Great Trade Routes by Pavilion Books

THE GREAT TRADE ROUTES

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THE GREAT TRADE ROUTES A HISTORY OF CARGOES AND COMMERCE OVER LAND AND SEA Edited by Philip Parker

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G e n e r a l E d i to r Philip Parker is a former diplomat and publisher, who specialises in the late antique and early medieval periods. He is the author of The Empire Stops Here: a Journey around the Frontiers of the Roman World and the Eyewitness Companion Guide to World History. He is currently working on a major new history of the Vikings.

S p e c i a l i s t C o n t r i b u to r s Professor David Abulafia is Professor of Mediterranean History at Cambridge University. His works include The Great Sea: a human history of the Mediterranean and he specializes in the Mediterranean at all periods but especially in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and attitudes to non-Christians in medieval Europe and the early Atlantic world. Dr Errietta M.A. Bissa, Lecturer in Ancient History, University of Wales Trinity Saint David. Author of Governmental Intervention in Foreign Trade in Archaic and Classical Greece. Stephen R. Bown is the author of eight books on the history of exploration, science and ideas, including The Last Viking:The Life of Roald Amundsen, Conqueror of the South Pole and Merchant Kings:When Companies Ruled the World, 1600–1900. Dr Clayton Brown is Professor of US History & the New South at Texas Christian University. He is author of King Cotton in Modern America: A Cultural, Political, and Economic History since 1945. Dr David M. Carballo, Assistant Professor of Archaeology, Boston University. Specialist in pre-Columbian Mexico and author of Obsidian and the Teotihuacan State:Weaponry and Ritual Production at the Moon Pyramid. Dr Bob Dean, formerly Visiting Lecturer, Department of Maritime Studies and International Transport, Cardiff University, specializing in the historical geography of ports and related trade spheres. Dr David Ditchburn is Associate Professor of Medieval History, at Trinity College, University of Dublin. His research and publications have focused on the economic, religious and political connections between Scotland and Europe in the later middle ages. Dr Christopher Godden, Lecturer in the Economic History of Globalization, University of Manchester. Specializing in inter-war economic history and the history of economic ideas. Dr George Lane, is Senior Teaching Fellow in the History of the Middle East and Central Asia, School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He specializes in the Mongol Empire and the Toluid Empire in particular. His new book on the Mongols will be published by OUP in 2014. Dr John McAleer is a Lecturer in History at the University of Southampton specializing in the history of the British Empire. Dr Raoul McLaughlin is a tutor at Queen’s University Belfast. He is the author of Rome and the Distant East and specializes in contacts across the Eastern and Western Imperial frontiers. Dr Rory Naismith is a Junior Research Fellow at Clare College, Cambridge. A specialist in early medieval history and coinage, and author of Money and Power in Anglo-Saxon England: the Southern English Kingdoms 757-865.

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Dr Jason Neelis, Associate Professor for South Asian Religions, Wilfrid Laurier University, author of Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks: Mobility and Exchange within and beyond the Northwestern Borderlands of South Asia. Emeritus Professor Malyn Newitt, King’s College London (formerly Charles Boxer Professor of History). Author of History of Mozambique, Portugal in Africa and numerous publications on the history of the Portuguese colonies in Africa. Dr Khodadad Rezakhani, post-doctoral researcher at the LSE, specializes in Late Antique/Early Mediaeval Economy of Central and West Asia. Dr Seth Richardson is a Research Associate at the Oriental Institute and the Managing Editor of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies. He is a historian of the Ancient Near East, whose specializations include Mesopotamia’s Old Babylonian period and problems of violence in the ancient world. Dr Hance D Smith, Reader (retired), Cardiff University. Author of Shetland life and trade, 1550-1914, specializing in past and present economic development of the world ocean. Dr Martin Wilcox is Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer at Greenwich Maritime Institute, University of Greenwich. He is a specialist in British trade, shipping and fisheries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Antony Wild is the official historiographer of the East India Company, and author of the international best seller, Coffee: A Dark History. He lives in France. © Conway Publishing 2012 This edition first published in Great Britain in 2012 by Conway An imprint of Anova Books Ltd 10 Southcombe Street London W14 0RA www.conwaypublishing.com www.anovabooks.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publishers. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN: 9781844861415 Project Editor: Christopher Westhorp Picture Editor: Jennifer Veall Design, Layout and Cartography: Martin Brown Printed and bound in Toppan Leefung Printing Ltd, China Reproduction by Rival Colour Ltd, UK To sign up for Conway’s monthly newsletters and regular updates please go to: www.conwaypublishing.com

