ABSTRACT
Medieval Trade Routes.—In the Middle Ages, long-distance trade centred mainly round the two great inland seas, the Mediterranean and the Baltic. The first of these was the traditional highway between East and West along which had flowed in Roman times, and for some centuries after, a rich and fertilizing stream of commerce. But the advance of the Moslem power in the eighth century and its establishment on the eastern and southern coasts of the Mediterranean drove a wedge between East and West and reduced the trade between Asia and Europe to small dimensions. The loss to Western civilization was great. Europe was thrown back upon herself; her agrarian character was intensified; her town life decayed; and her commercial activity sank to a low ebb. The impulse which rescued the West from this state of economic stagnation came from the Crusades. The eastward thrust of Christendom in the eleventh century broke the Mohammedan power in the Mediterranean and reopened to European traders the markets so long closed to them. The Italian cities and especially Venice were quick to seize the opportunity thus provided. All over the eastern Mediterranean they planted their trading depots, and collected in their galleys the rich cloths, the glasswork, the mosaics, the porcelain, the gold and silver ornaments of the great manufacturing city of Constantinople; the spices, the silks, the tapestries, the carpets and the precious stones of the East, brought by desert ways to the Levantine ports from Hindustan and far Cathay. These luxury goods were distributed from Italy to the rest of Europe either by the land routes through the passes of the Alps or by sea through the Straits of Gibraltar, the Bay of Biscay and the English Channel. Both these trade routes terminated in the Low Countries, which thus acquired exceptional importance in the Middle Ages as an international mart or emporium.
