchant to attend to the proper distribution of wares, in place and time. He does not change the form of things, like the farmer or the manufacturer, but he is as truly a producer as they are.

Ice may be manufactured in summer by the ammonia process, or it may be saved from the preceding winter, or it may be brought in summer from Greenland. To the consumer it makes no difference which one of these methods is employed; he wants his ice in summer, and the trader who satisfies his wants by saving or transporting the ice is as useful a member of society as the manufacturer who makes the ice.

2. Obstacles to the development of commerce. (1) Personal.—Great as are the advantages of commerce, ages of progress were required to give it the position which it holds in the modern world. It has had to make its way against innumerable obstacles; and to some of these obstacles the reader is asked now to give his attention.

There is, first of all, the difficulty which we may term personal. A man now accepts trade as a matter of course. He devotes himself to some special line of production, the growing of wheat or the making of shoes, feeling sure that he can exchange his surplus for whatever else he wants, and making his exchanges without hesitation. An uncivilized man, however, is accustomed to satisfy his wants in only two ways, by his own labor in production or by robbing another man. He is suspicious of any offer to exchange wares, and is unwilling to apply himself to any special line of production that would make him dependent on trade. The ignorance and suspicions of men were in early times the greatest hindrances to the rise of commerce, as they are still in backward portions of the world; it has required generations of experience to teach men wants for things which they did not themselves produce, and to teach them to satisfy these wants by exchange. Commerce took on definite proportions and became of considerable importance only when a special class of traders and merchants arose, who made it their business to study wants, to inspire new ones, and to provide the means of satisfying them.

3. (2) Physical obstacles.—Another difficulty in the pursuit of commerce, which we may term physical, appears in the exchange of articles which are produced at some distance from each other, so that they need to be transported by land or sea. A farmer who sets out for the city with a load of grain will have to count carefully the cost of getting it to market. Assume that he feeds himself and his horses from his wagon-load; evidently, if the road is long, or so bad that progress is slow and many horses are necessary, he may find all the wheat consumed on the journey before he has secured a purchaser. In this aspect the facilities for transportation, whether by land or water, by pack-animal, cart, canal boat or steamer, are of great importance. It has been estimated that a human burden bearer would require more than a day and a half to move a ton of goods a mile; a strong pack-horse can carry three hundredweight a considerable number of miles in a day; while on first-rate level roads a horse can drag a ton even further. Another factor in this question is the character of the ware. A farmer who could not afford to bring wheat to market might still find it profitable to bring butter, which has much greater value in the same bulk, so that the profits on a wagon-load might pay the expenses of the journey. Gold can be exported from the interior of Alaska under difficulties which would make the transportation of any other product impossible.

4. (3) Risk of loss at the hand of public enemies or robbers.—The carrier of merchandise has to face not only physical difficulties, but also dangers from another source. From time to time we read in the modern newspaper of high rates charged for war insurance, when ship or cargo may be captured and confiscated by an enemy on the sea. The merchant must count his insurance charges before he can figure out his profits. This illustration will make clear the character of one of the obstacles to commerce, which we may term military, by some stretching of the current meaning of the word. It gives, however, no idea of the extent of this danger in earlier times, when not only were wars far more common, but when even in times of peace the state was so weak that the merchant, in every mile of his progress, was exposed to attack by highwaymen on land and by pirates at sea. Either the merchant must bear his own risks, or pay somebody to protect him against them. In either case the result would be the same, the necessity of charging higher prices for the wares, and so making sales less attractive and less common.

5. (4) Political restrictions.—Still another element can be distinguished in history, which seems often to be an obstacle to the development of commerce. This element may be termed the political. A man is not only a producer and consumer; he is also, whether he is conscious of it or not, a member of the state, and subject to some kind of political organization which restrains and directs him in his economic life. His efforts to further his own interests are restricted by laws meant to protect the interests of the people as a whole against the selfishness of individuals. A merchant in the United States who proposes to import some ware from another country will find that he must pay not only the natural transportation and insurance charges, but possibly also a customs duty in addition, that would make the exchange unprofitable. If he proposed to import a foreign ship for use in the American coasting trade he would find that he is absolutely prohibited from doing this, no matter how much he might be willing to pay as duty.

These restraints are imposed nowadays, not because the government assumes that individuals cannot take care of themselves and is afraid that they may lose money by making purchases abroad, but because it thinks that they may hurt the interests of producers in the home market, whom it proposes to protect. We shall find that governments in earlier times restrained the flow of commerce to protect not only producers but also consumers and even the merchants themselves; and that regulations were imposed, of such variety and such strictness, that they made a very important element in the commercial life of peoples. The church as well as the state interfered with the course of exchange in the Middle Ages, and thought it necessary to safeguard public morals by many restrictions which have since disappeared.

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

1. Consider some articles of your clothing; try to ascertain from what different sources the materials were gathered by the merchant for the manufacturer, and how the finished product reached you. Do the like for a common implement, a lead-pencil or pocket knife, or an article of furniture. What countries were drawn upon to supply the food and setting of your breakfast table? [Compare The cost of a dinner, Outlook, March 13, 1897, quoted in Clow’s Introduction to the Study of Commerce, Silver, Burdett & Co., 193-194.]

2. What articles would you have to do without if your supply were limited to the things produced within a radius of 10 miles of your home? Within a radius of 100? Within a radius of 1,000?

3. Ice was given as an example of a ware which varies greatly at different times. Are all wares subject to such variation? [If you find what seems to be an exception, verify it by the wholesale prices quoted in newspapers.]

4. What is the use of grain elevators and wheat speculators?

5. Can you detect any difference between city people and country people in making a bargain?

6. What has been the attitude of the North American Indians to trade? With what wares have traders had to tempt them?

7. Arrange the following articles in the degree of their transportability, i.e., according to the distance which they may be carried with profit: raw cotton, coal, potatoes, silver, building stone, gold, wheat, cotton cloth, diamonds, hay, coffee, salt, silk ribbons, copper. [The price per pound of many of these wares is given in the newspaper.]

8. Give an instance of articles wasting, unused for lack of good wagon-roads; for lack of railroads.

9. In what regions has piracy persisted to recent times? [Read some description of Borneo or of the Philippine Islands, or a description of Chinese junk trading and Chinese river life.]

10. What effect did the Civil War have on American commerce? [See reference in chap. 51.]

11. In what regions of the world is land trade still unsafe?

12. To what restrictions, if any, does an American merchant have to submit who desires to trade in one of the following wares: cigars, gunpowder, whisky, lottery tickets, imported iron, cigarettes, improper literature?

13. Government restrictions now are due usually to one of three objects: (1) collection of revenue, (2) protection of other producers, (3) protection of the consumer and the public. Classify the wares above according to the object of the legislation.

14. Read Bourne, Romance of trade, 96-137, on the close relations of politics and commerce.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The reader will find at the end of most of the following chapters titles of books suggested for further reading and study; titles of books that are warmly recommended are marked by an asterisk, titles that are particularly noteworthy are marked by two asterisks. In all cases the references are restricted to books available in English. The prices given are in most cases those at which the book was sold before the war, and are retained as giving some indication of the relative expense involved in the purchase of the books; prices have changed so much during and after the war that an attempt to list current prices appears impracticable.

Bibliography.—The best available bibliography of English books on the history of commerce is Sonnenschein’s Bibliography of social and political economy, London, 1897, reprinted from The Best Books and The Reader’s Guide. Useful bibliographical information will be found also in Palgrave’s Dictionary, and in the Subject Index of the British Museum Library, which has been published at brief intervals since 1902, and which lists all the new books added to the Library. The American Economic Review, established in 1911, is a quarterly publication which has devoted particular attention to the bibliography of economic subjects, and which should be consulted for the announcement of new books, the summary of articles in periodicals, and the appreciation of important works in book reviews. The American Library Association Catalogue, which has appeared in various editions, gives full bibliographical information about popular books which are on sale in the American market.

In default of a general bibliography the student must refer to books describing conditions in England. The most complete and scholarly bibliography is that given by Cunningham, in appendixes to his Growth, etc. References which to most students will be more useful are given in Traill’s Social England. Both these sources cover the whole period, into the nineteenth century. For the medieval period the general student has a bibliography approaching near to perfection by Charles Gross, Sources and literature of English history, London and N. Y., 1900, and the student of the history of commerce will find many references in the Select bibliography of English mediaeval economic history, edited by Hubert Hall, London, 1914. A revision of C. K. Adams, Manual of historical literature, which has been undertaken by the American Historical Association will be of great value when completed.

Manuals.—Cheesman A. Herrick, **History of Commerce and industry, N. Y., 1917, resembles in plan the present book. Bibliographies are appended to the different chapters. Two English manuals on the history of commerce, H. de B. Gibbins, *History of commerce in Europe, London, Macmillan, 1891, and J. R. V. Marchant, Commercial history, London, Pitman [about 1901], suffer from the attempt to compress an immense number of facts into a small compass. William C. Webster, *General history of commerce, Boston, Ginn, 1903, $1.40, marks a decided advance in the selection and presentation of material, but is lacking in scholarship; the present writer discusses this book in detail in Yale Review, Feb., 1904, vol. 12, p. 436 ff. It has scattered bibliographies, unclassified. George W. Sanford, *Outlines of the history of commerce, Chicago, Powers & Lyons, 1902, occupies a place by itself, and should be of decided value in supplementing any manual. It gives topical outlines of the different chapters in the history of commerce, suggestions and references for reading, and skeleton maps for the student to fill in. It seeks to give no information directly.

General Works.—Of the general works on the history of commerce most are old and out of print. Of these only one need be noted here, Lindsay’s *History, of which the first volume covers ancient and medieval times. This will be of value to any school library, if it can be procured. John Yeats, Growth and vicissitudes of commerce, Boston, Boyle, covers the whole subject, from ancient to recent times, in a volume of about 400 pages; it was compiled about 1870, from other compilations, and is not to be trusted entirely, but is about the only book of its kind now in the market. Bourne’s *Romance of trade and Oxley’s *Romance of commerce answer well to the description Bourne gives of his book, “an interesting gossip-book about commerce”; both books contain readable discussions of various topics in the history of commerce, and references will be given to them hereafter. Morris, History of colonization, 2 vols., N. Y. Macmillan, 1900, would be a valuable book to the teacher if it were well done, as it covers the history of colonization and commerce from earliest times to the present. It is, however, so badly constructed and so unreliable that it cannot be recommended. See the reviews in The Nation, Yale Review, American Historical Review. A far better book on the subject is A. G. Keller, **Colonization, N. Y. 1908.

The book which I recommend most strongly to teachers who are restricted in their choice is Cunningham’s **Growth; it will enable the teacher to dispense with many other books, and no other book could be substituted for it. Ashley’s *Economic history, always desirable, is less necessary for the purposes in view here. Ashley’s **Economic Organization of England, London, 1914, is an admirable survey of English economic history and is well suited to serve as collateral reading, but has little on the history of commerce proper. If Cunningham’s large work is provided, the teacher and student can afford to neglect the smaller manuals on English economic history by Cunningham and MacArthur, Warner, Price, Cheyney (revised edition, 1920), Usher, and others. Frederic A. Ogg *Economic development of modern Europe, N. Y., 1917, deserves separate mention since it embraces not only England, but also the more important countries on the Continent; it covers the earlier periods briefly, but treats the nineteenth century fully, and has extensive bibliographies.

Many of the general histories of Europe and England can be used to advantage by the teacher or student of the history of commerce. The only work, however, which can receive special mention here is Traill’s *Social England; chapters contributed by various writers cover the history of commerce from earliest times to 1885.

Maps.—The student must look to the general historical atlas for help in studying the history of commerce. He will find that the more elaborate atlases are hardly worth the extra expense for his purposes.

William R. Shepherd, **Historical Atlas, N. Y., Holt, revised ed. 1921, includes considerable economic material, is provided with a full index of places, and will serve all ordinary needs.

The outline maps of the McKinley Publishing Company (Philadelphia), and the Rand McNally Co., will be found valuable for the use both of teacher and class.

In many cases a modern atlas is more desirable than a historical atlas. Longmans’ **School atlas, N. Y., 1901, is an admirable work, which should be in the hands of every student, and the Century **Atlas is indispensable for reference purposes.

THE ANCIENT WORLD

CHAPTER II
ORIENTAL PERIOD

6. Prehistoric commerce. Ancient Egypt.—The origins of commerce are lost in obscurity. Before people are sufficiently civilized to leave written records of their doings they engage in trade; we can observe this among savage tribes at the present day, and we know that it held true of the past, from finding among the traces of primitive man ornaments and weapons far from the places where they were made. Such evidences, interesting as they are, belong to the prehistoric period, and this sketch of early commerce must begin with the peoples who had acquired the art of writing and have left us records from which we can gain some idea of their history.

First among these peoples, in point of time, were the Egyptians. Three thousand years before Christ, at the time when the great pyramids were built, this people had already attained a developed civilization, which, in the opinion of modern scholars, can be traced back even thousands of years more. The Egyptians, however, were not a commercial people. Their main resource was agriculture, and though they developed some of the industrial arts to great efficiency they used the products for direct consumption rather than for trade. Their country, a strip of the Nile valley over five hundred miles long, and but a few miles wide, was so much alike in its different parts that it offered little inducement to internal exchange over great distances; while its isolation by deserts was a bar to the growth of foreign commerce. The sea, in this early period, was a hindrance, rather than a help, to communication.

7. Rise of Egyptian commerce; characteristic wares.—Egypt never became a commercial country so long as it remained under its native rulers. With the period known as the New Empire, however, beginning about 1600 B.C., commerce at least became more important than it had been before. Regular communication was established with Asia, and caravans brought to the country the products of Phœnicia, Syria, and the Red Sea district. Before the eyes of Joseph and his brethren “behold, a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt”; to this caravan Joseph was sold as a slave. The wares named here were characteristic imports of Egypt; among others were precious woods, ivory, gold, wine, and oil. Among the exports of the country were grain, linen, and manufactured wares like weapons, rings, and chains. Even to a late period trade was carried on by barter, the use of coins being rare, and many of the imports came as tribute, for which the Egyptians needed to make no return.