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Contents Introd uction by Philip Parker 8 C hapte r 1 Trade Route s in th e An c ie n t Wo r l d 14 Introduction Philip Parker 14 Prehistoric Pathways Seth Richardson 16 Uruk and its World Seth Richardson 18 Trade with the East Seth Richardson 22 The Old Assyrian Trade Seth Richardson 25 Egypt: Gateway to Africa Seth Richardson 27 The Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age Seth Richardson 30 Phoenician Trade Seth Richardson 34 Age of Empires: Assyria, Babylon and Persia Seth Richardson 39 Chapter 2 Trade Routes in Classical Times

Introduction Philip Parker 42 Necessities and Luxuries in the Ancient Mediterranean World Erietta Bissa 44 ‘Frogs Around a Pond’: The Greeks and their Colonies Erietta Bissa 46 Colonization, Commodities and Conquest Erietta Bissa 49 The Black Sea Grain Routes Erietta Bissa 51 The Frankincense Route from Arabia Felix Erietta Bissa 54 The Nabataeans Erietta Bissa 56 Rome and the Growth of Empire Erietta Bissa 58 Roads and Rivers Erietta Bissa 62 Fish Sauce and Wine Erietta Bissa 65 Grain Routes: Alexandria–Rome–Constantinople Erietta Bissa 67 The Amber Road Philip Parker 68 The Central Asian Silk Routes Jason Neelis 71 Early South Asian Trade Networks Jason Neelis 77 The Monsoon Trade to India and the Periploi Raoul McLaughlin 79 The Camel: A New Tool of Trade Khodadad Rezakhani 84 The Caravan Cities of the Middle East Khodadad Rezakhani 86 C hapte r 3 Trade in the Mid d l e Age s 90 Introduction Philip Parker 90 The Growth of the Islamic Empire and its Effect on Trade Khodadad Rezakhani 92 Trade Under the Ummayads and ‘Abbasid Caliphates Khodadad Rezakhani 94

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Islamic Trade with Europe Before the Crusades Khodadad Rezakhani 97 The Growth of Trading Emporia in Merovingian and Carolingian Europe Rory Naismith 100 Trade and the Champagne Fairs Rory Naismith 103 The Vikings in the West Philip Parker 106 The Vikings in the East Philip Parker 108 The Salt Trade in the Later Middle Ages Philip Parker 110 Bruges, Flanders and the Europeanization of Commerce David Ditchburn 112 The Hanseatic League David Ditchburn 116 Trade Routes: Mediterranean Shipping David Abulafia 120 Pisan Trade Routes in the Mediterranean and Levant David Abulafia 122 Venetian Trade Routes in the Mediterranean and Levant David Abulafia 124 Genoese Trade Routes in the Mediterranean and Levant David Abulafia 127 Catalan Trade Routes in the Mediterranean David Abulafia 129 The Trade in Sugar, 1300–1550 David Abulafia 131 Trade Routes in the Islamic World – from the Fatimids to the Seljuks Khodadad Rezakhani 133 Trade in the Indian Ocean: the Dhow Khodadad Rezakhani 136 Coffee: The Mocha Trade in the Islamic World Antony Wild 140 The Pax Mongolica and the Polos George Lane 142 The Black Death David Ditchburn 147 Amalfi David Abulafia 149

C h a pte r 4 T r a d e in th e Age of D i s cov e ry

152

Introduction Philip Parker 152 Growth of the Portuguese Empire Malyn Newitt 154 Indian Ocean and Africa: Arab Trade Routes Khodadad Rezakhani 158 Southeast Asia and Maritime Trade George Lane 161 Chinese Trade under the Ming and Zheng He George Lane 163 Trade Routes in the Americas Before Columbus David Carballo 166 Old Meets New: Columbus’s Discovery of the Americas Stephen Bown 171 The Treaty of Tordesillas: The World Divided Stephen Bown 173 Winds – The Key to Global Trade Stephen Bown 176 From Conquistadores to Traders: Opportunities in the New World Stephen Bown 178

