The Taste of Conquest (8 page)

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 wrinkled black berries from Malabar.

Most traders made a perfectly good living buying and selling more mundane commodities, so why the obsession with spices? The short answer is money. On average, Venetian traders earned a
net
profit of some 40 percent from spices. The great Florentine bankers of the time were getting half that return on investment. Other merchandise might earn 15 to 20 percent if you were lucky. And although certain commodities, especially grain in times of famine, could occasionally be more lucrative, the market for spices remained nice and steady, fat years and lean. Moreover, you did not need a huge investment to enter the market. As a young man with limited resources, a twenty-something merchant could get on a boat to Egypt and return with a couple of sacks of pepper and still make it worth his while. To make a similar profit on grain, you would need to invest serious money, hire an entire ship, and fill it with literally tons of wheat.

But spices had something else going for them, a seldom-remarked quality that may explain why pepper, in particular, was the bait that drew so many Venetian galleys to trade with the infidel and later lured the Spanish and the Portuguese to distant oceans. Spices don’t spoil—or at least, not quickly. We are so used to nibbling Chilean grapes and chomping on shrimp from Thailand that we may forget how difficult it used to be to transport all but a few specialized commodities over any great distance. There would have been no demand for Indian-grown pepper in medieval Europe if the dry little berries had not been light enough and sufficiently nonperishable that they could withstand being shipped halfway across the world. For a bale of pepper to get from Quilon to Cologne, it would likely endure months of transportation by ship, camel, and mule, interrupted by many more months of storage in every port along the route—and all this without a noticeable decline of quality. Pepper, in particular, is remarkably stable and can be stored up to a decade as long as it’s kept reasonably dry. Imagine trying to ship a sack of mangoes halfway across the world or lugging a crate of china across the Alps. And while Asian spices were never really worth their weight in gold, they were a whole lot lighter for those camels to carry! The only other goods that were worth transporting over such a long distance were precious stones and silk. Marco Polo’s trading family, for example, seems to have specialized in pearls and such when they trekked across Asia in the late twelve hundreds. The problem with jewels, though, was that they were relatively pricey even at the point of purchase, and thus, the potential for profit was inevitably smaller. Spices, on the other hand, were a cheap agricultural commodity that was easily obtained by low-skilled foragers in the forest. This explains why princes and businessman could get away with jacking up the price 1,000 percent between the time the dried condiments left Asia and their arrival at the Adriatic port.

Pepper, as depicted in Garcia da Orta’s late-sixteenth-century herbal.

Still, the long-distance trade wasn’t without its risks. Overseas were alien rulers who wanted to wring ever more revenue from the trade; foreign merchants demanding a fatter slice of the pie; and rivals from Genoa, Barcelona, and Marseilles bidding up the price. Once your cargo was loaded, you had to worry about shipwrecks, pirates, and, once again, the European competitors, who could be worse than the pirates. The merchant who not only wanted to make a profit but also to survive needed to keep one hand on the hilt of his sword as the other reached for his purse. In some ways, even to characterize the traders aboard Mediterranean galleys strictly as merchants is a little misleading. Rather, imagine highly organized, well-armed gangs prowling the sea, en route from port to port, seizing any opportunity that might present itself. Throughout most of history, whether a transaction ended up as looting or trade often depended on the strength of the opponent. The Venetians were always calculating whether to haggle or fight, but in either case, it was wise to be well armed if for no other reason than that the threat of harm might result in a better price. While fellow citizens of the Republic were generally considered off-limits for piracy, other Italians were considered fair game, especially if a precious cargo of spices or pearls was suspected on board. The situation on land was not much better, and while all sorts of treaties and legal statutes were supposed to regulate trade in the spice ports, there was always the possibility one side might not like the deal and pull their daggers. Even once the goods were in hand, they had to be locked up under vigilant guard. In part, this is why local authorities sometimes permitted or acquiesced in the erection of surprisingly elaborate fortifications for each trading “nation.”

The Venetian semimilitarized vessels had a distinct advantage over the lightly armed merchantmen of the Byzantines. The rulers of the Eastern Empire put what resources they had into their navy, which was a strictly military outfit and did not meddle in trade, whereas the large, heavily armed crews of the Venetian ships were not only able to ward off potential attackers, they could attack at will, buying and selling all the while. Recognizing their naval prowess, Byzantine emperors hired Venetian navies on at least two occasions to fend off Norman incursions. As a reward, Venetians would enjoy tax-free status throughout the empire.