8. Development of Egyptian commerce in a later period.—Only in the last period of Egyptian independence, a few centuries before the country was conquered by Alexander, did commerce bind it closely to other portions of the ancient world. The government, which formerly had discouraged trade, now permitted and encouraged it; Greek merchants came in considerable numbers to Egypt; and an active commerce sprang up. It is said that Necho, the king who ruled about 600 B.C., sent out Phœnician sailors to attempt the circumnavigation of Africa; and the same king took up the work of cutting a canal across the isthmus of Suez which was completed shortly afterward. The canal was allowed to fill up with sand, but was reopened later, and its course may be distinctly traced, it is said, along the route of the modern canal.

9. Rise of commerce in the Mesopotamian Valley.—The district northwest of the Persian Gulf, centering in the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, offered opportunities for the rise of civilization which led to the establishment of settled governments while Egypt was still living secluded from the rest of the world. This district was rich in agricultural products, but lacked the metals, some of the building materials, and other of the raw materials of industry. Though it was bordered in part by deserts, communication with other districts was far easier than in the case of Egypt; and commerce with other countries early acquired an importance here which Egyptian commerce attained only in the last period of the country’s history. Ancient Babylon, which rose to importance some time after 3000 B.C., under a Semitic people (with a language akin to that of the Jews), was a market-place for wares brought not only from the South (Arabia) and West (Syria), but also from the East (Iran, the later Persia). Clay tablets, used like modern paper for the preservation of records, have been discovered and deciphered in modern times, and show an active trade in the precious metals, grain, wool, building materials, etc.

10. Development of commerce under the Assyrian and Persian empires.—Military expeditions extended the commercial relations of the people of this district; and the conquests of an Assyrian, who founded a great empire about 745 B.C., were guided in part by commercial considerations. Babylon, Armenia, Syria, and parts of Iran and Palestine, were brought under one rule; peoples on the frontiers were held in check, and order was fairly well maintained within; so that merchants could traverse the different parts of the empire, and meet at its capital, Nineveh, to exchange their wares. The Assyrian empire was made by the sword, and it fell by the sword after a brief duration; but its place was taken by succeeding states, and commerce continued to grow. The Persian empire, which enjoyed its full power for about two hundred years, until its destruction by Alexander in 330 B.C., included an area more than half that of modern Europe; it stretched from the Mediterranean on the West to the Indus on the East, from the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf to the Black and Caspian seas. Within these boundaries lay some of the richest regions of the ancient world, the products of which could now be exchanged without passing from under the protection of the Great King.

11. Relative insignificance of the commerce of the ancient empires. The Jews. The Phœnicians.—In the Oriental states which we have hitherto considered, commerce never grew to a position of decisive importance in the national life, however great it may seem when we compare it with its meager beginnings. It served mainly the needs of luxury, and left untouched the economic position of the mass of the people. If we seek in the ancient Orient a people whose very existence depended on trade we must look further. We do not find the Jews to have been such a people, though we are accustomed nowadays to think of them as devoted largely to the pursuit of trade. The descriptions of the Bible show that they lived mainly a pastoral and agricultural life; and down to the time of the Roman Empire they counted for little in the world of commerce. A truly commercial people we do find, however, in near neighbors of the Jews, the Phœnicians, who inhabited a strip of land on the coast of Syria and Palestine, scarcely ten miles wide in most places and little over a hundred miles long. They could gain a scanty food supply from the level ground, and had timber in abundance on the mountains that separated them from the interior, but had to look to trade with other peoples for the means of growth which their home denied them.

12. Commerce of the Phœnicians. Beginnings of sea-trade.—From raw materials which were in many cases procured from other countries they manufactured products which found a market throughout the ancient world. Their cloths and glass were celebrated; they exported large amounts of metal ware; and they had a monopoly of the purple dye extracted from a species of shell-fish, which was highly prized throughout this period. These wares were but a few of those in which they regularly traded; the reader who would have a more detailed account of the wares of Phœnician commerce, especially the imports, is advised to study the description in the Bible. They maintained an active exchange with peoples to the South, East, and North of them by caravan routes, while they were the first people of antiquity to secure such mastery over the sea that it could be made the medium of regular and extensive transportation. The beginning of these sea voyages is lost in the obscurity of the past. We know that they were highly developed by 1500 B.C., when Sidon was the leading Phœnician city, and that they did not cease to extend when the primacy of the Phœnician cities passed to Tyre. The Phœnicians taught the art of navigation to the ancient world. Their ships were long the accepted models of construction, and the Greeks learned from them to direct their course at night by the North, or, as the Greeks called it, the Phœnician star.

13. Development of sea-trade; wares of Phœnician commerce.—Beginning, presumably, with fishing and short coasting trips, and reluctant always to venture out in the stormy season, they had reached the islands of Cyprus and Rhodes, and had established regular commerce with Greece in the heroic age of Greek history, say before 1000 B.C. From this point their progress was rapid, and soon they had traversed the whole Mediterranean, and passed outside it into the Atlantic. The means of cheap transportation which they controlled gave them an immense economic advantage. We may accept as a product of the imagination the story that on their arrival in Spain they found silver so plentiful that they not only filled their ships but made their utensils, even their anchors, from it; still the story shadows forth a truth. They found wares in some districts cheap and begging a market because of their abundance, which were rare and highly prized elsewhere; and they could make great profits by exchanging wares so as to put each where it was most wanted. From the island which we now call England they procured tin, which is a very rare metal in Europe, and which was especially desired as a component of the important alloy bronze. They got copper in Cyprus and Spain, also silver and iron in Spain, and gold and ivory in Africa. They carried westward the wares of the Orient (cf. our words cinnamon, cassia, hyssop, cumin, manna, all from Hebrew forms), and manufactures, which not only gratified the momentary needs of Europeans but served also as models for imitation.

14. Establishment of colonies by the Phœnicians. Carthage.—The Phœnicians are noteworthy not only as the greatest merchants and the first navigators of the ancient world; they were the leaders also in the founding of colonies. At points important for commercial or naval reasons they established stations which enabled them to trade in security with the natives and to control the sea. Gades, for instance (the modern Cadiz), near the straits of Gibraltar, was a rallying-point from which the Carthaginians extended their voyages to the tin islands in the North, and far down the Atlantic coast of Africa on the South. Similar stations were established on many of the Mediterranean islands (Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, Balearics); and one founded on the north coast of Africa, Carthage (near the site of modern Tunis), grew to especial importance. The power of the Phœnicians declined, a few centuries after 1000 B.C., partly by reason of internal dissensions and the attacks of land-powers like Assyria, partly by reason of the commercial rivalry of the Greeks, who had risen to an independent position and cut the lines of communication between East and West. In this period Carthage fell heir to the Phœnician establishments in the western Mediterranean, and maintained its power and policy on substantially similar lines until it received its great defeats at the hands of Rome.

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

1. What evidences of prehistoric commerce are given by Indian arrow-heads, wampum, Indian ornaments, or the relics of the mound-builders?

2. What modern countries have the strip-form of Egypt? [See a map of South America.]

3. Are there any modern countries like Egypt in the uniformity of their conditions and products, diminishing the stimulus to internal trade? [Study, for example, conditions in Alaska, Nevada, or Australia.]

4. Are any of the exports of ancient Egypt still characteristic wares of the country? [See the Statesman’s Year-Book, index under words Egypt, commerce.]

5. What can you infer as to the security of trade from the fact that it was carried on by caravans, bands of merchants?

6. What physical barriers obstructed Egyptian commerce? [See map 33 of Longmans’ School atlas, noting the deserts and the cataracts of the Nile.]

7. Write an essay on the economic conditions of Egypt, from references to that country in the Bible.

8. What countries of the modern world fill the space occupied by the ancient empires of the East? What commerce do they carry on? [See Statesman’s Year-Book.]

9. Can you suggest any reasons why the commerce of these regions seems now much less important than in ancient times?

10. Write an essay on the economic conditions of later Babylon, from descriptions in the Bible. [See Babylon, in the subject-index of the Oxford Bible.]

11. Write an essay on the economic life of the Jews from the descriptions of the Bible.

12. Write a similar essay on the Phœnicians. [See Sidon and Tyre in the subject-index.]

13. Show the similarity of conditions in Phœnicia and in Norway, forcing the inhabitants of both countries to the sea. [Study the physical characteristics of Norway in a geography, and note the history of the Vikings, and the importance of commerce and navigation in modern Norway.]

14. Write a report, from information to be got from the Encyclopædia Britannica, on one of the following subjects:—

(a) The commerce and manufactures of the Phœnicians. [See the index in the last volume of the ninth edition, under Phœnicians.]

(b) The manufacture and trade in glass in the ancient world. [See vol. 10, p. 647.]

(c) The Phœnician purple. [See the references under the word Purple, vol. 20, p. 116, and the index.]

(d) Early navigation. [See the index.]

15. Wares of Phœnician commerce. [Bible, Ezekiel, chap. 27.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ancient Commerce.—The best available survey of the economic development of the ancient world is Cunningham’s **Western civilization in its economic aspects, vol. 1, Ancient times, Cambridge (N. Y.) Macmillan, 1898; this may be used for parallel reading throughout. On Egypt, Adolf Erman, Life in ancient Egypt, London, 1894, is interesting and reliable. Readers of English are fortunate also in having a translation of Holm’s *History of Greece, N. Y., Macmillan, 1894, 4 vols.; it may be made to serve as a history of commerce in the Mediterranean down to the second century. The popular books on Alexander’s conquests and their results, by Wheeler and Mahaffy, give, unfortunately, little attention to economic affairs. P. V. N. Myers, *History of Greece, Boston, Ginn, 1895, is a convenient manual for general reading. Alfred E. Zimmern, **The Greek Commonwealth, revised ed., Oxford, 1915, is an interesting account of the economic and political factors in Athens of the fifth century.

On economic development in the Roman world the student has now available a good manual by Tenney Frank, **An economic history of Rome, Baltimore, 1920. A detailed account of conditions in the provinces is provided by Mommsen’s *Provinces of the Roman Empire, N. Y., Scribner, 1887, 2 vols., $6. The current Roman histories give a distorted idea of Roman commerce by viewing it from the capital.

Maps.—In default of an atlas of the history of commerce students must seek the maps scattered through special works, or rely upon an ordinary historical atlas. Justus Perthes’ *Atlas antiquus (about $.75) can be recommended for use in ancient history; it is admirably executed, and is provided with an index.

CHAPTER III
GREEK PERIOD

15. Greece, physical character and products.—The mention of the Greeks at the close of the last chapter introduces us to a people who were, for a time, the leading merchants of the Mediterranean. The peninsular part of Greece has an area less than that of the State of Maine, little more than half that of the State of New York. It is, however, most richly diversified geographically, and no country in the world of an equal area, it is said, presents so many islands, bays, peninsulas, and harbors. The coast line of this little country is longer than that of Spain. No point is more than a few miles from the coast, and there are few points on the coast from which an observer does not see an island. In the Greek sea, moreover, every island is in plain sight either of the mainland or of another island, and in the good season the winds are very regular. Favoring conditions such as these are of vast importance in the early days of navigation, when sailors faced real perils due to their inexperience, and perils of the imagination which were even greater. At home the Greeks inhabited a country which was not rich enough to support them without exertion, but was, on the other hand, not so poor as to force them to use all their ingenuity in finding the means of subsistence. They could easily produce a surplus of oil and wine, but found a deficiency of other products, especially grain and, in the early period, manufactured wares.

16. Rise of Greek commerce. Colonies.—Though it would be hard to conceive a better nursery for the growth of commerce than existed under the conditions here described, the Greeks, when we first get knowledge of them, about 1000 B.C., were not yet ready to take advantage of their opportunities. There was some commerce, it is true, but it lay entirely in the hands of the Phœnicians, who brought utensils and cloth and took away timber and metals. Little by little the Greeks rose to commercial prominence, and gained the place formerly held by the Phœnicians. A striking feature of this revolution was the Greek colonial movement, which covered some five hundred years, and ended about 600 B.C. Greek emigrants settled throughout the Ægean Sea and established themselves as a fringe on the coast of Asia Minor and about the Black Sea; in the West they chose by preference the shores of southern Italy and Sicily, but founded colonies as far as Malaga in modern Spain, and created a great commercial center on the site of modern Marseilles. The colonies kept up an active intercourse with the mother country, and Greek sailors and merchants ousted the Phœnicians from their commanding position. The Greeks at home began to produce wares for export, seeking customers not only among the colonists but in other markets also; they emancipated themselves from their former dependence on Oriental manufactures, and developed the clay, bronze, and woolen industries to a point not dreamed of before.

17. Rapid development in the fifth century, B.C.—In this, which may be termed the preparatory period of Greek commerce, the leadership rested with the Greek colonies in Asia; Miletos was the first of the Greek cities in commercial importance. The advance of the Persian kings about 500 broke the power of the Greek colonies in the East; at the same time the western colonies, especially Syracuse, grew rapidly in importance, and forced Carthage to recognize their supremacy in the northern Mediterranean. The mother country itself was, however, that part of the Greek world which showed the most striking gains. The successful resistance to the Persians was followed by a remarkable development not only in politics but in industry and commerce as well, and Greece now took for two centuries the position which England occupies in the modern world. The little island of Ægina (near Athens), rocky and sterile, supporting to-day but 6,000 inhabitants, became for a time the most important market of the Greek world; it amassed fabulous riches by a commerce penetrating all seas, aided by an artificial harbor and a strong war navy. Another great commercial city, destined to a longer career, was Corinth; this city was the natural medium of trade with the western colonies, not only because it offered an opportunity to reach them without rounding the dreaded promontory of the southern tip of Greece, but also because some of the leading colonies of the West were Corinthian or closely allied to the Corinthians.