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The Columbian Exchange Stephen Bown 180 The New World Silver Trade: From Peru to Manila Stephen Bown 182 The Newfoundland Cod Trade and the Discovery of North America Stephen Bown 184 Illegal Trade in the Caribbean – Smugglers and Privateers Stephen Bown 187 The Portuguese in the East Stephen Bown 190 Portugal, Macao and the China–Japan Trade Stephen Bown 194 Sugar and Spice: New Commodities, New Routes Stephen Bown 196 Scurvy – The Plague of the Seas Stephen Bown 198 The Dutch: The VOC and the Eastern Trade Routes Stephen Bown 199 The Dutch West India Company Stephen Bown 204 The East India Company Stephen Bown 207 The Dismemberment of the Portuguese Trading Empire and the Freedom of the Seas Stephen Bown 210 From Companies to Governments Stephen Bown 212

C h a pte r 5 T r a d e in th e Age of E m p i r e s

214

Introduction Philip Parker 214 Trade and the New Global Empires John McAleer 216 Coffee in the Age of Empire Antony Wild 219 The Cotton Trade: Chintzes and Calicoes Clayton Brown 222 Slavery and Sugar: The Transatlantic Trades John McAleer 226 African Trade: Ivory and Gold John McAleer 231 The China Tea Trade and the Tea Clipper Martin Wilcox 233 From Sail to Steam Martin Wilcox 238 Terms of Trade: The Opium Wars Martin Wilcox 242 The Great Canals: Suez, Panama and Erie Martin Wilcox 245 The Fur Trade Stephen Bown 247 Industrialization and Trade Martin Wilcox 250 The Coal Trade Martin Wilcox 253 Copper Refining and South Wales Bob Dean 255 Transcontinental Trade and the Railways Martin Wilcox 258 Refrigeration and the Meat Trade Martin Wilcox 264 The First World War and Trade Christopher Godden 267 Deglobalization Between the Wars Christopher Godden 270 The Great Depression: Trade Seizes Up Christopher Godden 274

C h a pte r 6 T r a d e in th e Mo de rn Wo r l d 278 Introduction Philip Parker The Globalized World Hance Smith 280 Energy Hance Smith 282 Minerals Hance Smith 284 Grain Hance Smith 285 Living Resources and World Food Supplies Hance Smith 287 The Container Revolution Hance Smith 289 People Hance Smith 293 The Risky World of Merchant Shipping Routes Hance Smith 294 Nodes and Regions Hance Smith 297 Railways and Roads Hance Smith 301 Air Routes and Airports Hance Smith 303

Epilogue by Philip Parker 304 Further Reading 305 Index 310 Picture Acknowledgements 320

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The world of classical antiquity is characterized by the rise of great

empires: the Roman, the Achaemenid Persian, the Mauryan in India and the Han in China. The conditions of political stability they brought were

then taking advantage of favourable winds in the opposite direction for their return.

The India that they found had become connected by the first

into the progenitor of the Silk Road, travelling through

favourable to economic growth and the expansion of trade networks

century

The period from around 750bc to ad500, therefore, saw the extension of

into the Ganges Plain. It was more a network of capillary routes than

both within the zones that these empires controlled and between them. pre-existing trade routes to become genuinely long-distance ones and

the appearance of a series of new trade networks that answered the various empires’ thirst for resources and hunger for luxury goods.

One of the earliest signs of the resource-driven expansion of trade

came with the establishment of colonies by the Greek city-states from the early eighth century bc. Generally poor in land and agrarian resources, the Greek states needed to expand overseas to acquire the

Central Asia, across the Hindu Kush and Karakorum Mountains down

one major road, and fingers of it took lapis lazuli from Badakhshan and

sandstone from Mathura to distant markets in southern India, China, Mesopotamia and even the Roman Empire. Just as in Europe, increasing urbanization, with the growth of imperial cities such as Mathura

and Taxila, stimulated a demand for luxury goods and created good trading conditions.

Evidence of the Roman participation in this trade comes from the

means to support burgeoning populations. The colonies they founded

record of a temple to Augustus built at Muziris (Pattanam in Kerala).

web of maritime trading networks. This in turn drove policy, with the

to fret that Rome’s precious silver and gold were draining into India in

throughout the Mediterranean provided the nodes in a vastly increased

Athenians’ need to secure the vulnerable grain routes through the Hellespont into the Black Sea, and to obtain timber for the triremes to patrol them, leading almost inexorably to the ruinous Peloponnesian War with their great strategic rival, Sparta.

