Discovery from 9th to 13th Century
Amalfi and Pisa
At the beginning of the ninth century we can see the first glimpses of a better day in
the rising fortunes of some Italian sea-ports, where favorable circumstances had
given birth to liberal institutions. As early as the year 840, Amalfi
possessed a considerable number of trading-vessels and, built in 1020, a church in Jerusalem.
The maritime code of this little republic ruled the commercial transactions of all the Mediterranean
sea-ports as in a later century the law-book of Wisby served as a guide to the
merchants of the Baltic.
A few years after its submission in 1131 to the arms of King
Roger of Sicily, Amalfi was plundered by the Pisanese and almost entirely
destroyed. The neglected harbor was gradually choked with sand, and the little town with
no more than 3000 inhabitants had nothing left other than poverty and the remembrance of a
glorious past.
Along with Amalfi, Gaeta, Naples, and Pisa rose to considerable
eminence in commerce, though far from equaling the power and splendor of Genoa and
Venice.
Venice
As far back as the beginning of the sixth century, the lagoons city of Venice
fitted out a small fleet to purge the Adriatic or Istrian pirates. By a prudent
course of policy she rendered herself indispensable to the Byzantine court, and
acquired great privileges in Constantinople. It is here she purchased the costly
productions of the East with which, during the ninth and tenth century, she provides
Northern Italy and a greater part of Germany.
By the beginning of the eleventh century, her trade with Egypt and
Syria began to flourish, which soon raised her to the pinnacle of her power and wealth. In
the year 1080 she extended her rule over Croatia and Dalmatia
and gained in 1204 considerable advantages by assisting the western crusaders in
the conquest of Constantinople.
Pera, numerous coast towns from the Hellespont to the Ionian
Sea, a great part of the Morea, Corfu, and Candia fell
to the winged lion's share, and repaid the services of "blind old Dandolo." The
silk manufacture was transported, as a valuable fruit of conquest, from the Morea
to Venice, and became a new source of wealth to the Adriatic Tyre. The Euxine
opened her ports to the Venetian seamen, treaties of commerce were concluded with Trebizond
and Armenia, and a factory was established at Tana, at the mouth
of the Don.
Genoa
While the power of Venice rises more and more in the East, Genoa,
which already in the tenth century carried on a flourishing trade, acquired by degrees the
supremacy in the Western Mediterranean. The aid provided by the republic
to the Greek emperor Michael Palaeologus contributed largely to
the overthrow of the Latin throne of Constantinople, and opened the Bosphorus
and the Black Sea to the enterprise of her merchants. The grandeur of Genoa
now reached its height as she holds fortified possession of Pera and Galata,
and covers the coasts of the Crimea with her strongholds and castles.
At a later period, the Florentines appeared on the scene and
assumed the rank formerly held by Pisa in Mediterranean commerce. The acquisition
of the sea-port of Leghorn in 1421 opened the barriers of the
ocean to the birthplace of Dante and Galileo.
After their deliverance from the Moorish yoke in the ninth
century, a fresh and vigorous spirit begins also to animate the Catalans. They
conclude treaties of commerce with Genoa and Pisa, and towards the end of
the thirteenth century the ships of Barcelona are found visiting all the ports of
the Mediterranean.
Reopened Intercourse between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic
But in spite of the growth of trade and navigation in Italy and Spain,
many years had yet to elapse after the fall of the Roman Empire before
the gates of the Atlantic were once more opened to the navigators of the Mediterranean.
It was not before the middle of the thirteenth century, after Seville and a great
part of the Andalusian coast had been retaken from the Moors by Ferdinand
of Castile. Then the Italian and Catalonian seafarers, encouraged by
privileges and remissions of duties, began to visit the port of Cadiz, where they
met with merchants from Portugal and Biscay. Soon after, and most probably
in consequence of the connections thus formed, we find Italian ships visiting the
ports of England and the Netherlands. About 1316, Genoese
vessels began to carry goods to England, and somewhat later the Venetians,
whose visits are not mentioned by the chroniclers before 1323.
Mariner's compass
After a long interruption we see the seamen of the Mediterranean
resuming the track to the Atlantic ports that had been struck out more
than thirty centuries before by their predecessors the Phoenicians. But their
voyages to the western ocean took place under circumstances much more favorable than those
which had attended the men of Tyre and Carthage in their adventurous
expeditions. Not only the better construction of their ships, but still more the use of
the mariner's compass, for which Europe is probably indebted to the Arabs,
who in their turn owed their knowledge to the Chinese. The compass enabled
them to steer more boldly into the open sea, and regardless of the twisting of the coasts
to reach their journey's end by a less circuitous route.