18. Rise of Athens to leadership. Exports.—The city of Athens, which had developed rapidly in the century preceding the Persian wars, rose to the first place among the Greek cities in the century in which they occurred (500-400 B.C.). The Athenians broke the power of Ægina in armed conflict, and appropriated its commerce; the Athenian sea-port, the Piræus, became the leading commercial port of the Greek world, and remained so until the Macedonian period (about 300). Readers must be referred to one of the narrative histories of Greece for an account of the way in which Athens built up its empire in the Ægean Sea, and for the story of the varied fortunes of its political power. Even in times of defeat, when its war-navy was scattered and its leagues and alliances broken up, it was still able to control a large part of the trade of the Ægean and Black seas, and maintained an important commerce with the South and West. The favorable situation of the city, and the ability and energy of its navigators and business men, enabled it to conduct a large carrying trade for other peoples, and many of the exports were foreign wares which were merely transshipped in the Piræus. Of native wares it exported silver and coin, from the mines near the city, some natural products (oil, figs, honey, wool, marble) of comparatively slight importance, and especially manufactured wares, of which pottery was the chief.

19. Athenian imports and policy.—The chief import was wheat, on which Athens was then as dependent as England is now; the city had grown so great by trade that the surrounding country was unable to support it. The great granary of Athens was the level country north of the Black Sea, and the Athenians made extraordinary efforts to control the narrow entrance to the Black Sea, that they might assure their food supply. They were not entirely dependent on this source, however, and imported wheat also from Sicily, Egypt, Syria, and the mainland to the North. Among the other imports were ship-building materials, salt fish, slaves, raw materials for the Athenian manufacturers, and articles of luxury. The breadth of the Athenian trade is pictured in the statement of a contemporary: “What delicacies there are in Sicily, or Lower Italy, or Cyprus, or Egypt, or Lydia, or on the Pontus, or in Peloponnesus, or anywhere else, they all are brought to Athens by her control of the sea.”

The commercial policy of the Athenians was framed with an eye especially to the interests of the consumer. What duties were levied were low, and had no leaning to “protection” in the modern sense. The export of articles especially desired (wheat, ship-building materials) was restricted in the hope of keeping up the home supply, and commercial advantages were granted or withheld with the idea of exercising political pressure on other states; but nothing like modern protectionism can be found in the commercial policy of this period.

20. Contrast of the ancient and modern world; effect of Macedonian and Roman conquests.—In the course of our narrative we are now approaching a point when a great change came over the ancient world. The isolation of the earlier states of antiquity is their most striking feature. Each one lives only unto itself. It rises in civilization and then declines, without sharing its gains and losses with other states. It may conquer and hold them for a time, it is true, but it rules them as foreign territory, with alien interests; and the great empires crumble as readily as they are made. This characteristic of ancient history is one of its main difficulties to the student, for it deprives him of any bond of connection between the peoples, and forces him to pass from one to another of them, until he feels lost in the complexity of the narrative.

The modern world, with its common fund of culture and its community of interests uniting different peoples, could arise from these conditions only after long centuries of struggle. The unity of the Christian faith was needed to confirm the union of peoples in a common civilization. The process of union begins, however, at the point which we have reached; the great conquests of Alexander of Macedon, and those of Rome, did much to break down the barriers between peoples, and to prepare them for the acceptance of a common civilization and a common religion. It is to be hoped that the student knows already something of the narrative of those conquests. We shall have to confine ourselves to the results as they appear in the history of commerce. Here the reader can merely be reminded that Alexander united the eastern world into an empire extending from Greece to India, a little before 300 B.C., and that the Romans began about 200 B.C. to extend their authority outside the Italian peninsula, and before the birth of Christ had subjected to it practically all the peoples whose history we have been studying.

21. Effect of Alexander’s conquests on commerce; decline of Greece.—In appearance the empire of Alexander outlived its founder but a few years, and then dissolved. Alexander, however, was a civilizer as well as a conqueror; he endowed the East with a common fund of Greek culture; and however distinct or hostile the states might seem thereafter the peoples were united as they had never been before. Commerce took on a new aspect. Greece, which before had been at the center of the great commercial movements, was now left on the western edge. Greek merchants could for a time use their former commanding position to share in the great commercial development, but in the long run their struggle was hopeless. The most energetic Greeks left their home to settle in eastern countries which were richer, more populous, and closer to the great currents of trade. Corinth was the only city which managed to maintain and extend its trade. Athens declined rapidly in commercial importance; and grass grew and cows were pastured in the streets of other towns which had once been important markets.

22. Rise of great cities.—Some indication of the development of commerce, and of the rearrangement of its important centers, can be got from a study of the great cities of the ancient world. Before the time of Alexander there were only three cities of the Mediterranean with a population of over 100,000, Syracuse, Athens, Carthage; none of these had a population far above that figure. About 200 B.C., scarcely more than a century afterward, there were four cities with a population over 200,000, Alexandria, Seleukia, Antioch, Carthage; one city with a population far above 100,000, Syracuse; and of cities with a population about 100,000 there were Corinth, Rome, Rhodes, Ephesos, and possibly others. The names of some of these cities are already familiar to us. Carthage was enjoying its last century of commercial greatness, before Rome robbed it of its influence in the northern Mediterranean. Syracuse was the chief Greek colony of the West, destined also to fall under the Roman power just before 200. Other names, however, are entirely new to history, or first became of great importance at this time, and the best idea of the commerce of the period can be got by considering the reasons for their greatness.

23. Alexandria, Seleukia, Antioch.—Alexandria, as its name suggests, was founded by the Macedonian conqueror. It was situated on a tongue of land between a lagoon and the sea, near the most western of the mouths of the Nile. It had a double harbor, formed by the island Pharos, which has given the name for lighthouse in some of the modern languages (French, phare, Italian, fáro), as the most celebrated lighthouse of antiquity was erected there. Alexandria furnished the only good harbor for large vessels on the coast of Egypt; it had access to the Nile, tapping one of the great granaries of antiquity, and connected with the Red Sea through the canal that ran from the Nile to the Bitter Lakes. It was at the point where the sea-route from the far East reached the Mediterranean, and it became by right the greatest market and the largest city that the world had known.

Next to it in size and importance came two other cities, Seleukia and Antioch, which were founded even later than Alexandria. Seleukia, on the Tigris, took the place of the earlier Babylon and the later Bagdad; it was situated in a rich plain at the points where the routes from the Persian Gulf and the Persian highlands met on their way westward. Antioch was at the focus of the routes by which the trade with inner Asia was carried on. Situated at a point where the Euphrates approaches to within a few days’ march of the coast, and where the valley of the Orontes offers the best means of reaching the sea from the interior, it had the full benefit of the revival of eastern commerce which followed the conquests of Alexander and the enlightened rule of his successors.

24. Rhodes.—Only one other city, Rhodes, deserves especial attention, and this not because of its size alone but also because it was so specifically a commercial city. The little island could offer but scanty products to commerce, but it enjoyed an exceptionally favorable position, where navigators from Egypt and Syria, avoiding the dangers of the open sea, would put in for shelter and to trade. Rhodes followed a far-sighted foreign policy, guided by the idea of securing the greatest freedom of trade; it policed the seas and repressed piracy with vigor; and established a code of mercantile law which was celebrated as a model and which invited dealings in its market. The Rhodians were skilful navigators, and developed the principles of commercial association to a point of high efficiency. It is little cause for wonder, therefore, that commerce flowed hither from all parts of the eastern Mediterranean and even from the Black Sea; that foreign merchants sent their sons there to learn the conduct of commerce; and that great riches were accumulated, of which one evidence was furnished by the many colossi, gigantic statues, about the city.

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

1. Prove the statement in the text, regarding the Greek islands. Take a good map, measure off on the scale 25 miles, the distance at which hills of about 125 feet are visible (the Greek islands are mountainous and the air very clear), and show by what stepping-stones timid sailors could advance.

2. Study in detail the influence of the physical characteristics of Greece on the people and their history. [See Myers, chap. 1; Holm, vol. 1, chap. 2.]

3. Write a report on the evidences of early civilization and trade. [Holm, vol. 1, chap. 8.]

4. Write a report on the early commerce carried on by Phœnicians. [Holm, vol. 1, chap. 9.]

5. Make a careful study of the Greek colonial movement, noting, (a) the motives to colonization, (b) the extent of Greek colonies, (c) the relations with the mother-country, (d) the mode of life in the colonies, (e) the influence on the commercial development of the different parts of Greece. [Myers, chap. 5; Holm, vol. 1, chaps. 12, 13, 14, 21, 25.]

6. Write a report on the history of the Greek colonies of the West, especially Syracuse and its contest with Carthage. [Holm, vol. 1, chap. 25; vol. 2, chap. 6, 29; Freeman, Story of Sicily, N. Y., Putnam, 1892, $1.50.] ·

7. Study the growth of the sea-power and empire of Athens, indicating on a map the allied or subject cities. [Myers, chaps. 15, 16; Holm, vol. 2, esp. chap. 17.]

8. Contrast Athenian exports of this period with the exports of modern Greece. [Statesman’s Year-Book.]

9. What is the leading port of modern Greece? [Same.]

10. Write an essay comparing the Athenian and the British empires, noting, (a) advantages of geographical position, (b) products of the home country, exports and imports, (c) naval power and naval stations, (d) policy to members of the empire, (e) commercial policy of the home country. [See Myers or Holm, and the chapters in this book on England; compare E. A. Freeman, Greater Greece and Greater Britain, London, 1886.]

11. Compare the imports of ancient and of modern Greece. [Statesman’s Year-Book.]

12. Make a chart, naming on a horizontal line the leading states of antiquity, from Egypt to Rome, placing dates (3000, 1500, 1000, etc.) in a column at the left, and indicating changes in the history of each state in the appropriate place in its column.

13. Draw a map showing the extent of Alexander’s conquests, and comparing the empire with earlier Oriental empires. [See the maps in Myers, and if no good historical atlas is available consult the maps in the Oxford Bible, teacher’s edition.]

14. Study the influence of the Macedonian conquests on civilization and commerce. [Myers, chaps. 25, 26, 27; Holm, vol. 3, esp. chap. 27.]

15. Write a report on the economic decline of Greece after the Macedonian conquest. [Holm, vol. 4.]

16. Is England exposed to such a change in the currents of trade as furthered the decline of Greece?

17. Why do great cities rarely grow up without the aid of commerce? [The answer to this question is suggested in a later chapter, but the student should be able to work it out himself.]

18. Are there any exceptions? What is the commerce of Washington, D. C.? Is there any one of the cities named in this section which may have owed its size to something beside commerce?

19. Has there been any later period in which great cities have risen suddenly, as in this period after Alexander?

20. Write a commercial history of Carthage from the information to be got in a Roman history, or in the Encyclopædia Britannica. Write a commercial history of Syracuse in the Roman period, from the same sources.

21. Write a report on the commerce and civilization of one of the cities, using Holm, vol. 4, and the encyclopedia.

22. Endeavor to trace the later history of one of these cities, and to discover its population now, using the encyclopedia and a geographical gazetteer.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

See chapter ii.

CHAPTER IV
ROMAN PERIOD

25. The Roman state; Rome not a commercial city.—In entering on the period of Roman domination we need spend no time over the earlier history of the city which came to rule the world. The Romans were not a commercial people. Even in the last two centuries B.C., when Rome extended her sway over the eastern countries which have already been noticed, and subjected a large part of the West as well, Rome did not become a commercial center. The city grew to unparalleled size, it is true, and required immense imports of food to support the population. These imports came, however, as taxes and tribute to the conquerors. Rome supplied no exports of considerable amount, and built up no great carrying and forwarding trade such as would have made the city the center for the exchanges of other people. The service which the Romans gave to the world of their time, and for which they received such rich reward, was not economic but political in character; they were the greatest organizers and administrators of antiquity, and by their skill in the arts of war and government succeeded in living on the labor of subject peoples. They were not mere parasites. They earned all that they received by one great contribution, “pax Romana,” Roman peace, which continued almost unbroken for centuries, and which furnished an opportunity for commercial development before unknown.

26. Development of commerce in the Roman East.—The study of commerce in the Roman period resolves itself, as suggested above, into a study of commerce in the different regions of which the great Roman state was composed. In the East commerce developed on the lines which have already been described; Alexandria and Antioch continued to be great markets for Oriental wares, coming now even from India and China; and Carthage remained an important outlet for the African trade. Asia Minor, northern Africa, and southeastern Europe reached the very pinnacle of their historical development in the Roman period; these countries have never since attained to anything like the prosperity they then enjoyed. We shall not have the time hereafter to notice the commerce of these regions in detail; the reader may take it for granted that merchants struggled strenuously to keep the place they had reached, and that decline came slowly, when it did come later.

Our attention must be directed hereafter mainly to the West. It was there that the most important states of modern Europe arose, and there that commerce grew up in its modern form. Our chief interest must be to know what progress the peoples of the West made under Roman rule, and how far commerce had developed among them.

27. Backward condition of the people of the West.—The peoples of the West were far behind those of the East in civilization. They have sometimes been compared to the American Indians, and though the comparison is inexact in detail and may easily mislead, it gives still a rough indication of their backwardness. They lived more from the products of their flocks and herds than from agriculture, when the Romans came in contact with them; they had practically no towns, and no considerable trade.

The five hundred years (roughly) of Roman rule made some striking changes in the Roman provinces of the West (modern Spain, France, England; not Germany or countries farther east). It kept the people in order, and gave them an opportunity to acquire the elements of a higher civilization. The fact that modern Spanish and French are based on Latin remains always a striking testimony to the Roman influence on the provincials.

28. Limited influence of Rome on the commercial development of the West.—It is easy, however, to overestimate the results of this influence, especially so far as regards economic progress. Rome gave her subject peoples of the West a chance at commercial development, but none had sought it and few were ready to profit by it. The Roman government constructed a system of military roads, models of their kind, which enabled troops and messengers to reach speedily the different provinces. Romans settled in the provinces as officials or private gentlemen, and Roman culture was acquired by the wealthy provincials; cities and large landed estates formed centers of industry and exchanged manufactured products for the raw materials of the surrounding districts.