The Greek world expanded massively through Alexander the Great’s

The extent of trade between Rome and India was vast, leading Pliny exchange for the frivolous luxury of silk clothing. In reality Rome sent

wine, copper and red coral as well as silver in exchange for the cotton, silk and spices (in particular pepper, which was an ingredient in threequarters of the dishes in the only Roman cookbook to survive).

Rome thirsted for spices, too, from southern Arabia, which came

conquest of the Achaemenid Empire in the 330s bc, and it was one of

either by the gruelling land route up the west of the Arabian Penin-

a new route along the eastern coast of Africa, down the Red Sea and

connected to the Mediterranean shipping routes. The frankincense

the Hellenistic successor states to Alexander’s empire that pioneered into the Indian Ocean. By 100bc, sailors using Ptolemaic ports such as Myos Hormus and Berenice were sailing via the southern Arabian Peninsula directly to India, making use of the recently discovered monsoon winds that allowed them to reach India in three weeks, and

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sula or by the Red Sea route to the port of Aila (Aqaba), which then and myrrh, aromatic gums from Arabia Felix (modern Yemen), were in demand for ritual and medicinal uses, and were so valuable and came

in such quantity that the taxes on them may have supplied as much as one-third of Roman imperial revenue.

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CHAPTER 2

Trade Routes in CLASSICAL TIMES The interior of the Roman Empire formed a huge trading commu-

As the Roman Empire in the west faltered and fell in the fifth century

nity, connected by the vast network of high-quality roads that the

ad,

Those highways, together with Roman-controlled waterways such

the Amber Route, which led from the Baltic into the Roman Empire

Romans constructed (1,900 miles/3,000 kilometres in Britain alone). as the Rhine and Danube, enabled large-scale trades such as that in

terra sigillata, the high-quality red glazed pottery from northern Italy and Gaul that was popular throughout the western provinces of the Roman Empire until the third century ad.

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and Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hold on the vital Central Asian trading posts such as

Dunhuang and Turfan ebbed, very long-distance trade routes (such as

at Carnuntum in modern Austria) contracted or ceased altogether. The classical age, which had seen a radical escalation in the extent

and quantity of trade, ended with an apparent return to the localized networks of the preceding era.

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44 TRADE ROUTES IN CLASSICAL TIMES

necessities and luxuries in the Ancient Mediterranean World The ancient Mediterranean was a place of trade throughout antiquity. In the period before Alexander the Great, individual city-states, tribal kingdoms and great empires, such as the Persian, dominated the political map of the Mediterranean. After Alexander’s conquests, the kingdoms of his successors warred for power over the eastern Mediterranean, from Greece to Bactria, while Rome was starting to build its empire in the west. By the time of Jesus’ birth and the beginning of the Common Era, the Roman Empire controlled the Mediterranean world, from Britain to Egypt and the forests of Germany to the Arabian Peninsula. Whether the city-state or a mighty, centrally controlled empire dominated the Mediterranean world, trade remained the lifeline that supported the lifestyles of the time.The ancient Greeks and Romans lived lives that were based upon a rich material culture, which needed items, supplies and products from places both near and far. The weapons and armour, such essential items in the constant wars that scoured the Mediterranean throughout antiquity, were made out of iron and bronze found in small quantities in mining regions around the Mediterranean (see also page 59). The same was true for gold and silver, the main precious metals the ancients used to mint their coinages and create jewellery and artefacts that still inspire admiration and awe thou-

sands of years after their makers drew their last breath. The specialist timbers that enabled the creation of the magnificent fleets that fought for freedom as much as domination could be found only in specific mountainous areas, dotted around the shores of the Mediterranean, from cedars in the Levant to silver-firs in the mountains of Macedonia. At the same time, the luxury products – from silk to spices – that characterized the extravagant lifestyles of the rich and powerful were imported from lands thousands of miles away from the Mediterranean. The routes that traders took, either by land or sea, to bring all the products, either necessities or luxuries, to the great cities of the Mediterranean civilizations, Athens, Rome or Alexandria, became the bones of contention between warring states and empires, as well as sources of immense revenue for those that controlled them. A vase depiction of a Greek hoplite of the fifth-century bc (above). Ceramics were carried throughout the Mediterranean world by Greek merchants, and the spread of styles associated with particular cities can act as a guide to the spread of trade. A medieval illustration of the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics illustrated drapers in a market (below) . The trade in luxury goods and its pernicious effect on public morals is a theme that stretches from classical times to the modern world.

