ABSTRACT
Throughout the sixteenth century Venice remained one of the leading economic centres of the Italian peninsula, and indeed of all Western Europe. Difficulties and even partial losses no doubt there were. Early in the century, the rich spice trade had slipped from Venetian hands, and for over fifty years was to bring prosperity to Atlantic rather than to Mediterranean merchants and seamen. In the I 5 30s France, traditionally an important customer of Eastern commodities supplied from Venice, began to build her own commercial and shipping organization with the avowed aim of by-passing the Venetian middleman; and in the I 5 70s England followed suit. In I j 71 the handsome colonial possession of Cyprus was lost to the Turks, and in the last quarter of the century the commercial fleet flying the banner of St Mark lost ground before the competition of English and Dutch merchantmen, on whose services Venetian traders themselves became increasingly dependent. And yet, in spite of these setbacks, the economic record as a whole was still impressive. Venice retained control of trade between the eastern Mediterranean and Germany, the largest market for Turkish cotton, Persian silk, and a variety of Mediterranean goods. Again, in the second half of the six-
teenth century, spices, which had seemed irretrievably lost after the opening of the Cape route, began to flow again through the caravan routes of the Levant, at whose terminal points of Cairo and Aleppo they were purchased by Venetian merchants. Moreover, the ancient reputation of Venetian luxury industries - silks, glassware, mosaics, leatherwork - remained unblemished, while Venice acquired a commanding position in newer fields such as printing and sugar-refining. Lastly, in the course of the sixteenth century, cloth-making was added to the city's range of industries, and the new addition, as will be seen, was an impressive one indeed: starting nearly from scratch, Venice was about to turn out, by the later part of the century, over 2j,000 pieces of high quality woollen cloth a year, thus ranking among the largest single textile centres in Europe.
