ABSTRACT
It is generally thought that dislocation of the spice trade by the Portuguese discovery of the Cape route to India crippled Venetian commerce. A study of Venetian shipping fails to justify that notion. The effects of the Portuguese discovery upon Venetian trade have frequently been misrepresented because of a failure to distinguish between long ships and round ships. In most discussions of Venetian commerce attention has been concentrated on the merchant galleys,l a type of long ship built especially for the transport of spices and other precious wares. But throughout both the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries round sailing ships formed a larger part of the merchant marine. During these centuries the relative usefulness of the two types shifted, however, because of technical changes in rigging and armament. A recognition of the distinct economic functions of these different types of ships in the fifteenth century, and of their changed status in the sixteenth, is the key to the history of Venetian shipping in the period of the Commercial Revolution. When viewed as a whole the Venetian merchant marine employed in international commerce appears not to have declined, but actually to have grown in cargocarrying capacity during the sixteenth century.