A lament about luxury The elegiac poet Propertius, writing at the time of the first Roman emperor, Augustus (reigned 27bc–ad14), on the spread of luxurious commodities in Rome:

‘The ants of India bring forth gold from the great mine, and Venus’ nautilus comes from the Red Sea, while Cadmian Tyre creates purple dyes

and the shepherds of Arabia cinnamon full of

scent. Such things defeat modesty, even for those who are contemptuous of them like Penelope.

Wives leave the home dressed in a man’s fortune and show their disgrace before all. No respect is seen in asking or giving; if there is, money does away with it.’

From Propertius. The Elegies.

Book III: 13.

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NECESSITIES AND LUXURIES IN THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN WORLD 45

Imports and exports Too often both the ancient writers and

the country: in one place gold, in another

significant but were in fact their most

concentrate on the importance of imports,

Next follows revenue from ports and

their greatest asset in inter-regional politics

significance of exports in the economies

transactions.’ Revenues from the ‘special

the modern scholars that study them

sometimes going as far as denying the

of the ancient world. In the beginning of the second book of the treatise entitled

Economics, Aristotle, or one of his students, portrayed clearly the importance of

exports for the economy of a state: ‘Of the third type of government, that of a free

city-state, the most important revenue is that arising from the special products of

silver, in another copper and so forth.

markets; and finally that from day-to-day

important source of revenue, as well as and conflicts.

products of a country’ and those from ports and markets are intimately connected,

as these products were the main exports of any city-state. What Aristotle does not elaborate on is that for those city-states

controlling important trade routes, such as Byzantium at the mouth of the Black

Sea, ports and markets were not merely

A modern statue of the fourth-century bc philosopher Plato outside the Hellenic Academy in Athens (below). Plato lived at a time of great political and civic ferment when the trading empire that had provided Athens with so much wealth had collapsed after the city’s defeat in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta (431–404bc).

Fortune favours the master of the seas An unknown author (commonly referred

‘As to riches, the Athenians alone of either

state consists of iron, or of bronze, or of

perspective the importance of seaborne

them. For if some place is rich in timber for

permission of the maritime power?’

to as the ‘Old Oligarch’) puts into clear trade in the late fifth century bc:

Greeks or foreigners are able to possess

shipbuilding, where is it to find a market for its products except by persuading the ruler

of the seas? Or, suppose the wealth of some

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linen, where will it find a market except by

From Xenophon. Constitution of the

Athenians: 2.11

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46 TRADE ROUTES IN CLASSICAL TIMES

‘Frogs around a pond’: The Greeks and their Colonies The eighth century bc shows the beginnings of the greatest expansion of Greek civilization from the heartland of the south of the Balkan Peninsula, the islands of the Aegean Sea and the western coast of Asia Minor to the rest of the Mediterranean from Pantikapaion in the Crimea to Ampurias on the northeastern coast of Spain. Overpopulation and the quest for wealth drove the Greeks to settle in places, from Byzantium to Syracuse, that could guarantee them income and revenue. They were not alone because the Phoenicians expanded at the same time, albeit not to the same degree, founding great trading centres such as Carthage and Gades (Cadiz). An artist’s impression of the port of the ancient city of Kyrenia in Cyprus (below). It was founded in the late second millennium bc, and ships from Ionia and mainland Greece could easily reach it by sailing along the southern coast of Asia Minor and then making a short sea crossing, meaning that Kyrenia was well placed to act as a bridge between the Greek world and the empires of the Near East.

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A Mediterranean of trading colonies The earliest Greek colony was founded c.720bc at Pithecussae in Italy, where it was situated in the best position to dominate the export of the iron ore at Elba. The knowledge of far-away places and their riches accumulated by Greek traders drove and guided the colonization movement. Each Greek settlement had its own source of wealth, depending on the area and its resources. Some settlements gained their wealth from agricultural produce, such as grain in south Italy and wine in the Cimpresshalcidice and Thrace; other settlements were founded in locations that were best suited to dominate trade routes and new untapped markets, such as Byzantium on the Bosporus, Rhegium on the Strait of Messina and Olbia in the north of the Black Sea. These settlements became important city-states in their own right long before the Persians advanced to the shores of the Mediterranean, while providing their mother-states with

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‘FROGS AROUND A POND’: THE GREEKS AND THEIR COLONIES 47

From the Phasis to the pillars of Herakles Writing in the Phaedo in the early fourth century bc, the great

Athenian philosopher Plato

shows the centrality of the Mediterranean Sea in Greek life and culture: ‘Also,’ he [Socrates] said, ‘I think that the earth is very large and that we

who live between the

pillars of Herakles [the

Strait of Gibraltar] and

the river Phasis [in the north

of the Black Sea] live in a small

part of it around the sea, like ants or frogs around a pond, and that

many other people live in numerous other regions like ours.’

