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Authors: Michael Krondl
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the Dalmatian coast, and plenty of Greek towns in the Aegean continue to be overshadowed by the wrecks of Venetian citadels.
The merchants who ran the Venetian state often resorted to the techniques they had learned in the salt trade. This meant that no one who interfered with the Republic’s business was off-limits. The Venetian navy was sent to fight Italian city-states just as often as any other interlopers. In particular, the wars with Genoa came almost as regularly as the tides throughout most of the Middle Ages as the two cities wrestled for control of the eastern Mediterranean. But violence wasn’t always the best approach. When the doges calculated that sending in the battle triremes was a bad bet, the city’s agents arranged for all sorts of deals and exemptions, even if it meant negotiating with ostensibly hostile Muslim potentates.
While the motivating spark for the city’s imperial expansion was the need to protect the spice route—whether the odiferous cargo was coming from the Black Sea, the Levant, or Egypt—the trade network that resulted from the policy involved just about anything that could be loaded onto a vessel. So Bohemian silver might be exchanged for Slavic slaves in the Crimea, who were in turn traded for pepper in Alexandria, which was then bartered for Florentine wool in Venice, from whence it was shipped to Trebizond and sold for ginger, which could be used to buy Apulian grain in the south of Italy and sent on to Venice, where it then fetched a good price in Bohemian silver. Consequently, Venetian merchants, no matter what was in their ship’s hold, benefited from the bases established to further the pepper trade.
All the same, it was the spices that were critical to keeping Venice Inc. in the black. This was widely recognized, and the administration kept tight control of the details of the spice trade. To ensure the safety of the cargo, spices could be transported only in an armed convoy referred to as the muda. The muda had a legal monopoly on spices for some two hundred years, starting in the 1330s. Armed galleys were designed and built in the Arsenale, the massive government shipyard, exclusively for this lucrative trade and were then leased to the highest bidder. He, in turn, was required to accommodate even small-time merchants at standardized rates. As a result, in 1423, Doge Tomasso Mocenigo estimated that Venetians of all stripes invested some ten million ducats in the spice trade, annually reaping an impressive profit of some four million, and this at a time when government revenues were less than one million! *4
As in Byzantium, the European definition of what was called a spice was rather loose in those days, encompassing perfumes, medicines, and even dyes along with the likes of cinnamon and ginger. A list of purchases by the Venetians in Damascus in the early fourteen hundreds gives a good idea of what was in demand. The Italians loaded up on what we would call “spices” of varying qualities, including black pepper and long pepper, five kinds of ginger, galingale (similar to ginger), zedoary (related to turmeric), nutmeg, mace, cloves, clove stalks, three types of “cinnamon,” cubebs (a kind of pepper), cardamom, but also several varieties of incense, dyes, and a half dozen drugs and other chemicals, some thirty items in all. But this long list is a little misleading, since most of these Oriental exotics were traded in minute quantities. The only two commodities that were traded in bulk (making up some 50 to 65 percent of the Damascus spice purchases) were pepper and ginger. And pepper was king. In the fifteenth century, Venetians imported some five pounds of pepper for every two pounds of ginger. Moreover, the quantity of black pepper traded was typically more than all the other spices combined. Accordingly, when Venetian doges fretted about keeping their sea-lanes safe and their ships well provisioned, they were mostly concerned about the flow of the
The merchants who ran the Venetian state often resorted to the techniques they had learned in the salt trade. This meant that no one who interfered with the Republic’s business was off-limits. The Venetian navy was sent to fight Italian city-states just as often as any other interlopers. In particular, the wars with Genoa came almost as regularly as the tides throughout most of the Middle Ages as the two cities wrestled for control of the eastern Mediterranean. But violence wasn’t always the best approach. When the doges calculated that sending in the battle triremes was a bad bet, the city’s agents arranged for all sorts of deals and exemptions, even if it meant negotiating with ostensibly hostile Muslim potentates.
While the motivating spark for the city’s imperial expansion was the need to protect the spice route—whether the odiferous cargo was coming from the Black Sea, the Levant, or Egypt—the trade network that resulted from the policy involved just about anything that could be loaded onto a vessel. So Bohemian silver might be exchanged for Slavic slaves in the Crimea, who were in turn traded for pepper in Alexandria, which was then bartered for Florentine wool in Venice, from whence it was shipped to Trebizond and sold for ginger, which could be used to buy Apulian grain in the south of Italy and sent on to Venice, where it then fetched a good price in Bohemian silver. Consequently, Venetian merchants, no matter what was in their ship’s hold, benefited from the bases established to further the pepper trade.
All the same, it was the spices that were critical to keeping Venice Inc. in the black. This was widely recognized, and the administration kept tight control of the details of the spice trade. To ensure the safety of the cargo, spices could be transported only in an armed convoy referred to as the muda. The muda had a legal monopoly on spices for some two hundred years, starting in the 1330s. Armed galleys were designed and built in the Arsenale, the massive government shipyard, exclusively for this lucrative trade and were then leased to the highest bidder. He, in turn, was required to accommodate even small-time merchants at standardized rates. As a result, in 1423, Doge Tomasso Mocenigo estimated that Venetians of all stripes invested some ten million ducats in the spice trade, annually reaping an impressive profit of some four million, and this at a time when government revenues were less than one million! *4
As in Byzantium, the European definition of what was called a spice was rather loose in those days, encompassing perfumes, medicines, and even dyes along with the likes of cinnamon and ginger. A list of purchases by the Venetians in Damascus in the early fourteen hundreds gives a good idea of what was in demand. The Italians loaded up on what we would call “spices” of varying qualities, including black pepper and long pepper, five kinds of ginger, galingale (similar to ginger), zedoary (related to turmeric), nutmeg, mace, cloves, clove stalks, three types of “cinnamon,” cubebs (a kind of pepper), cardamom, but also several varieties of incense, dyes, and a half dozen drugs and other chemicals, some thirty items in all. But this long list is a little misleading, since most of these Oriental exotics were traded in minute quantities. The only two commodities that were traded in bulk (making up some 50 to 65 percent of the Damascus spice purchases) were pepper and ginger. And pepper was king. In the fifteenth century, Venetians imported some five pounds of pepper for every two pounds of ginger. Moreover, the quantity of black pepper traded was typically more than all the other spices combined. Accordingly, when Venetian doges fretted about keeping their sea-lanes safe and their ships well provisioned, they were mostly concerned about the flow of the
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