It wasn’t just shipping that was subjected to Venetian attack, though. The poorly garrisoned coastline of the southern Aegean was a tempting target for the Venetian corsairs as well. As they passed through, the armed galleys would descend on undefended fishing ports at will, demanding provisions (if you were lucky) and kidnapping children and young adults to sell into slavery (if you weren’t). Technically, Christians were supposed to sell only nonbelievers into slavery, but this distinction was not always strictly observed. It isn’t that Venetians were any more rapacious than the others; they were just the most capable predator in a shark-infested sea.

At first, the Venetians took over the export trade from Byzantium to the Adriatic; then, along with the Pisans and Genoans, they began to supply Constantinople itself; and finally, by the time of the First Crusade, Italians were doing most of the shipping inside the empire. The splendid old dominion of the eastern Caesars was having a tough time of it all around. Central authority had broken down to such an extent that most of the provinces were now run by regional strongmen who seldom bothered to send any tax revenue to the capital. In the East, Seljuk Turks had gradually consumed large chunks of what is now Turkey. By the late eleven hundreds, all that remained of the realm that had once controlled the entire eastern Mediterranean were the Balkans and fragments of coastal Turkey. As the once-great empire wasted away, Venetians moved in to feed off the carcass, swelling, in turn, the purses of the upstart republic. In 1204, Frankish and Venetian pilgrims, armed for the Fourth Crusade, arrived to deliver the fatal blow.

C
OOKS AND
C
RUSADERS

As you arrive in Venice today, the city that floats upon the sea presents a skyline of soaring cupolas and pointed bell towers. Every
campo,
every square, every neighborhood, is dominated by a church. Many are still graceful and limber, even though others are increasingly doddery and infirm. But still, with all those domes and steeples, you’d think the Venetians a religious lot. The truth is rather more nuanced. As far as the rest of medieval Europe was concerned, the Venetians were always on the verge of apostasy. They were particularly notorious for cutting deals with the Moor to maintain their trading privileges. The popes regularly excommunicated the entire town—though, admittedly, there was usually a political motive for this. In the Republic of Saint Mark, local clergy were strictly subordinated to the secular authorities. Here, the slogan was
Veneziani, poi Christiani!
(“Venetians [first], then Christians!”). As a result, many historians have attributed Venice’s involvement in the Crusades to purely mercenary motives; the whole bloody affair as little more than a hostile-takeover bid for the pepper business. But that’s just too pat. To discount religion from Venice’s strategy toward the Arab world would be as simplistic as it would be to remove the ideological component from America’s adventures in the Middle East. Sure, pepper (like oil today) was important, but that didn’t mean the Venetians weren’t dedicated Christians just like every other medieval European. Which isn’t to say that—much like fervent American Christians today—the Venetians let their religion get in the way of their business practices.

By the time the Italian city-states became involved in the pepper trade during the waning years of the first millennium, the Mediterranean world was irrevocably split between the Christian North and the Islamic South. After Muhammad’s death in 632, Muslim armies thundered across the Middle East and North Africa. They seized Iberia and Sicily. Their mounted horsemen surged deep into France, where they were finally checked by Christian knights at the battle of Poitiers in 732. In the aftermath, there was a more or less stable entente between the faiths for the next three hundred years. By the early years of the new millennium, however, an increasingly prosperous Europe was emerging from the slumber of the Dark Ages. One sign of this was a new imperial religiosity, a widespread desire to push back the borders of Islam. When, in 1095, Pope Urban II appealed for a crusade to liberate Jerusalem, men (and even some women) across Europe took up the cause by the thousands, donning the white tunic emblazoned with the red Crusaders’ cross.

Lacking any navy to speak of, the Frankish knights of western Europe had to charter ships in order to get their men and horses to the Holy Land. Consequently, they turned to the nautically endowed Italian city-states. Genoa offered a measly 13 ships. Pisa was more generous, providing a flotilla of about 120 vessels. The Venetian authorities took close to a year to sort out the pros and cons of joining the holy war, but when they finally did, their 200 ships were to be the single largest contribution to the Crusader navy. There were certainly many Venetians who were swept up in the religious fervor of the time; nevertheless, there were also a good number who were more calculating in the matter. When the then-current doge, Vitale Michiel, exhorted his fellow citizens to join the jihad, he did not forget to add that the potential for gain was not merely of the spiritual variety. Under the terms of the deal, the Italian cities were supposed to get one-third of any territory captured in the Holy Land in payment for transport. Though the Italians never got quite as much as the contracts stipulated, they did get enough territory to set up commercial bases across the Levant.