From Plato. Phaedo. Section 109a–b.

In Book IV of his Histories, Herodotus recounts an early encounter between Greek traders from Samos and native Iberians in Tartessus, southern Spain:

‘The Samians with Colaeus then sailed away from Thera [modern San-

torini] on a course to Egypt, but an easterly wind drove them

from their course, and did not

stop until they had passed through

the pillars of Herakles [the Strait of Gibral-

tar] and good fortune brought them to Tart-

essus. At that time, Tartessus was a port as

yet untouched by Greek traders. So, the Samians,

of all the Greeks whom I know about, brought back

from there the greatest profit on their cargo.’ From Herodotus. Histories. Book IV: Chapter 152.

Zeus and an eagle (one of his divine attributes) adorn a drinking cup (above) from Taranto, a Greek colony in southern Italy founded in 706bc by Spartans.

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48 TRADE ROUTES IN CLASSICAL TIMES

wealth, power and prestige. Such cities as Syracuse in Sicily became as powerful, if not more so, than the great city-states of old Greece like Athens or Sparta, creating their own miniempires and colonies. The Greeks came to dominate the Mediterranean from east to west, becoming the main purveyors of trade, particularly on the northern shores. Greek colonization was not a bloodless exercise â&#x20AC;&#x201C; all the areas settled by the Greeks already belonged

Amphorae from a Greek vessel that sank off Kyrenia around 300bc, carrying around 400 wine jars like these (above), most of them originating from Rhodes, which could have been the shipâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s port of origin. It was less than a mile from harbour when it went down and may have been sunk by pirates.

to native tribes that were at times pushed into the hinterland, such as in Sicily, or amalgamated into the Greek populations, such as in the eastern Black Sea.

Naukratis: the gateway to Egypt Egypt was the oldest civilization the Greeks

The settlement was given official status in

imports of silver, wine and other commodi-

two cultures stretch back to the Bronze Age

of the pharaoh Amasis, who gave the Greek

tis have yielded a treasure trove of objects

recognized, and trade relations between the civilization of the Minoans. In the eighth

and seventh centuries bc, Greek trade with Egypt became more and more important

to the former, while Greek mercenaries can be found working for Egyptian monarchs.

the early sixth century, under the auspices traders dominion over it. Naukratis, as the settlement was called, became the main

trading port of Egypt in the Mediterranean until the foundation of Alexandria by Alex-

ander the Great in 331bc. Naukratis was the

Sometime in the seventh century, traders

port that controlled all exports of Egyptian

port in the westernmost delta of the Nile.

and beyond, while Egypt gained from

from Greece and other places established a

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ties. Long-standing excavations at Naukraand coins. The excavated buildings show

the power and wealth of this port-town, as

well as its intimate relations with the great trading city-states of the Greek world, such as Miletos and Aegina.

grain, and possibly gold, to the Greek world

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COLONIZATION, COMMODITIES AND CONQUEST 49

Colonization, commodities and conquest The great city-states of the Greek world desired to expand their influence and power over their neighbours, and indeed over whole regions of the Mediterranean. In the archaic period, part of this expansion was expressed through colonizing ventures that brought the mother-city not only resources but also footholds of power far from itself.

corinth: the spider in the web The best example of such a ‘colonizing’ power was Corinth, which not only founded some of the greatest settlements, such as Syracuse, but also kept close relations with and partial dominance over these settlements. In the case of Potidaea, Corinth’s only settlement on the Aegean seaboard, Corinth annually sent a board of magistrates to effectively manage Potidaean political affairs. In the run-up to the Peloponnesian War, Athens and Corinth were in conflict in the 430s (c.437–434bc) over Corcyra, another Corinthian colony that had thrown off Corinthian influence over its affairs. In the midst of that conflict, the Athenians became particularly suspicious of Corinthian interference in Potidaea, which was geostrategically vital to Athens because it was in position to incite other city-states in the Chalcidice to secede from the Delian League (the defensive alliance formed in 478bc against a potential new Persian invasion, but which had slowly evolved into an Athenian empire). Hence Athens demanded that Potidaea not only send away its Corinthian magistrates but also tear down its walls. The demand prompted the Potidaeans to revolt and became one of the events that sparked off the Peloponnesian War (431–404bc).