ROMAN ROADS IN SOUTHERN BRITAIN

The course of some of the roads is uncertain, and the number would be increased or diminished according to the authority followed. The map gives, however, a fair picture of the Roman road system; it was, evidently, not so extensive as our modern railroad system.

The roads, however, seem to have served mainly Roman purposes, and the cities and culture depended mainly on Roman influence for their support. The mass of the people remained passive, and advanced slowly. Most of them lived by agriculture in the country districts, producing the things necessary for their own subsistence and a small surplus for the Roman tax-gatherer; they received for their surplus no wares which would have formed the basis of commerce. However much Rome did to efface the differences of race, language, and national tradition, such differences remained to hinder commerce; and peoples were still separated by great distances and by serious physical barriers. The commercial development of the West, though it may seem great in comparison with conditions in the following period of disorder, was very limited even at the height of Roman power.

29. Decline of Roman power and of commerce in the West.—The time came soon when the provincials could no longer look to Rome for protection and stimulus. In the third century, A.D., the Roman government began to go to pieces. It lacked the force to repress internal revolts in the provinces, and to repel the inroads of barbarians on the frontiers. The process of decline had already proceeded far before the “Fall of Rome” (476), when even the shadow of authority passed from the Roman Emperor of the West. The remnants of Roman rule centered henceforth about the eastern capital, Constantinople. In the West barbarian chieftains established government of a kind on the fragments of the Roman state, but endeavored in vain to follow the models which the Romans had set them. The motives to commerce grew weaker as Roman culture disappeared, and the obstacles to commerce increased rapidly with the decline in public order. Brigandage and piracy became more profitable than honest industry; roads and bridges deteriorated; the course of rivers was obstructed. Even a great ruler like Charlemagne, who had himself crowned Emperor in 800, could do little to stay the process of decline, and weaker successors could do still less. The last remnants of the Roman organization seemed to have passed away, and the European world passed into the “Dark Ages.”

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

1. Endeavor to verify the statements in the text by studying the descriptions of Roman commerce in the current Roman histories. Ask the following questions of them. What wares, beside manuscript books and a few other items of no great importance, did the people of Rome produce for export? What wares beside food for the people and luxuries for the rich did they import?

2. Show how the taxes and tribute from conquered provinces can be regarded as war-insurance.

3. Write a report on the civilization and commerce of one of the provinces of the Roman Empire. [See Mommsen, Provinces, esp. vol. 1, chap. 7, Greek Europe; chap. 8, Asia Minor; vol. 2, chap. 12, Egypt; chap. 13, the African Provinces.]

4. Write a similar report on one of the provinces of the West. [Vol. 1, chap. 2, Spain; chap. 3, Gaul; chap. 4, Germany; chap. 5, Britain.]

5. Study the civilization of Roman Britain, distinguishing carefully the life of the upper (Roman) classes, and the life of the common people. What effect would this contrast of classes have on the extent and character of commerce in the Roman period? [Consult manuals of English history.]

6. Study the economic and political factors in the fall of Rome. [Cunningham, West. civ., vol. 1, p. 170 ff.; Adams, Civ., chap. 4.]

7. Compare the fall of Rome with the growth of political corruption in some modern cities, as affecting the prosperity of commerce.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

See chapter ii.

PART II.—MEDIEVAL COMMERCE

CHAPTER V
CONDITIONS ABOUT THE YEAR 1000

30. Political conditions affecting commerce; the modern system of government.—The reader who studies the history of commerce in the medieval period faces a system of government entirely different from that of modern times, which he must understand before he can appreciate the peculiar conditions of commerce then. We can illustrate the modern method of government by taking a country, say France, for an example. We wish to understand the relations of the capital, Paris, to other parts of the country, say the district around Bordeaux, in the southwest corner. An observer of this country will find that Paris and Bordeaux are united by different means of communication and transportation, telegraphs and posts, railroads, highways and canals, which are constantly employed in the service of government. On the path from the province to the capital go the reports of the officials who are in charge of the government of Bordeaux; and, if they fail in their duties, petitions and complaints from private citizens, asking relief, will take the same path. By this path, also, the taxes collected at Bordeaux will stream to the treasury at Paris, to be employed in maintaining the government. Part of these taxes will be expended at Paris, to support the officials who live in the capital, the central army, etc. Part, however, must be used to fulfil the local needs of Bordeaux; and on the road from the capital to the province we shall find money and wares, going as salaries to officials, appropriations for public works and the like. On this road, furthermore, we shall find a stream of messages, sent by the central government to its local subordinates, directing them in their work; these messages will answer the reports of officials and the petitions and complaints of subjects.

31. Impossibility of applying modern methods of government in the period after the fall of Rome.—The system of government, thus roughly outlined, was the system used in the period when Rome was still strong. But when the power of Rome declined it became constantly more difficult to maintain a system of the kind; every obstacle to the free passage of men and wares weakened the hold of the government on its provinces. The roads grew worse, and while they were still passable the danger of traversing them increased, so that the expense of maintaining this government became prohibitive. The reports from officials and the petitions from subjects were delayed or lost; only a small part of the local taxes reached the treasury at the center. The central government, on its side, found that it had no longer the means to pay the bills for salaries and public works in the provinces, and found that its commands were not received there, or were not obeyed, because the government could no longer send officials and troops to force obedience.

32. The feudal system; rise and character.—The time came, finally, when the government had to recognize publicly the change in conditions, and to adopt a system of quite a different kind, known as the feudal system. In substance it told the man who before had been a salaried official that it could no longer pay salaries, and that he must support himself henceforth from the revenues of land which would formerly have gone to it as taxes. It maintained still a nominal superiority, and exacted from the feudal lords who now assumed the responsibility of government certain payments for general public service, occasionally a sum of money and more frequently personal service of a military or judicial kind. Practically, however, the state had split into little pieces; the central government had lost the right even to nominate the successor of an official, and each was succeeded in the duties and profits of government by his son, as though he had been a petty king. It is impossible to state accurately the number of little governments of this kind that existed in the different countries of Europe; in France, in the tenth century, it is supposed to have exceeded 10,000. The character of government varied greatly, of course, according to local conditions, not only in different countries but in different parts of the same country, but it was everywhere extremely low when measured by modern standards. This will be apparent as we survey the conditions under which commerce was carried on in the period known as the Dark Ages.

33. Difficulties and dangers of transportation.—Attempt was made to maintain the roads, which of course are essential to trade by sea as well as by land, by making the proprietors through whose land they ran responsible for their repair. Many of the proprietors managed to escape contribution, and what work was done was largely wasted, through ignorance and lack of proper superintendence. We shall see that even in later periods the roads were bad; in this early time they were so bad that they seem to have been mere tracks, of service to passengers on foot or on horseback, but of little use for wagon traffic.

The merchant suffered even more, however, from bad men than from bad roads. Government was so weak that robbery was common; people were so ignorant of everything outside the narrow sphere of local interests that they suspected every stranger, and too often with reason. There is a whole series of English laws, beginning about 700 and continuing for centuries, of which this is an early example; “If a man come from afar, or a stranger, go out of the highway, and he then neither shout nor blow a horn; he is to be accounted a thief, either to be slain or to be redeemed.”

34. Restrictions imposed to insure security. The market.—The dangers of travel required a merchant to go in company with others, and the danger that a merchant would himself turn robber made it necessary for him to subject himself constantly to public supervision, and to get residents who would act as sureties for his good behavior. In England, even in the eleventh century, the central government thought it necessary to pass a law “that every man above twelve years of age make oath that he will neither be a thief nor cognizant of theft.” Such a general statute would surely be of little use.

Many other statutes of a more specific nature were passed, which may have helped to repress robbery, but which must have hampered trade at the same time. The idea in general was to force a man to make his purchases in public, so that if he appeared at home with new wares he could get witnesses to prove that he came honestly by them. Cattle formed a large part of the personal property in early times, and as these could readily be stolen, many laws were passed restricting the trade in cattle. Other things were included in the restriction, however, as the need of protecting commerce became more apparent. In England, in the tenth century, a man was not allowed to buy or sell any goods above the value of twenty pence, unless he did it within a town where a public official and witnesses could legitimate the bargain. In this practice is found the origin of the market, a medieval institution of which more will be said later. A market was a place appointed by the government, where bargains could properly be made; and only small exchanges of household produce could be made outside it, in the open country. Beginning in the need that was felt to prevent thieving it developed as a public institution, which the people found it profitable to extend as a means of collecting tolls and of regulating internal trade.

35. Society organized to exist with the minimum of commerce; the medieval village.—The striking and important feature in the life of European peoples at this period was not the large amount of commerce carried on, but the small amount. The people were organized on a system which enabled them to support life with the least commerce possible. Instead of being concentrated in towns, they were isolated in little groups, often called manors, one of which would be composed often of less than 100 people, who got their living from the square mile or so of land surrounding them. It is not necessary here to discuss the social and political life of these little groups, though it is proper to remark that often some of the inhabitants were slaves, and many more were only half-free, like the Russian serfs of the nineteenth century.

36. Self-sufficiency of the villages; low stage of the arts of production.—The economic life of these village groups is the side in which we are interested, and the chief point in that was the self-sufficiency of each group. A village tried to produce everything that it wanted, to be free from the uncertainty and expense of trade. We find, then, that almost all the people in a village were agriculturists, and these raised the necessary food supply by methods which were always crude, and were often very cumbersome and wasteful. The stock was of such a poor breed that a grown ox seems to have been little larger than a calf of the present day, and the fleece of a sheep weighed often less than two ounces. Many of the stock had to be killed before winter, as there was no proper fodder to keep them, and those that survived were often so weak in the spring that they had to be dragged to pasture on a sledge. Insufficient stock meant insufficient manure, and though the fields were allowed to lie fallow every third year they were exhausted by constant crops of cereals, and gave a yield of only about six bushels of wheat an acre, of which two had to be retained for seed.

Not only the food but nearly everything else had to be raised where it was to be consumed. Houses were constructed of materials from the forest, clothes were made out of flax and wool from the village fields, furniture and implements were made at home. Nearly every village had a mill, usually run by water, to grind its meal or flour; some villages had a smith or carpenter; few special artisans beside those suggested were to be found in the ordinary manor.

37. Evils resulting from the lack of commerce.—Before we proceed to describe the growth of European commerce from such origins it will be well to stop and consider the results of a system which was based on the lack of commerce. With regard to the main product, food staples, the result was an alternation of waste and want. A good year brought a surplus for which there was no market outside the village, and which could not be worked up inside for lack of manufacturing skill and implements. A bad harvest, on the other hand, meant serious suffering, because there was no opportunity to buy food supplies outside the manor and bring them to it. Nearly every year was marked by a famine in one part or another of a country, and famine was often followed by pestilence. Diseases now almost unknown in the civilized world, like leprosy and ergotism or St. Anthony’s fire, were not infrequent. The food at best was coarse and monotonous; the houses were mere hovels of boughs and mud; the clothes were a few garments of rude stuff. Nothing better could be procured so long as everything had to be produced on the spot and made ready for use by the people themselves. Finally, these people were coarse and ignorant, with little regard for personal cleanliness or for moral laws, and with practically no interests outside the narrow bounds of the little village in which they lived.

38. Exceptional instances of higher organization of industry.—These conditions existed all over western Europe, and may be taken as typical of the period about the year 1000. Though they determined the commerce, or better the lack of commerce, at this time, they were not absolutely universal. Great feudal princes and great monasteries owned each a considerable number of villages or manors, and tried to introduce a more advanced economic system among them. A great lord would have his shoemaker and tailor, his saddler, swordsmith, etc.; and would have a considerable number of women gathered in a sort of factory making clothes. It is noteworthy, however, that the difficulties of transportation were so great that for a long time to come it was not practicable to concentrate the food supplies of a large group of manors in one place, and the owner would have to go to the food instead of having it brought to him. So we read of the kings and princes being always on the road, traveling with court and retinue from one manor to another, eating up the surplus that had accumulated and then moving on.

39. Common wares of commerce in the period of the manor.—Absolute self-sufficiency was impossible; it was the ideal at which the managers of the manor aimed, but there were few manors which could supply all the necessaries of life. The list, however, of articles which had to be procured by commerce with the outside world was small. Salt was one item, of special importance as it was so difficult to keep live stock through the winter, and the animals had to be killed and salted down. Iron was necessary for various implements, though it was so expensive that it was spared in every possible way. Other articles had to be bought as occasion arose, stones for the mill or tar to keep the murrain from sheep. These wares were essential to existence; by channels so obscure that they cannot now be traced they reached the places where they were wanted, and were purchased with part of the manor’s scanty surplus. Cattle and horses formed also, as is natural, common objects of exchange.

40. The slave trade in Europe.—One ware which had long been an object of commerce was of especial importance in the period just after the fall of Rome, and, indeed, for some time later; this was slaves. The slave trade extended over all Europe, and had great markets on the Mediterranean, the North, and the Baltic seas. Merchants drove troops of slaves in chains from one country to another, or exported them in lots of 100 or more. In the slave markets of the Baltic as many as 700 are said to have been put up for sale at once. A number of English laws regulated the slave trade of the time. It seems to have been largely confined to convicts, but a law of Alfred provided that a father should not sell his daughter to servitude among strange people. Later the English laws forbade the trade entirely, but we read of Bristol merchants in the eleventh century who not only bought slaves all over England for export to Ireland, but bred them as well; and the trade persisted in various sections even later.

41. Distant commerce confined to rare luxuries.—Under conditions such as these the term “foreign commerce” in its modern sense is meaningless. The areas which now form the countries of Europe did not specialize in the production of different wares, so that we can trace a regular exchange of products between them. Most of the common wares of commerce circulated inside a restricted area. Only the rich could afford to pay for the transportation of wares over any distance, and they would spend their money only for valuable luxuries. The dignitaries of the church, by reason of their higher culture and connection with a universal organization, created a demand for a few foreign wares, and the governing classes wanted some things which could not be produced at home. Wines and spices were brought up from southern Europe, along the river routes and over the passes of the Alps, and furs were brought down from the North.