The period when the magnetic needle was first made use of by the Mediterranean
navigators is not exactly known, but so much is certain that it did good service long
before the time of Flavio Gioja (1302), to whom its discovery has been
erroneously ascribed, though he may have introduced some improvement in the arrangement of
the compass. Humboldt tells us in his "Cosmos," that in the satirical
poem of Guyot de Provens, "La Bible " (1190), and in the
description of Palestine by Jaques de Vitry, bishop of Ptolemais (1204
-1215), the sea compass is mentioned as a well-known instrument. Dante also
speaks of the needle which points to the stars (Paradise, xii. 29); and in a nautical work
by Raimundus Lullus of Majorca, written in the year 1286, we find another
proof of a much earlier knowledge of the compass than before the beginning of the
fourteenth century, since its use by the mariners of his time is expressly mentioned by
that author.
Following this accurate guide, the Catalonians sailed at an
early period to the north coast of Scotland, and even preceded the Portuguese
in their discoveries on the west coast of Africa. Actually Don Jayme
Ferrer penetrated to the mouth of the Rio de Ouro as early as August 1346.
About the same time the long-forgotten Canary Islands were
rediscovered by the Spaniards; and at a later period (1402-1405) conquered
and depopulated by some Norman adventurers, the Bethencourts.
While the South-European navigators unfurled their sails on the Atlantic,
and gave the first impulse to discoveries that in the following century were
destined to open up the ocean, the Indian Sea still remained closed to their
enterprise.The Venetians by this time rivaled, if they did not surpass, the ancient
maritime greatness of the Tyrians in the Mediterranean. They did not, like them,
directly carry the rich produce of the South in their own ships from the East-African and
Indian ports, but received them at second hand from the Arabian masters of Syria
and Egypt.
Despite the fact that no ship of theirs was ever seen in the Indian
seas, the knowledge of the Arabian discoveries in those parts
penetrated to Europe, and widely extended the knowledge of the ocean.
When the Arabs suddenly emerged from the remoteness of pastoral life, and
appeared as conquerors before the astonished world, the trade of the Indian Ocean
fell into the hands of these new masters of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.
Arabs soon learnt how to pursue commerce with an energy which the Romans and Persians
had never known.
The town of Bassora was founded by the caliph Omar on the
western shore of the great stream formed by the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates,
and soon emulated Alexandria herself in the greatness of its commerce. From Bassora
the Arabs sailed far beyond the Siamese Gulf, which had formerly bounded European
navigation. They visited the unknown ports of the Indian archipelago, and established so
active trade with Canton, that the Chinese emperor granted them the use of their
own laws in that city.
This progress of the Arabs, and the vast treasures accruing to Venice
from the overland Indian trade excited the envy of the other seafaring powers, and
caused an increasing desire of discovering a new maritime route to the wealthy regions of Southern
Asia.
Marco Polo
The wonderful narratives of the first travelers who wandered by land to the distant
East contributed to evoke the ardor of discovery. The most celebrated of these
geographical pioneers was Marco Polo, a noble Venetian who had resided many
years at the court of the Mongol ruler, Kublai Khan, and visited the most remote
regions of Asia. He was the first European that ever sailed along the western
shores of the Pacific, the first that told his astonished countrymen of the magnificence
of Cambalu or Peking, the capital of the great kingdom of Cathay, and of the
splendor of Zipauga or Japan situated on the boundaries of a vast ocean extending
to the east. He also made more than one sea-voyage in the Indian Ocean, and to him Europe
owed her first knowledge of the Moluccas, the east coast of Africa, and the
island of Madagascar.
This greatest of all the medieval travelers, who without exaggeration
enlarged the boundaries of the known earth as much as Alexander the Great, was
followed by Oderich of Portenau, who traveled as far as India and China
(1320-1330), by Sir John Mandeville, who visited almost all the lands
described by Marco Polo, by Schildberger of Munich who accompanied the
barbarous Tamerlane on his locust expeditions, and finally by Clavigo, sent
in the year 1403 by the Spanish court on an embassy to Samarcand. These bold
travelers communicated to their countrymen about the riches and the commerce of the
nations they had visited, as well as the fables in which their confidence or their
extravagant fancy indulged, made an enormous impression on the European mind, and raised
to a feverish longing after those sunny lands and isles which imagination adorned with all
the charms of an earthly paradise.
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