A modern impression of the agora, the marketplace in Athens (above), where commodities from the extensive Athenian maritime empire would have been traded. It was the need to retain control over the grain trade routes into the Black Sea that drove the Athenian expansion overseas.

S p h e r e s o f i n f lu e n c e Megara, a much smaller city-state in the Peloponnese and whose wealth was solely from trade, colonized locations that commanded important trade routes in the eastern Mediterranean. Its most famous colony was Byzantium, but Megara also settled Herakleia Pontica and other sites in the area, which essentially put it in a position to dominate trade with the Black

Apollonia

Pella

Im b ro s

Ch a l c i d i c e

A E G E A N

Larissa

S E A

E u b o ea

Delphi

I onian

Gulf of Thebes Diolkon Road Corinth

I slands Italy, North Africa

I O N I A N S E A

Megara

Sicyon

Corinth

Argos Olympia

Ch i o s

Athens

Aegina

Paros

P e l o p o n n e s e Thalamae

Sea of Marmara

Artemisium

Samos

Herakleia Pontica

Athenian territory, c.510 BC Spartan territory, 550 BC

Miletus

Trade routes

Didyma

Cos

Melos

Corinthian territory, 585 BC

Ephesus Samos

Naxos

Termessos

Cos

Attaleia

Telmessos

Cnidus

R h od e s Crete, Egypt, Cyrenaica

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Byzantium

Delos

Tegea

Sparta

Hellespont

Lem n o s

Dodona

The powerful rulers (or “tyrants”) of Greek city states in the seventh and Abydos sixth centuries bc did much to promote Sigeum trade. In the case of Corinth, Sparta A S I A and Athens they also began to build M I N O R empires (map, left), with the Athenians securing land that would control the Pergamon grain routes to the Black Sea, while Mytilene the Corinthians built a paved road (the Les b o s Diolkon) across the Isthmus of Corinth to enable the rapid transfer of goods Sardis between the harbours at its eastern and western end.

Th a s o s

T H E S S A L Y Corcyra

Therma

Potidaea

Bos pho r

Black Sea

Lindus

Egypt, Cyrenaica

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50 TRADE ROUTES IN CLASSICAL TIMES

Sea. Interestingly, some of the most important city-states in the Greek world, such as Athens and Sparta, founded only a tiny number of settlements abroad. (Unlike most other city-states, Athens and Sparta did not suffer from overpopulation in the archaic period, and neither had particular interests in seaborne communications; Sparta never developed such an interest, while Athenian maritime power did not come about until the fifth century.) Yet, most of the classical period is dominated by the efforts of Athens and Sparta to extend their influence and power over the Greek world through imperial alliances and the conquest of existing settlements, often previously colonized by other city-states.

All routes lead to Athens The Athenian comic playwright Hermippus, of the late fifth

century bc, describes in a fragment (63) from a lost play some of the goods that Athens imports and where they originate:

‘From Egypt come sails and books, and from Syria incense.

Blessed Crete has cedar from the gods and Libya has many

elephants to sell. From Rhodes arrive raisins and dreamy dried figs. And from Euboea come pears and sweet apples, from

Phrygia slaves, and bodyguards from Arcadia. Pagasae sends off both slaves and runaways. Almonds and Zeus’ dates bring the

Paphlagonians. From Phoenicia comes the fruit of the palm and fine flour, and from Carthage carpets and fine pillows.’

T h e v i ta l g r a i n t r a d e Grain was an extremely important commodity in the Greek world and many cities in Greece, the Aegean and Asia Minor had to import it from colonized areas, as Herodotus, in Book VII of Histories, describes the peoples of the Peloponnese doing at the time of the Persian Wars: ‘Xerxes when he was at Abydos [on the shores of the Hellespont] saw ships with cargoes of grain sail out of the Black Sea through the Hellespont [the narrow passage, known today as the Dardanelles, that connects the Aegean with the Sea of Marmara] on their way to Aigina and the cities of the Peloponnese. His counsellors, seeing that these were enemy ships [that is, Greek ships], argued for stop-

From Kock, Theodorus. Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta. Vol I.

Leipzig, 1880.

ping them, and asked the king for orders to do so. Xerxes, however, asked them where the ships were going, and they answered: “To your enemies, Majesty, carrying grain.” Xerxes then replied, “Are we not going to the same places as they, with grain amongst our provisions? What wrong are they doing us in carrying food there?”’