Distant sea voyages were still uncommon. An English law of about 900 provided that “if a merchant thrived so that he fared thrice over the wide sea by his own vessel” he might be promoted to a higher social class; and later laws refer to merchant ships again. The Scandinavians have left records of adventurous voyages to the North and West, and a vast number of silver coins found in Russia and the Baltic countries shows that a land trade with southwestern Asia persisted in the period of which we treat. It is only toward the close of this period, however, that we begin to get details about distant commerce, and can see that it is firmly established. The Institutes of London, issued in the eleventh century, and regulating the commerce of the town, mention ships coming from Flanders, from Rouen and other places in France, and from Germany. Foreign merchants bought wool and pigs, and sold wine, furs, spices, gloves, and fish.

42. Character of the merchant in the early Middle Ages.—We know even less of the person of the merchant, in this period (about 1000 A.D.), than of the wares that he carried. It is certain, at any rate, that the merchant was not the specialist that he afterwards became, but was a jack-of-all-trades. He might be wholesaler and retailer, transporter and pedler, and often an artisan too. Nothing like the country store of the present day existed, and trade outside the few centers where markets had been established was carried on by pedlers, who carried their wares on the back or on a pack animal. Every merchant was sure to be something of a soldier, as he was thrown largely on his own resources for self-defence; and he often assumed the garb of a missionary or pilgrim to get the help of the church in carrying on his trade. The pilgrim was exempt from many burdens laid on the ordinary traveler or merchant, and though this exemption had later to be abolished, because it was so frequently abused, it seems to have been of great use in helping commerce through its early stages.

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

1. Modern France has, approximately, an area of 200,000 square miles. Calculate the average size of the feudal state about the year 1000, and compare it with the county in which you live.

2. Can you suggest anything in cow-boy life on the plains of the West reminding you of feudal conditions, when the State was weak?

3. What district, known to you, has the least commerce with the outside world?

4. How does the yield of wheat, as given in the text, compare with the yield in different parts of the U. S.? [See Abstract of the United States Census.]

5. Show why the lack of commerce requires small groups of people to produce everything for themselves, and why this self-sufficiency involves a low standard of living.

6. How does commerce remedy the waste and want which are characteristic of self-sufficiency? Why cannot people plan to produce just enough food?

7. Report on the wares and workmen collected on the estates of a great king. [Falkner, Statistical documents of the Middle Ages, Philadelphia, 1896, 10 cents, pp. 2-5.]

8. Name some wares, important in the stock of even the smallest country store, which did not appear in commerce in the period of the manor. Show the necessity of each one of the wares mentioned in the text.

9. Why could a profitable commerce in slaves be carried on when other wares did not pay the merchant?

10. What are the luxuries which a trader now can afford to pack into the uncivilized districts of Africa and America?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

References on the rise and character of feudalism may be found in many manuals of European history; among others Emerton, Introduction, 236; Mediæval Europe, 477; Robinson, Middle Ages, 119. Brief accounts, mainly for the student of political history, may be found in the above, in Adams, European Hist., 185-191; and in the same author’s *Civilization, chap. 9. The best account of the feudal system in English is Seignobos, **Feudal regime, N. Y., Holt, 1903.

Most of the books describing conditions in this period treat them either from the political or the agrarian standpoint; the writer knows nothing, suitable for student’s reading, discussing the origins of commerce at this time. See, therefore, Cunningham, Growth, vol. 1, book 1, or the smaller manuals on English economic history.

CHAPTER VI
TOWN TRADE

43. Significance of towns in the economic organization; decline of the Roman towns.—In the latter part of the Middle Ages, beginning after the year 1000, a striking change took place in the life of Europe; the people advanced so rapidly in their economic and political organization that we can make this a new era in their history. It will be necessary to notice the important changes in detail, but we can summarize them now, from the economic standpoint, by saying that people advanced from the stage of the village or manor to that of the town. A town, as the word will be used here, means a group of at least several hundred, perhaps several thousand people, settled closely together, and maintaining themselves in large part by manufactures and trade. Such towns had existed, as noted above, in the Roman Empire of the West. In Roman Gaul (modern France) there were over one hundred of them. They depended for their existence, however, on the stimulus of Roman culture, and on the security which good government could afford to their trade. A manufacturing class evidently could not eat the wares it made, and needed the chance to exchange them for food products from the country districts if it was to maintain itself. In the period before, during, and after the German invasions the chance for exchange grew steadily less, as we have seen. Some of the towns were entirely destroyed in the period of disorder which followed the fall of the Roman government. London, for instance, which had been a flourishing town under Roman rule, must have become a mere heap of rubbish, for when it was rebuilt in later times no attempt was made to follow the lines of the old streets, and new streets were laid out over the ruins of former houses. When a town was not actually destroyed it ceased to live; the inhabitants had to take to agriculture to support themselves, and the town shrank to a mere village, which could not be distinguished from the manors about it. Of more than 500 modern French cities scarcely 80 can be traced back to the Roman period, and all of these lost their identity as towns and became simple villages in the intervening time.

44. Rise of towns after 1000; conditions determining their location.—We read of towns in Europe before the year 1000 but they scarcely deserve the name; they were rather the germs from which towns were later to spring. Considerable numbers of people would collect in the place where some great feudal lord spent most of his time, or where a monastery had been founded; garrisons would be established at places suitable for military operations. We must regard such groups, however, as supported by taxation rather than by the trade of individuals, from which most urban groups arise. Trade of this kind became, however, so considerable after the year 1000 that real towns grew up in constantly increasing numbers. Their position was determined by two important conditions of existence, political protection and the chance for profitable trade. People found the former by nestling under the walls of some castle or monastery; the many French towns which bear the name of some saint show how much the protection of the church was prized. The latter object was generally attained by founding the town at some break in a line of transportation, where goods had to be transshipped and where merchants would naturally congregate to rest and exchange their wares (cf. Ox-ford, Cam-bridge, etc.). We find the most considerable towns, therefore, along the seacoast and rivers, and at breaks or intersections of the land routes.

45. Development of manufacturing in the towns.—The rise of the towns brought with it, as has been suggested, a new era in manufactures. In the ordinary village it did not pay men to specialize in the production of wares, as the market was so small. A shoemaker, for instance, could not make a living by selling 50 or 100 pairs of shoes a year. If we think, however, of a village growing into a town surrounded by a considerable country population, we see that the market has widened into an area of size sufficient to support a number of specialists. Manufacturing became a profession to which men devoted most of their time. A man could learn his trade much more thoroughly, and could afford to make the tools which would enable him to exercise it most efficiently. The result was an increase in production which enabled the people on a given area to live far more comfortably than they had done before.

46. Effect of the towns in improving the conditions in the country.—This movement was bound to change the conditions of life in the country districts. The people there were freed from the necessity of devoting part of their time to work which they never did well; they could apply most of their energy to agriculture, and could use the surplus crop which they thus obtained, for a profitable exchange with the artisans of the town. The growth of towns affected them in another way. In the purely manorial period a serf could not better his condition by running away; he had nowhere to go except to other manors like the one he had left, where his condition might actually be worse than before. In the towns, however, practically all the population were free; the artisans were numerous and intelligent enough to provide for their own protection, and did not need to subject themselves to a lord. The towns were islands of freedom in a sea of serfdom or of half-freedom. The custom established itself that a serf who could escape from his lord, and who lived a year and a day within the walls of a town, became a free man, and could not be reduced to his former position. Landlords found that they must bid against the attractions of the town if they were to keep the laborers in the country, and agreed to lighten their burdens if they would stay. Many influences worked together, and the results were modified by many factors, especially of a political kind, in various countries, but the upward movement of the country population was general throughout western Europe. Free men produced more than serfs, and this was another influence increasing the surplus of the country districts, and furthering trade thereby.

47. The “foreign” trade of this period was that between towns, even in the same country.—The student who has begun the history of commerce with the notion, as common as it is erroneous, that the foreign trade of a country is more important than its internal trade, and who is impatient to arrive at the description of this foreign trade, will be disappointed to learn that even in the latter part of the Middle Ages it scarcely existed in the modern sense. We mean now by foreign trade that between states—between the United States and Germany, for example. In the manorial period, as has been suggested, foreign trade was rather that which existed between manors. In the period under discussion it was that which existed between towns. The towns existing inside the boundaries of a modern European country did not, it is true, differ as much among themselves, in their products, as they differed, taking them altogether, from the towns of another country. But the expense of transportation restricted most trade still to a comparatively small radius, and the town, rather than the country, was the natural trading unit. The radius of profitable trade, for most articles, was so small that an English town would have its most important commercial relations with the other English towns rather than with the towns of foreign countries. The town, moreover, was the unit for regulating trade. Each town would have its own customs tariff, and to a merchant of London it made little difference whether he traded with Southampton or with Paris; national regulation was less important than municipal. Climatic and historical influences, it is true, made a clearly marked distinction between the great sections of Europe, the North and the South, the East and the West, and we shall have to take up some of these sections in detail; but we shall use our time most effectively by spending it not on the features of trade in the different modern countries considered separately, but on the characteristics of trade common to all the advanced countries.

48. Small size of the medieval towns.—A point deserving special emphasis in the description of the medieval town is this, that though the town comprised practically all the mercantile and manufacturing population of a country, and though it marked a tremendous advance over the village, yet the town was a very small affair when measured by modern standards. In England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the average size of the first class of towns was probably below 5,000 inhabitants; few had more than 10,000 and many had less than 1,000. On the Continent, in the last centuries of the Middle Ages, even celebrated cities like Nuremberg and Strassburg had not over 20,000 inhabitants. Frankfort on the Main had scarcely 10,000, and other cities which played a great part in economic and political history had even less.

49. Rural characteristics of the towns.—Another misconception must be guarded against. Though the town was a distinctly industrial group in comparison with the village, yet each town had grown from a village, and retained many features of its agricultural infancy even to a late period. Most of the townspeople owned some land which they used for garden plots, and every town had considerable amounts of arable and pasture land outside the walls which was used for the benefit of the townspeople if not actually worked by them. In Coblentz, in the thirteenth century, work on the city walls was stopped during harvest by lack of labor, and in London at the same period people were allowed to keep pigs “within their houses,” and the attempt to keep vagrant swine off the streets was a distinct failure.

50. General description of a town.—There were generally a few streets that were broad and straight, as they were the old highways on which the town had grown up. The attempt was made to keep these clear of encroaching houses and shops by sending a horseman through them once a year with a spear held horizontally, and by forcing the removal of obstructions. Most of the streets, however, had grown up from village by-paths and were narrow and crooked. They were rarely paved, and as they served as the repository for all kinds of offal and garbage we can understand why the townspeople wore wooden overshoes when they went out, and even the saints in the pictures were painted with them on. The houses were of wood in the early period, and there were no chimneys, so that fires were frequent and disastrous until they forced people to a better mode of building. Travelers in Europe now remark upon the picturesque beauty of the old houses, and upon the merits of their construction, but it should be noted that most of these relics date from the very end of the Middle Ages and that they were the select few of their time, and give no indication of the character of the average house. Most of the people lived in narrow quarters, dark and drafty, unsuited for good work places and unwholesome as habitations. Wares were exposed for sale either in the open market-places which are so common in European towns, or in little shops like pedlers’ booths at the front of the house. The municipal government spent little or nothing for public works or police protection; it tried to make the inhabitants share in performing all absolutely necessary duties, but succeeded so ill that all the towns were sinks of disease, and breach of the peace was a constant occurrence.

51. Improvement in conditions in the later Middle Ages.—In the early period of the towns, say before 1300, conditions were distinctly worse than they were in the last two centuries of the Middle Ages, when commerce had attained such development that it brought great wealth to some and comparative comfort to many among the city people. The town of Colchester, in England, ranked as one of importance in 1295, but a tax roll of that date shows a striking poverty in the stock in trade assessed for taxation, in the small value of household furniture, in the insignificant amount of most of the assessments, and in the preponderance of rural wealth like live-stock and agricultural produce over other kinds of personal property. In the fourteenth century, however, the population of the town doubled, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the towns of England in general freed themselves from the worst features of medieval squalor, accumulated wealth, and expended large sums in building and improvements.

52. Town organization. The merchant gilds.—Much more might be said about the general characteristics of the medieval town, but the student of the history of commerce must devote most of his time to its economic life. He must prepare himself to accept and understand conditions quite different from those of modern times, and must try to realize how much the world has gained by the advance of the commercial organization from these early stages. In every town the merchants and manufacturers were organized in gilds and subject to strict regulation. The Anglo-Saxon word gild means “a contribution to a common fund,” and came to be applied to the society itself. Societies had existed in the first part of the Middle Ages with social and religious objects, and about the eleventh century, with the springing up of trade, commercial gilds became more and more common. It is supposed that the dangers and difficulties of trade were then so great that merchants united in bands for a journey, as caravans are now formed in the unsettled countries of the East. A collection of early gild rules shows that the members were subject to regulations like the following: Every one was obliged to carry armor, a bow and twelve arrows on penalty of a fine; they must stand by and help each other when they set out for a journey; in case one member had not sold his wares the others must wait one day for him; if one was imprisoned or lost his wares on the road the others must ransom him. The organization was probably temporary at first, and the company of merchants dissolved at the end of the trip; but as such caravans became more regular at any place there grew the tendency to permanence of organization. These merchant gilds were at first also private associations, formed voluntarily by the merchants to protect themselves; but they received public recognition and became a part of the town government as the town saw the advantage it could get from them in pushing its trade and protecting it against the efforts of rivals. They included not only professional merchants, but all who bought and sold, including many artisans. Of the nine members who belonged to the Shrewsbury merchant gild in its earliest period two were fishermen and one was a butcher.

