ABSTRACT
From the end of the fifteenth century a whole new scenario evolved that greatly affected east-west trade, including the indigo trade. The domination of much of the Muslim world by the Ottoman Turks was one great force for change. Another was Vasco da Gama's circumnavigation of the Cape of Good Hope, which brought with it the possibility of direct importation of goods from India and further east by sea to Europe, and the opportunity to escape from the crippling duties levied by the successive rulers on goods in transit through their countries. The Portuguese arrival in India in 1498 broke the Venetian and Muslim commercial monopoly in spices, dyestuffs and luxury textiles. This competition led to a relative decline in the wealth of Venice and the great Arab trading cities and a significant reduction of their spice and dye trade, although their share of this trade remained substantial and even increased in the middle of the sixteenth century. 1 Finally, the domination of the Indian Ocean trade by the Dutch, English and French shipping companies from the beginning of the seventeenth century made available to Western markets a far greater volume of Eastern imports, indigo included, and inevitably deflected trade away from the Levant routes; 2 the latter were bound to suffer once goods from India could be shipped in increasingly large quantities directly to Europe at competitive prices.
