Walker - 1967 - A geography of Italy

PART l: SOME GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
had enabled her to establish merchant ‘colonies’ on the mainland at an early date,
while her seaboard rivals in the river traffic, Comacchio and Chioggia, were
brought under control and their interests subordinated to those o f Venice.^ A
speech by the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo (1413-23) gives us a glimpse o f the
importance o f the Po Valley trade in the heyday o f the city. According to him.
T h e Florentines bring to Venice each year 16,000 bales of the finest cloth which
is sold in Naples, Sicily and the East. T h ey export wool, silk, gold, silver and
sugar to the value o f 392,000 ducats in Lombardy. M ilan spends annually in
Venice 90,000 ducats; M onza 56,000 ducats; Com o, Tortona, Cremona 104,000
ducats each; Bergamo 78,000, Piacenza 52,000; Alessandria della Paglia 56,000,
and in their turn they import into Venice cloth to the value o f 900,000 ducats.
Although interested in all the Alpine passes, it was in relation to those o f the
eastern Alps that Venice was particularly favoured. The Brenner, the gateway to
Germany, could be approached either up the Adige or up the Val Sugana or up
the Piave and so along the Puster Thai. The Adige was navigable for small boats
below Rovereto, but the easy route it provided could not be fully exploited tmtil
the difficult section near Chiusa had been improved (c. 1320) and tmtil Venice
controlled Verona in the early fifteenth century. Along these routes the Venetians
sent not only their oriental wares,^ but also their own manufactures, in particular
glass, and gold and silver ware, and salt. Metals, wool, wine, foodstuffs, and in
the later Middle Ages, fustians for re-export from Venice, provided the return
traffic.
The expansion o f Venetian power overseas falls into four main periods. In the
first Venice, still careful to maintain the valuable Byzantine connection, succeeded
in dominating the Adriatic in the face o f Moslem, Narentine and Norman
opposition. In the second, that o f the early Crusades, she secured trading
privileges in Tyre, Sidon, Acre and Constantinople, and considerable earnings
as the major carrier of the Crusaders. In the third, Venice revenged herself on her
ancient protector, Byzantium, for the ill-treatment of the large Venetian merchant
community in Constantinople, by turning the Fourth Crusade against the Greek
Empire, and so acquired strategically placed islands (e.g. Crete, Negroponte and
the Cyclades) and ports o f call in the Morea and elsewhere, as well as a dominating
position in the Straits. These gains furnished excellent bases for the Levant,
^In 1142 the diversion of the Brenta which threatened to silt up the lagoon involved
Venice in war with Padua, and eventually the river was canalized to do the minimum of
harm.
* A selection of the oriental wares so frequently referred to may be helpful:
Textiles: Persian and Chinese silks; damask; Byzantine velvets and taffeta; Indian
cottons and muslins; Cypriot cloth of gold; Persian carpets; Syrian purples.
Spices: South-east Asian cloves, cinnamon, cassia, ginger, cardamon, saffron, sugar,
nutmeg.
Textile raw materials: Asia Minor alum; Indian indigo and logwood.
Jewels: Persian pearls; Indian stones.
Perfumes etc.: Red Sea incense, myrrh, spikenard; Tibetan musk; South-east Asian
camphor, sandalwood.
Also Russian furs, wax; South-east Asian ivory and ebony.
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