53. Position of the merchant gilds; their privilege of monopoly.—These merchant gilds did not exist in all parts of Europe, and differed much from each other in the various regions where they did exist. In England, which we shall choose to illustrate their operation, they became regular parts of the town government. They were granted one most important privilege, the exclusive right of trading within the town. “Foreigners,” which meant at this period the people from any other town, whether English or not, were allowed to bring their wares to the town and to sell them wholesale, but they were forbidden to purchase wares which the townspeople wanted for themselves, and they were not allowed to keep shops and to sell retail. The gilds were not like modern “trusts,” for, in the first place, their membership was very broad, and, in the second, they were associations of men, not of capital, and there was no division of profits among the members. There was a strong feeling of solidarity among the members, however, and competition between them was discouraged. In some places there was a law that if a gildsman made a bargain for any ware another gildsman had the right to share in it if he gave security that he could pay for the portion he desired.

54. Development of manufactures in the towns; the common handicrafts.—The growth of towns led, as has been said, to a specialization in manufactures which was impossible before. All the industries that had been carried on in villages were continued in towns by professional craftsmen, and new ones were added as the demand for them grew. There were from a dozen to a score of handicrafts which supported for centuries the staple manufacturing groups of the towns: butchers, bakers, brewers, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, coppersmiths, masons, carpenters, cabinet-makers, wheelwrights, skinners or furriers, tanners, shoemakers, saddlers and harness-makers, weavers, dyers, fullers, and tailors. Most of these terms will be familiar to the reader. Coppersmiths took the place of the modern tinsmiths before the introduction of tinned iron. Fullers improved the texture of cloth after it had been woven, by beating and washing it with fuller’s earth, a clay which absorbs the grease from the wool; the cloth loses in length and breadth but gains in body and thickness.

55. The craft gilds.—The craftsmen, like the traders, were organized in gilds, which followed shortly after the rise of merchant gilds. The general reason for their existence was the desire on the part of members of a particular craft to be free to regulate their professional affairs as they pleased, and the willingness on the part of the public authorities to grant them this privilege when it seemed to promise better work and better products for the consumer. To insure efficient regulation the grant of monopoly was necessary, and accordingly no one was allowed to practise a craft who did not belong to the appropriate gild. We shall see that the monopoly was greatly abused in later times and was a serious hindrance to the development of manufacturing. At the start, however, the craft gilds were liberal; they desired a large number of members to increase their political importance, and admitted them freely; inside the gild the class distinctions were at first unimportant. “The regulations drawn up by the crafts aimed at the prevention of fraud, and the observance of certain standards of size and quality in the wares produced. Articles made in violation of these rules were called ‘false,’ just as clipped or counterfeit coin was ‘false money.’ For such ‘false work’ the makers were punished by fines (one half going to the craft, the other half to the town funds), and, upon the third or fourth offence, by expulsion from the trade. Penalties were provided, as far as possible, for every sort of deceitful device; such as putting better wares at the top of a bale than below, moistening groceries so as to make them heavier, selling second-hand furs for new, soldering together broken swords, selling sheep leather for doe leather, and many other like tricks.”

56. Town policy; imports, exports, protection.—Every town felt a community of interests among its inhabitants and a competition with the inhabitants of other towns, which expressed themselves in a town policy very like the national commercial policy of the modern state. We can consider this municipal policy under several different heads.

(1) Every town had what may be called a “revenue tariff,” consisting of duties levied on articles brought within the walls, with additional dues for the use of the market. As an example we can cite a brief extract from one of the London tariffs, giving the customs on victuals. “Every load of poultry that comes upon horse, shall pay three farthings, the franchise excepted.... If a man or woman brings any manner of poultry upon horse, and lets it touch the ground, such person shall pay for stallage three farthings. And if a man carries it upon his back and places it upon the ground, he shall pay one half-penny, of whatever franchise he may be.” It is interesting to note that this custom still survives in some European cities (octroi).

(2) Prohibitions to export goods, now rare in national policy (though suggested recently to keep English coal at home), were common in the town policy, when the supply of necessaries was small. “No butcher, or wife of a butcher, shall sell tallow or lard to a strange person for carrying to the parts beyond sea; by reason of the great dearness and scarcity that has been thereof in the City of late.” “No person shall carry corn or malt out of the City, under penalty of forfeiture.”

(3) The modern idea of protection was applied by the towns in a number of different ways. Bread from one part of London could not be sold in another part, which formed a separate jurisdiction. The protection at this period was attained more commonly, however, by aiming it against persons rather than wares; the merchant always accompanied his wares at this period, so it was easy to discriminate against “foreigners,” by making them pay special dues from which members “of the franchise,” i.e., townspeople, were excepted, and by restricting their chances for profit. Reference has been made above to the monopoly of retail trade reserved to townspeople and designed to protect the “home market.”

57. The market and its regulations.—(4) The market was an institution used in this period to regulate trade for the benefit of the townspeople; the name is applied now especially to meat shops simply because regulations were imposed on butchers after other dealers were freed from them. The townspeople were afraid that traders bringing provisions for sale could impose on their needs and force higher prices by making separate individual bargains. Therefore they required the country people to bring their provisions to a certain place (market-place) at a certain time, that they might have the benefit of competition among sellers; and tried to force the traders to sell out their stock before the close of the market. That all the townspeople might have an equal chance they were forbidden to buy goods on their way to market (“forestalling”); to buy larger amounts than they needed (“engrossing”); and to buy goods for retailing before the ordinary consumers had supplied their needs (“regrating”). After the close of the market the town shop-keepers looked after the needs of retail trade.

Ignorance and distrust were still so powerful in the town period that merchants were subject to constant supervision; they had to employ officials to weigh and measure for them, and could not employ brokers to hunt up customers unless the agents were also officials acting under oath.

58. Attempts to regulate prices. The assize of bread.—The town government went even so far as to set the prices at which wares must be sold. We are familiar, nowadays, with instances of the regulation of prices by public authority, as in the case of hack fares. Such instances, however, are now exceptional, while in the Middle Ages innumerable attempts at public regulation, covering practically all wares, were made at different times and places. Most of them were soon given up, because they defeated their own object; when the price was set too low the ware was no longer offered, and people suffered more by going without than by paying the higher price. Thus it was found unwise to set a price for a necessary like wheat; and high wheat prices were allowed to work their own cure by the inducement they offered to an increase in supply. It was as hopeless to set a fixed price for bread, but the government determined that at least the baker should not make improper profits from the necessities of his customers. It established, therefore, the “assize of bread,” a sliding-scale which fixed the weight or the price of a loaf according to the market price of wheat, and so restricted the power of the baker to raise his charges unduly. The same system was applied to ale, and assizes of this kind have lasted down to the nineteenth century in some countries.

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

1. Show what would happen to our modern cities if there were an interruption of commerce, either physical (perhaps the giving out of coal) or political (wars, strikes attended with violence, etc.).

2. Study the effect on a modern city of such a brief interruption as a great blizzard.

3. Find the reasons for the rise and growth of the following: London, York, Paris, St. Omer, Lille, St. Denis, Lyons, Bruges, St. Cloud. [Use a geography and the encyclopedia.]

4. Starting from the statements in the text, that in a manor of 100 inhabitants the only specialists were perhaps miller and smith, try to think of specialists who would appear as the group grew in size to 1,000; to 10,000; to 100,000; to 1,000,000. For example, when would the following appear: watch-maker, artificial limb-maker, shoe-maker, saddler? [The business directory of a city may supply helpful suggestions.]

5. How has the growth of cities in the U. S. affected the agriculture of the surrounding districts and the welfare of the farmers?

6. Compare the size of medieval towns with that of towns and villages familiar to you, and try to realize the conditions if all the larger cities were swept off the map. [See Abstract of the Census of U. S. giving the population of all places having 2,500 or more inhabitants, arranged by States.]

7. (a) Make a list of the ten or fifteen largest towns in modern England. [Statesman’s Year-Book, index, England, cities and towns.] (b) Compare this with a list of towns in early times and discover what large towns are of recent origin. [Cheyney, English towns, pp. 35-39. Beware of the large figures of population, p. 38; they are misleading.]

8. Write a report on the economic and social life of a medieval town. [See M. D. Harris, Life, or the original local customs in Cheyney, English towns, pp. 2-6.]

9. Write a similar report on the merchant gilds. [Harris, Life, chap. 7; Cheyney, English towns, pp. 12-20.]

10. Reviewing the list of trades in the text, try to realize how the people managed in the manorial period, when professional specialists in these trades were lacking.

11. Study the list of craft gilds in York, 1415; find from dictionary and encyclopædia the meaning of each trade mentioned; arrange them in classes, as for example: food, clothing, building utensils, personal service, etc. [Cheyney, English towns, pp. 29-32.]

12. Write a report on the town artisans and the craft gilds. [Harris, Life, chap. 13; Cheyney, English towns, pp. 21-29.]

13. Compare medieval and modern ideas on the regulation of trade. [Farrer, The State in its relation to trade, N. Y., Macmillan, 1902, $1.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gross, Sources, §§ 24a, 72.

General.—For the significance of towns in the development of the industrial organization the student may be referred to two important books, differing in details: Schmoller, Merc. system; Bücher, Indust. evolution. Chapters on the rise of towns and town life will be found in Adams, *Civ.; Emerton, Med. Eur.; Robinson, Middle Ages; Munro, Hist.; etc. Greater emphasis is, of course, laid on the economic (including commercial) aspects of town life in **Ashley and *Cunningham. Jessopp, *Coming, gives a vivid picture of urban and rural life of the period. Mary D. Harris, **Life in an old English town (Coventry), London, 1898 (N. Y., Macmillan, $1.75), should be very useful to student and teacher. Green, **English Towns, is valuable and interesting for the English towns of the fifteenth century.

Sources.—Cheyney, **English towns and gilds, Penn. Translations, Phila., 1895, $.20, gives an excellent selection, which can be used to advantage with advanced students.

CHAPTER VII
LAND TRADE

59. Roads neglected, or left to benevolent associations.—The maintenance of the roads was still left to local authorities. We find in the court records of manors that the people reported stretches of road which were in bad condition, and ordered that they should be repaired under penalty of fine; but a road had to be very bad before it attracted attention, and received little care at best. The clergy were the leaders in maintaining the roads, for their estates were scattered and they felt the need of transportation as none other but merchants did. Pious persons also devoted themselves to this object, as a meritorious work like visiting the sick or caring for the poor; they formed associations to keep roads in repair, and left bequests to allow the work to be carried on after their death. The Alpine hospices, which are so familiar to visitors in Switzerland now, were established by religious orders to help travelers and merchants on their way.

60. Difficulties of transportation by road.—A feudal lawyer distinguished in theory five kinds of roads: the path, the wagon road of eight feet, the road of sixteen feet, the highway of thirty-two feet, and the Roman roads of sixty-four feet. There was nothing in reality to correspond to this distinction. The Roman roads were still in use, but they were too much worn and too few in number to raise the general level of transportation. When an English king wanted to transport provisions to Scotland about 1300, he required four horses, or, in the northern counties, eight oxen to a wagon. Transportation by wagon was so difficult that pack animals were still in general use and travelers nearly always went on horseback, both men and women riding astride, and twenty miles being considered a fair day’s journey. The town of Bristol was granted a county court in 1373 to save the townspeople the journey to Gloucester, “distant thirty miles of road, deep, especially in winter time, and dangerous to passengers.” At the very end of this period (1499) a glover traveling to market at Aylesbury was drowned with his horse in a pit which a miller had dug to get clay from the road. A court acquitted the miller on the ground that he had no malicious intent, and really did not know of any other place where he could get the kind of clay he wanted.

61. Lack of bridges.—Bridges were still rare. Those which the Romans had built fell into ruins; they were rebuilt in wood, or replaced by bridges of boats, by simple ferries, or by mere fords. Complaint was made to the English Parliament in 1376 that nobody was bound to maintain the bridge over the Trent near Nottingham; the bridge was “ruinous,” and “oftentimes have several persons been drowned, as well horsemen, as carts, man and harness”: Parliament refused authority to keep the bridge in repair. A large number of towns had grown up on rivers, as is shown, for instance, by the number of English town names ending in -ford, -bridge, -ferry; and the difficulty and danger of crossing the streams were serious obstacles to trade. Pious and public-spirited people took up the work which the government was still unable to undertake, and devoted their time and money to the construction and repair of bridges; the church assisted by the grant of indulgences (remitting church punishments for sins) to those who contributed. Even now the religious character of some of the European bridges is attested by the chapels built on or near them.

62. Advantages of river transportation.—The difficulties of land transport led to the use of river navigation wherever it was practicable. It is said that the flow of many European rivers was more full in the Middle Ages than it is now, and though the course was apt to be obstructed by mill dams and fish-weirs, and little was done to preserve the channel, merchants could transport by rivers bulky articles which would not have paid for their carriage on land. A single boat, it is estimated, carried as much as 500 pack animals would take, and it often paid to go far out of the shortest way to a market to follow navigable water. It was cheaper, for instance, to bring salt from Lüneburg to Brandenburg by way of Lübeck and Stettin, though the direct land route was of course far shorter.

63. Danger of violence on the road.—The physical difficulties of travel were accompanied by danger of violence of which people nowadays have little conception. The church attempted to secure the safety of merchants, and cooperated with the political authorities in maintaining the “Peace of God,” and in repressing disorder. The feudal system had developed into a more efficient system of government in its later period, and something like the modern state rose from it before the close of the Middle Ages. But in spite of all efforts highway robbery and violence were regular and normal occurrences, even in the more advanced countries. In many parts of Europe merchants still traveled in temporary bands or “caravans,” for better protection, and students going to college in England were encouraged to carry arms on the journey.

64. Complicity of feudal lords in robbery.—The King of France tried in vain, in the thirteenth century, to make feudal lords responsible for crimes committed in their territories. The lords were often accomplices in the crimes; the King himself was not always above suspicion; and even dignitaries of the church or heroes of the crusades turned highway robbers on occasion. An indication of the conditions is given by a complaint of the English House of Commons in 1348. “Whereas it is notoriously known throughout all the shires of England that robbers, thieves, and other malefactors on foot and on horseback, go and ride on the highway through all the land in divers places, committing larcenies and robberies; may it please our lord the king to charge the nobility of the land that none such be maintained by them, privately nor openly; but that they help to arrest and take such bad fellows.” A century before, two merchants from the continent had been robbed in Hampshire; the culprits were arrested, but could not be convicted for a long time; finally more than sixty persons were executed for complicity in this and similar crimes, the number including many men of position, numerous royal officials and some even of the king’s household. Shakespeare’s story of Prince Hal’s exploits on the road may not be true, but it is not at all improbable.

