The largely ad hoc voyages of Mairano’s day gave way to a regular system of convoys known as the muda, or state-subsidized galleys auctioned out to the highest bidder. Columbia University Press. South Arabia was called Eudaemon Arabia (the elated Arabia) by the Greeks and was on the agenda of conquests of Alexander of Macedonia before he died. What one can see there are small fancied delicatessen shops selling olive oils etc. The control of sea trade, the chief source of Portuguese wealth in the East, was assured by the defeat of Muslim naval forces off Diu in 1509. [5] Channels such as the Bay of Bengal served as bridges for cultural and commercial exchanges between diverse cultures[3] as nations struggled to gain control of the trade along the many spice routes. Here the Venetians could acquire the very same spices they had previously purchased directly from the sultan, knowing full well that Lajazzo’s spices had been subjected to the same taxes, tolls, and levies imposed by the region’s Islamic rulers. Venice’s lucrative pilgrim and spice trade supported a host of other ancillary industries. The aspect of the trade was dominated by the Austronesian peoples in Southeast Asia who established the precursor trade routes from Southeast Asia (and later China) to Sri Lanka and India by at least 1500 BC. After capturing Egypt, Ottomans had control of the flow of trade though the Mediterranean and the Venetians were skilled at making boats, this made for a good trading relationship. The remainder of the spices he sold in Venice at many times the purchase price. Business was business, and Venice’s papal problem was neatly defused. From this building they were able to buy and sell goods. The rise of Islam brought a significant change to the trade as Radhanite Jewish and Arab merchants, particularly from Egypt, eventually took over conveying goods via the Levant to Europe. Bad news came in 1501, however, when word reached Venetian merchants that the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama had sailed around Africa to India, bypassing the Mediterranean and—so it was feared—diverting the flow of pepper away from Venice. Since the capture of Constantinople by the Turks on May 29th, 1453, Venice had seen its commercial positions in the Black Sea deteriorate. They carried peppery pomanders to ward off pestilence, and went to their graves embalmed in myrrh and pepper. By virtue of Venice’s ties to Byzantium, from the city’s earliest days Venetian merchants had had privileged access to the overland trade routes to Asia. The sequel to this story nicely illustrates the Venetians’ gift for navigating the tricky shoals of religion, geopolitics, and finance. After a brief collapse of the Mediterranean spice business in the early sixteenth century—more a result of the wars against Turkey than the incursions of the Portuguese—Venice regained a huge portion of the spice trade for most of the remaining hundred years. The most eminent medical authorities of the time insisted that pepper could revive flagging libidos. In the late second century BC, the Greeks from the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt learned from the Indians how to sail directly from Aden to the west coast of India using the monsoon winds (as did Hippalus) and took control of the sea trade via Red Sea ports. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 48(3): 414–435. Venice became a great sea power and controlled The Ottomans sold wheat, spices, raw silk, cotton, and ash (for glass making) to the Venetians, while Venice provided the Ottomans with finished goods such as soap, paper, and textiles. By mid-7th century AD, after the rise of Islam, Arab traders started plying these maritime routes and dominated the western Indian Ocean maritime routes. Rather, they were whisked across the sea in armed fleets carrying up to 300 metric tons of spice, defended by a contingent of marines, and sped on their way by banks of rowers, swift enough to outrun any pursuer. doi:10.1017/S002246341700056X, This page was last edited on 29 April 2021, at 18:07. Numerous wars had been fought between 1456 and 1490, pitching the Republic against the Ottomans, with the consequence of Venice losing more pieces of her commercial empire (inherited from the 4th Crusade in 1204) in the Aegean Sea and in Greece … Buy the Venice Issue of the Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarerly, Venice Issue of the Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly, Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Venice, Star Wars X-Wing Starfighter Lands at the National Air and Space Museum. Emboldened by these early successes and eyeing a lucrative monopoly on a possible sea route to the Indies, the Portuguese first rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 on an expedition led by Bartolomeu Dias. The massive spice trade met the demands of medieval palates.