65. Tolls imposed by feudal authorities.—It would be a great mistake to suppose that the merchant’s expense comprised only the sums necessary to transport his goods over bad roads and to protect himself against robbers. In addition every merchant had to pay the feudal tolls: tolls for the repair of a road which was not kept up, and tolls for protection which he had to furnish himself. Feudal lords were everywhere, and every feudal lord tried to make money out of the movement of men and goods. As early as the time of Charlemagne (809) we find the central government attempting to keep the ways of commerce open. Charlemagne forbade the compelling of travelers to use bridges when there were short-cuts, or the building of bridges in dry places to extort passage money from travelers, or the stretching of ropes across streams to force ships to pay for the right of passage with money or wares. The attempt was vain. The power of the central government fell into the hands of local lords, and was exercised by them without regard to any but selfish and local interests.

66. Variety and number of tolls.—The variety of feudal tolls is almost inconceivable. Attempts by scholars to classify them as we should modern fees and taxes are useless, because no principle underlay the system. A French scholar has made a list of seventeen different kinds of tolls, but this is rough and incomplete. We can say in general that tolls were levied everywhere and on everything. Even a jongleur, the equivalent to the modern organ-grinder, could not pass the gates of Paris without making his monkey show off to pay his own way. A man had to pay toll not only when he went over a bridge; he had to pay a toll when he went under it, and could not escape the toll by going around it.

Places at which tolls were levied are marked by a line across the river, or, when many were levied at one place, by lines drawn near the river. The tolls as shown were established at different times down to the seventeenth century, and affected different wares; so that a merchant did not have to pay all of them at any time. The map of the Hudson is inserted as a help in estimating distances.

In the thirteenth century there were on one side of the Rhone four toll-stations on a stretch of little over thirty miles. In the fourteenth century there were 74 tolls on the Loire, from Roanne to Nantes; 12 on the Allier; 10 on the Sarth; 60 on the Rhone and Saone; 70 on the Garonne or on the land-routes between la Reole and Narbonne; 9 on the Seine between the Grand Pont of Paris and the Roche-Guyon. There were 13 toll-stations on the Rhine between Mainz and Cologne. In a few hours’ walk around Nuremberg one passed 10 stations.

The traveler abroad, whose route follows the line of medieval trade, is struck with the number of feudal castles which he passes. He admires the picturesque ruins, perhaps, without realizing that each castle was once a toll station and without reflecting that the Hudson shows a higher stage of civilization than the Rhine.

67. Abuses of the tolls.—The burden of the tolls was aggravated by the fact, already suggested, that the merchant got nothing in return except the right to look out for himself. The merchants were forced to associate to do what the river lords neglected: keep up the tow-paths, drag the river-bed, build warehouses and wharves. The merchant might pay a lord for a safe-conduct which was supposed to assure him protection in a certain territory, and then be robbed by the lord himself.

According to the feudal theory exemption from tolls must be granted in certain cases. Supplies for the army and navy, for the king and higher officials, for churches, hospitals, and monasteries, should pay no toll. Scholars at the universities enjoyed in theory an immunity which they could not secure in fact. The merchant, however, was always regarded as fair prey, and wares of commerce which were supposed to be exempt, as in France, for instance, wares on their way to Lyons fair, enjoyed only partial immunity. A sixteenth-century French writer instances as an example of the oppression of tolls the case of a merchant who shipped to the East some cloth that was wet on the voyage and had to be sent back to Paris to be redyed; all along the road in France the tolls had to be paid over again. The collectors levied toll even on grain that was being taken to mill, on cattle that were to be used as plow animals, on agricultural implements and manure.

68. Development of the toll system.—With the growth of commerce the toll-stations of course increased in value; and the practice grew up of leasing them to contractors, who paid a high sum for the privilege and had to devise, an old author tells us, “ten thousand new and unusual tyrannies, frauds and exactions” to make any profit for themselves. Many kept taverns, and managed to detain the merchant for days on various pretexts, such as absence of the proper official. Some made the merchant pay to be relieved of the necessity of having his wares unpacked and weighed and measured in detail. Many kept the tariff secret, and extorted what they could on every occasion. Some lived far from the highway, and some put their offices by design on impracticable roads, and fined the merchants heavily who went by another route.

On some routes, as along the middle Rhine, Bingen to Coblenz, it was almost impossible for commerce to be carried on except along the river, and very heavy tolls could be levied here without danger of the merchants escaping; but under other conditions the collectors established wings, as they were called, secondary offices on the side-roads to prevent evasion of the toll. Some collectors established regular pools, to use the modern term applied to railroad combination; twenty-five or thirty of them, representing perhaps five or six separate toll-areas, associated and agreed upon their rates; then they pooled and divided their profits.

69. Constraint of trade by tolls.—The establishment of toll-stations put an artificial constraint on trade, which kept it in the paths most convenient for the collectors, not most suitable to the merchants. Lords would not allow new and better roads to be built, for fear that profits on the old roads would be impaired. The compulsion to follow certain routes (German Strassenzwang) became a serious evil as commerce developed and sought new openings; and the loss to the public was far greater than any gain by the toll receiver.

Peculiarly noxious customs clustered around the rights which feudal lords claimed for themselves in the period when the central government was powerless. The right to a wrecked ship, which had once been the prerogative of the king, could be distorted so that the whole cargo of a Regensburg ship was confiscated in 1396 because a single little cask had fallen off into the Danube. It was an accepted rule in Germany that if a wagon broke down so that the axle touched the ground it became a part of the land and belonged to the lord of the territory; break-downs must have been frequent, in view of the wretched condition of the roads, and it has been suggested that lords sought to cause them by traps and pitfalls.

70. Burden of the tolls on trade.—The most evident effect of the tolls was the additional cost of transportation which must be paid, of course, by the consumer. The price of a ware might rise, within a comparatively short distance, so much that it could not be sold at all. It has been estimated that in the fourteenth century the Rhine tolls merely on the stretch between Bingen and Coblenz amounted to two thirds of the value of the wares. Even in the fifteenth century, and after some reform had been effected in the French tolls, the price of goods was doubled by carriage from Nantes to Orleans on the Loire or from Honfleur to Paris on the Seine.

Besides the loss of money there was the loss of time; a merchant might arrive at his destination too late to find a market for his wares, or might find that they had deteriorated on the road. The monks of Beauvais took three pennyworths from each horse load that passed by, and on fast days they spent so much time in selecting their fish that the rest of the load spoiled before it reached Paris.

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

1. Make a study of the roads in your own State, noting (a) the extent of good and of bad roads, (b) the effect on transportation, (c) the system under which the roads are maintained, (d) organized attempts at improvement. Study the system of New Jersey and its effects. [Documents aiding in this study may be obtained from the Department of Agriculture, Washington, and probably from the government of your own State—apply to State Librarian for information.]

2. To what extent is river navigation practised in your State? Was it not more important before the introduction of railways?

3. Estimate the distance between the points named in the text, sect. 62, by land and by water.

4. Have we had in the U. S. in recent times any similar dangers of violence in transportation? [Read the history of gold-mining in California, in H. H. Bancroft or other available books.]

5. Robber knights in medieval Germany. [Baring-Gould, Story, chap. 22.]

6. Read the first part of Shakespeare, Henry IV, about the exploits of Prince Hal and Falstaff on the highway.

7. What would be the effect on trade in your State if tolls were levied on the border of every county, or even inside the counties?

8. Using a good map find from the scale of miles the length of one of the stretches mentioned in sect. 66 (for example, Mainz to Cologne), and insert the toll stations; then transfer this, changing the scale if necessary, to some road or railroad entering the place where you live.

9. Modern railroad officials are sometimes called “robber barons.” Assuming the truth of charges made against them, discuss the appropriateness of the term, indicating points of likeness and of difference with respect to medieval nobles.

10. Compare medieval and modern compulsion in the choice of routes. What is alleged to be the attitude of transcontinental railroads to the construction of the Panama Canal?

11. Using the method suggested in sect. 66 apply the statements in sect. 70 to conditions at home, and show how much medieval tolls would add to the present low charges of transportation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

By far the best reference that can be given is Jusserand, **English wayfaring life. If a library containing older books is available much of interest will be found in Smiles, *Lives of the engineers, London, 1862, vol. 1. A good study will be found also in the Economic Review, vol. 7, July, 1897: Alice Law, English towns and roads in the thirteenth century.

CHAPTER VIII
FAIRS

71. Fairs; the reason for their existence.—The foregoing description of medieval commerce will have shown that trade was far less extensive than it is now, and will suggest the reason for one of the characteristic trading institutions of the time—the fairs.

Every person with wares to sell seeks a purchaser who desires those particular wares and who will give him in exchange something that he himself desires. Nowadays, for instance, a farmer brings his country products to the city, seeks out a produce merchant who will give him money for it, makes his purchases at the dry goods store with the money, and returns contented; he has exchanged his surplus for what he lacks. If there is no special store where he can sell his produce he must seek out buyers by going around to the separate houses, and if there is no general store where he can make his purchases he must again hunt up the individuals who make or sell what he desires. Where exchange is still relatively rare it may be a very troublesome process to find the buyers and sellers of particular wares, and the following device has almost always been adopted to meet the difficulty; people who desire to trade agree to meet at a certain time and place, so that there will be every chance that buyer and seller will find each other and secure that coincidence of supply and demand which exchange implies. The current of trade is dammed for a time as it were; then allowed to flow in much greater volume for a little while, then dammed again.

72. Comparison of fairs with markets and modern exchanges.—Even now the old custom of “market days” persists in some places, and once it was universal; townspeople and country people agreed on a certain day, and met in the market-place then to exchange their wares. A fair is the same kind of institution as a market, and grew up for similar reasons, but it represented a further step of development, for it attracted buyers and sellers from a far greater area, and served the needs of wholesale as well as retail trade. The fair is, of course, much less advanced than the modern exchanges (stock and produce), from the fact that it was intermittent instead of being continuous, as well as for other reasons; but in the Middle Ages it was the means by which commerce grew strong, and the prosperity of commerce could be measured by the prosperity of fairs.

The fairs always attracted people for social as well as business purposes; life in the Middle Ages would be regarded as insufferably dull at the present time, and both townspeople and country people enjoyed the excitement which the fair brought with it. There were “side-shows” in plenty, then; wild animals, trained dogs, and monstrosities, poets and musicians, actors and clowns, dancing and gambling halls; and there was a good opportunity to turn a penny dishonestly as well as honestly. The court roll of the English fairs of St. Ives tells us of a defendant who was caught selling a ring of brass for 5¹⁄₂d., saying “that the ring was of the purest gold, and that he and a one-eyed man found it on the last Sunday in the Church of St. Ives, near the Cross.”

73. Privileges of merchants trading at a fair.—The fair ordinarily grew up under the protection of some feudal lord, secular or ecclesiastical, who endeavored in every way to further its growth that he might increase his revenue from the taxes he imposed on it. The lord of a fair endeavored to attract merchants by guaranteeing them protection on their way, and there were many cases in which the lord took up the cause of merchants of his fair who had been robbed or maltreated by others, and forced restitution. Furthermore, he endeavored to secure exemption from tolls for wares on the way to his fair, and sometimes merchants on their way to a fair were freed from the attachment of the person for debt. Inside the fair a freedom of trade was allowed which was unusual at the time, and various special privileges were granted the merchants. The most important of these was a special court in which cases of breach of contract and the like could be tried. It was called the Court of Pie Powder (Pie, French pied, foot; curia pedis pulverizati, court of dusty foot) from the dusty feet of the merchants, or, as some said, because justice was done as speedily as dust would fall from the foot. At any rate this court did give a rough and ready means of settling commercial disputes by referring them to a committee of traders, which was highly prized because commercial law was still in its infancy, and no justice could be looked for in a manorial or a feudal court.

74. Great fairs in Europe. The fairs of Champagne.—It would be possible to give a long list of fairs, for every country of Europe had them in varying number at different times. The oldest was probably that of St. Denis at Paris, which may have been founded (as its patrons alleged) in the seventh century, and which was certainly in active operation long before the time of Charlemagne. In a later period another Paris fair, that of St. Germain, became more important, and later still the fairs in the French province of Champagne became the most flourishing in Europe. The prosperity of these fairs was due in part to their geographical position, which made them a natural trade center and distributing point when commerce on land was more important than that on sea, but still more, apparently, to the good government and wise policy of the Counts of Champagne. The Counts gave sufficient protection both at home and abroad, maintained regular and reasonable dues, and did everything to stimulate the confidence of the merchant class. They got an enviable reputation by their strictness in forcing the proper execution of contracts made at the fairs, and took such precautions to assure the payment of debts contracted there that some merchants (or bankers) went to the fairs simply to loan money.

Most of the traffic of the Champagne fairs went North and South, by way of Flanders and of Italy. Merchants from Normandy ascended the river Oise to its junction with the land route. The route of German merchants is unknown, but most of them probably went by way of Bruges.

75. Trade at the Champagne fairs; other continental fairs.—In the thirteenth century, the period of their greatest prosperity, six fairs were held at different places in Champagne, of which Troyes and Provins, southeast of Paris, were the most important. Each lasted over six weeks, and, following in rotation, they supplied an almost continuous market. Here one might find all the wares which formed the objects of commerce in Europe; textiles of silk, wool, and linen; minor manufactures and jewelry; drugs and spices; raw materials like salt and metals; leather, skins, and furs; foods and drinks, live stock and slaves. The bulk of the trading was done by merchants from various parts of France and Flanders (modern Belgium) and by Italians who came up over the Alpine passes; there were also Germans and Spanish, and, in less number, English, Dutch, and Swiss. Wares came from more distant countries, Scandinavia and the eastern Mediterranean, but changed hands on the way.

The fairs declined as heavier dues were imposed, and especially when Champagne was brought directly under the French king, about 1300; wars diverted the merchants from Champagne to Flanders, and the growth of sea-trade favored this same movement. The Champagne fairs dwindled to insignificance, and their place was taken by the fairs of Bruges and Cologne, of Frankfurt on the Main, Geneva, and Lyons.

76. English fairs.—England was near the circumference of trade in this period, instead of being at the center as it now is, and its commerce was not so highly developed as that of some of the Continental countries. The English fairs, therefore, were of less importance, and in most cases did not attract merchants from distant countries. The largest English fair was Stourbridge Fair held about a mile from Cambridge, in an excellent position for trade with the low countries across the Channel, and for the distribution of goods through the thickly populated districts of England. Another great English fair was that of Winchester, held each year for sixteen days, beginning on August 31st. “The hill-top was quickly covered with streets of wooden shops; in one the merchants from Flanders, in another those of Caen or some other Norman town, in another the merchants from Bristol. Here were placed the goldsmiths in a row, and there the drapers; while around the whole was a wooden palisade with guarded entrance,—precautions which did not always prevent enterprising adventurers from escaping payment of toll by digging a way in for themselves under the wall.... All trade was compulsorily suspended at Winchester, and within a ‘seven-league circuit,’ guards being stationed at outlying posts, on bridges and other places of passage, to see that the monopoly was not infringed. At Southhampton, outside the circuit, nothing was to be sold during the fair-time but victuals, and even the very craftsmen of Winchester were bound to transfer themselves to the hill and there carry on their occupation during the fair. There was a graduated scale of tolls and duties; all merchants of London, Winchester, or Wallingford who entered during the first week were free from entrance tolls; after that date newcomers paid tolls, except the members of the merchant gild of Winchester.”

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

1. Following the reasons given in sect. 71 to explain the rise of fairs, show why they have declined in recent times. What effect will the extension of railroads and the development of trade between Asia and Europe have upon the fairs of Nijni Novgorod?

2. Set down all the points of likeness and of difference, so far as they occur to you, of: market, fair, produce or stock exchange.

3. Study the history of fairs in your own State. Did the “county fair” once have more economic importance than it has now?

4. Does a modern stock-exchange seek to attract customers by offering guarantees of special security, as in the case of fairs? [Study the rules of the exchange, and the pains taken to secure honesty and solvency of members.]

5. Study, on a good map, the advantages of location (transportation by land and water, nearness to advanced commercial people) of the Champagne towns; of their successors in commercial importance.

6. Indicate on a sketch map of England the position of medieval fairs. [See the index of Cunningham or Ashley]

7. Write a report on English fairs in the Middle Ages [same reference.]

8. Write a report on one of the following topics:

(a) The great fairs of Europe. [Horne, Harper’s Magazine, vol. 46, p. 376.]

(b) The fair of Nijni Novgorod. [T. Child, Harper’s Magazine, vol. 79, p. 670.]

(c) Kentucky fairs. [James Lane Allen, Harper’s Magazine, vol. 79, p. 553.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gross, Sources, has no separate section on fairs, but includes a number of books on them, to be found by consulting the index. A bibliography will be found also in the article **Fairs, by John Macdonald, in the Encyc. Brit.; this article can be heartily recommended to teacher and student. For modern fairs see Poole’ s Index of Periodical Lit. Bourne, Romance of trade, devotes chap. 3 to fairs.

CHAPTER IX
SEA TRADE

77. Rise of sea commerce. The Scandinavians.—We might suppose, in view of the difficulties and dangers of travel on land, that the trade of Europe would have been forced to the sea during the feudal period. In the last two centuries of the Middle Ages there was, in fact, a growth of maritime commerce which prepared the way for the great discoveries and the oceanic period of modern commerce. Before this period, however, the means of navigation were still so slight that regular and extended commerce on the sea was the exception rather than the rule.

In Northern Europe the Scandinavians were the leaders in the development of navigation. We get an idea of the ships that they used from one which was discovered a few years ago in a burial mound in southern Norway, where it had been preserved since the ninth century, it is supposed. It is an open boat, clinker built, and fashioned to go in either direction; it is about 75 feet long, and has places for 15 oars on each side, but no arrangement for a sail. Similar boats, with the addition of a rudder and hutch at each end, are still used in the Lofoten Islands. They are well suited to carry passengers along the coast, but have small cargo capacity, and, of course, are unfit for long sea voyages. The Scandinavian Vikings, indeed, used them mainly for raiding and piracy, and in them harried for centuries the coasts of western Europe, with a recklessness which accorded with their warlike character. A chronicle speaks of Danes who were tossed about for nearly a month before they made their landing in England. Along with these war vessels the Scandinavians must have had some cargo-ships, the details of which are unknown to us; a modern writer conceives them to have been clumsy and slow, “tub-shaped, round-bowed, and flat-bottomed.” Sailing ships were certainly used from a very early period.

78. Development of shipping in Northern Europe.—The Bayeux tapestry, which pictures the events of the conquest of England by the Normans in 1066, shows what was substantially the Viking type of vessel to have been used in that expedition; the boats were undecked, and several foundered at anchor before starting. A modern writer thinks that few were over 30 tons in size, and that none carried over 40 or 50 men. About two centuries later the seals of Sandwich and Dover show a ship still undecked, but provided with a rudder working over the side, fighting platforms at bow and stern, and a mast with a crow’s-nest at the top. It is doubtful how far we can trust representations such as these on the tapestry and seal, which were often executed by persons unfamiliar with the object and were sure to be conventional. We can, if we choose, follow the statements in the chronicles, which would make the ships much larger, holding a hundred men or even several hundred; the chronicles are notorious, however, for the constant exaggeration in matters of statistics, and the truth lies probably somewhere in between our two sources of information. Down to the fifteenth century the single mast with the square sail was the usual rig. Some vessels, however, carried two masts, one near the center and one toward the bow, and could spread six sails. For shorter trips and for the coasting trade smaller boats were used, sometimes propelled only by oars.

79. Development of shipping in the Mediterranean.—Navigation developed more rapidly in the Mediterranean, especially after the beginning of the Crusades, than in northern Europe. It is hard to believe the statements according to which the Mediterranean ships carried 1,000 or even 1,500 pilgrims, after all allowance is made for the crowding which would be permitted at this time, but the Mediterranean ships undoubtedly surpassed others in size and equipment. Venice presented to France in 1268 some ships which measured 110 by 40 feet, which were 11¹⁄₂ feet deep in the hold and had a height between decks of 6¹⁄₂ feet. These ships carried a complement of over 100 men, and must have measured 400 or 500 tons, while English ships of the period rarely exceeded 50 or 100. Mediterranean shipping regulations of about this date show advanced ideas concerning the construction, the equipment, and the loading of ships; all ships were inspected and none could sail which did not comply with the regulations.

The ship-builders of the Mediterranean ports retained the type of the classical galley, depending mainly upon oars for its propulsion. The hull was much longer than in the northern type of sailing ships and did not rise far above the water; both characteristics depended on the need of placing the oarsmen where they could work to advantage. The three square sails were a comparatively late improvement on the earlier rig, which consisted ordinarily of one sail; a fair wind was utilized for helping the boat on its course, but the chief reliance was placed on the oars.

80. Backwardness of the art of navigation.—The control of a ship is as important as its construction, if it is to serve commerce, and the growth of maritime commerce in the last centuries of the Middle Ages was due as much to improvements in the art of navigation as to superior ship building. During the early Middle Ages, as in ancient times, ship captains took their lives in their hands when they ventured out of sight of a familiar coast. The only means they had for determining their position at sea was “dead-reckoning,” i.e., estimating the distance that they had traveled from a known point, and the course that they had steered; and to know their course they had to rely upon the stars, which of course were obscured in stormy weather, when their help was most wanted. It was customary, on voyages in the open sea, to sail due north or south to the parallel of the destination, then to turn at right angles and sail due east or west; errors in the course of 8 or even 10 degrees were not uncommon. The means of fixing the course in any weather, the mariner’s compass, which was discovered by the Chinese, and is supposed to have been known to the Arabs at this time, was still unknown in Europe.

81. Introduction of the compass, and of navigators’ directories.—The first documentary evidence of acquaintance with the compass in the West dates from a little before 1200; and within fifty years we find it mentioned in nearly a dozen different places, both in the North and South of Europe. It has been suggested that Mediterranean sailors may have been the first to learn of the compass, from the Arabs, but that they could not use it in its early form of a magnetized needle floated on water by a rush or cork, because of the choppy seas; later the needle was balanced, as at present, on a point. In 1300 the compass was in general use. It is possible to exaggerate its importance as a cause of the great maritime explorations; for without it the Northmen had made their distant expeditions to the North and West, and with it the Portuguese crept along the west coast of Africa only slowly and timidly for a considerable period. As a means to regular navigation, however, it was indispensable; and the great extension of commercial voyages in the last two centuries of the Middle Ages is inconceivable without it. Medieval types of “sailing directions” now came into use; these were manuals telling the sailor about the coast, the tides, the bottom, and other features of the route he was to traverse. One of them, written probably before 1400, covered the whole West of Europe from Spain to the mouth of the Finnish gulf, enabling the mariner who was provided with a compass (used for determining the time of tides) to navigate the coast with a fair degree of safety.

82. Limits of early trading voyages.—Maritime voyages were made to suit the conditions of the time. In the first part of the period under discussion (say before 1300), they were attempted only for short distances and in the part of the year when severe storms were rare. “To sail after Martinmas (November 11) is to tempt God,” writes an old chronicler; and in the early days of the Hanseatic League there was a regulation by which ships were not to sail after November 11, and were to be in port if possible before that time. Some time afterwards an amendment was adopted which allowed ships laden with beer, herrings, or dried cod to sail as late as December 6, because the cargo was perishable or was needed for the Lenten market. The extent of the voyage was at first short. The sailors of Bordeaux would go as far as the coast of Brittany and Normandy; the Normans would go as far as England and Flanders; and so the chain of voyages was kept up.

83. Medieval seaports; contrast with modern.—Vessels were so small that they needed no great depth of water in their harbors, and could ascend rivers for a considerable distance. So the English town of Bawtry, lying on the little river Idle, which flows into the Trent, which flows into the Humber, which flows into the North Sea, was called in an official document “the port of Bawtry”; and the town of York, situated on the river Ouse, another branch of the Humber, claimed the right to share in wrecks at sea, as though it were on the seaboard. Ports of this kind were actually preferred to those on the coast which form the great harbors of modern times, for they gave access to the interior markets without the expense of land transportation, and they offered better security not only against tempests but also against pirates. Towns like Rouen on the Seine, Nantes on the Loire, Bordeaux on the Garonne, Narbonne and Aigues Mortes (“Dead waters”), on lagoons of the Mediterranean coast, were the great French ports of the early period.

84. Decline of medieval seaports in later times.—Occasionally a medieval port would keep its importance later; from the list above we can select Bordeaux, and there are a number of other examples in Europe—London, Antwerp, and Hamburg, for instance. Often, however, the port was superseded by another on the same river but nearer the sea; the trade of Rouen went to Havre; the trade of the Humber river system has gone to Hull; the commerce of Bremen has gone to Bremerhafen. The town of Bruges, in Flanders (modern Belgium), once the most important port in Europe, is situated at a distance of seven miles from the sea, and this might be seven hundred as far as its present oceanic commerce is concerned. Its trade has been taken by seaports giving easy access to large vessels; in the same way the trade of Narbonne and Aigues Mortes has passed to Marseilles.

85. Development of maritime commerce; persistence of medieval ideas.—After about 1300 the distances covered by sea voyages grew much greater. Galleys were sailed and rowed from Venice all the way to Bruges, and met there vessels from the far North and East of Europe; English sailors traded regularly with southern France, Spain, and the Scandinavian countries. The expense of transportation by sea, however, was still great. The price of spices was in Bruges two or three fold what it was in Venice; and English wool transported to Florence sold there for two to twelve times as much as it brought at home. It is hard for us, in modern times, to realize such facts, but the student should note them carefully, for they go far toward explaining the slight development of commerce even in the latter part of the Middle Ages.

The high cost of transportation is itself a fact demanding explanation. Inefficient ship-building and navigation would account for it in large part, but other factors are still to be considered. These distant voyages were carried on in the face not only of real dangers serious enough, but also of far greater dangers imagined by ignorant and credulous men. An English chronicler says that in 1406, when English ships were going to Bordeaux, they entered an unfrequented sea, and four vessels from Lynn were engulfed in a whirlpool which swallowed up the flood and vomited it forth again three times a day. The Arabian Nights have been called sober and realistic in comparison with the ideas held by the medieval mariner of the wonders and dangers of the unknown parts of the world.

86. Piracy.—At sea, as on land, the merchant faced dangers of violence which were probably as serious an obstacle to the growth of commerce as the physical difficulties of navigation. Ships went always armed, and sailed when possible in fleets for better protection. Sometimes one that had ventured out alone could beat off its enemies, as in the case of a trading ship from Stralsund which was attacked in 1391 but won a complete victory, and brought back (it is said) 100 pirates, packed in casks with only the heads sticking out, for a bloody punishment. Pirates came from every source. An ordinary merchantman would turn pirate if it met a weaker vessel from some town which was so far distant or so weak that reprisals need not be feared. A mariner of Winchelsea in England, who had seized and plundered a vessel owned by Dorsetshire merchants, became mayor of Winchelsea a few years later, and in the fifteenth century a Canterbury abbot was convicted of plundering a wine ship and was forced to make restitution. Even ships sent out by the public authorities for protection against pirates attacked and plundered ships not only of other nationalities but of their own too. Six ships which had been organized in 1316 to protect Berwick from freebooters harried the English coast to the south, and the fleet of the Cinque Ports (five towns on the English Channel), used its spare time in preying on English commerce and attacking English towns.