Prized silver The Greeks used coinage made most

with silver deposits. The greatest Greek city

Other city-states, such as Athens, the

gold, to conduct their trade transactions.

Many coins seem to have been minted

had silver-mines of their own but also

commonly of silver (above), and very rarely Ancient coinages, like modern ones, were

produced by the state. Yet only a few places in the Greek world had silver-mines, which meant that most city-states either had

to import silver or try to conquer an area

042-089_Trade_Routes_Chap2.indd 50

in Sicily, Syracuse, had to import its silver. there, which can be inferred from the

fact that they survive in great numbers, unearthed in hoards. This commodity

therefore became one of the most lucrative trading items in the classical period.

foremost naval power of the day, not only conquered areas with silver deposits in an effort to corner the market in silver and force their allies to use Athenian silver

coinage, as well as export the metal to the Levant and Egypt.

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THE BLACK SEA GRAIN ROUTES 51

The Black Sea Grain Routes Many Greek city-states were dependent upon imported grain for their survival, yet none was as dependent as Athens, the greatest naval power of the classical period. Athens’ political and military actions, particularly during the period of its domination of the Delian League (478–404bc), show its dependence upon imported goods of all types (except silver), but most importantly grain.

A n At h e n i a n w e a k n e s s The main cereal-exporting territories at the time were Egypt, Sicily and around the Black Sea. Egypt had been conquered by Persia in the sixth century, while Sicily and southern Italy were traditionally more inclined to side with the Spartans and other Peloponnesians against the Athenians. Hence, the Black Sea became the obvious place for Athens to get its much-needed supplies. The trade route between the Black Sea and Peiraeus, the port of Athens, passed through Byzantium and the Hellespont, crossed the Aegean and went around the southern tip of Euboea to reach Peiraeus – a long journey that was vulnerable both to piracy and to any rival maritime power.

042-089_Trade_Routes_Chap2.indd 51

Fourth-century Athenian diplomacy, primarily by agreement with the Spartokid dynasty of Pantikapaion, of the Crimean Peninsula in the northern Black Sea, assured that enough grain would leave the Black Sea ports bound for Athens. However, the route that the traders took from Byzantium to the south had to be secured by other means. Athens established some settlements on the southern part of the Hellespont and secured the crossing through the Aegean by expelling the native populations and taking over the three strategically placed islands of Skyros, Lemnos and Imbros, which also produced some grain of their own. Athens had the largest fleet of warships in the Greek world, which patrolled the route and its harbours, commonly providing escort for the grain ships through the Hellespont. Any threat to the route was met with an immediate show of force by Athens, the excessive nature of which betrayed its greatest weakness: any enemy that could stop the grain The Olympias (below) is a full-scale reconstruction of a fifth-century bc Athenian trireme, which was launched in 1987 as part of an experimental archaeology project to understand how these ancient Greek warships were built and operated.

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52 TRADE ROUTES IN CLASSICAL TIMES

supply to Athens via the Hellespont could bring the citystate to its knees. Sparta did just that, which enabled it to win the Peloponnesian War, and in doing so an example was provided for first Persia and then Macedon to follow in the fourth century.

Demosthenes’ testimony Demosthenes, the great Athenian orator of the fourth century bc,

speaking to the Athenians about the importance of their imports of grain, during a famous speech called ‘Against Leptines’:

At h e n s l o o k s to n e w m a r k e t s

‘For you know that we consume more imported grain than any other people. Now the grain that comes to our ports from the

In spite of Athens’ power – military and economic – in the eastern Mediterranean, war was never far away in the world of inter-city rivalries that marred most of the classical period. Even Athens, with a navy that could rival that of the Persian Empire, had to expend much money and effort to keep its vulnerable Black Sea grain-route secure. Therefore, in the middle of the fifth century bc the Athenians started to venture further afield in search of other markets that could supply them with grain. The first candidate was Egypt, with its past good relations to the Greek world; unfortunately, Egypt had been conquered by the expanding Persian Empire in the sixth century, which put its grain out of reach of Athens under normal circumstances. Yet, the Egyptians were always looking to revolt against their Persian overlords, and with Athens’ help they took their opportunity in the 450s. An Athenian fleet of more than a hundred ships sailed via Cyprus, where the Athenians took over some cities before sailing on to the delta of the Nile. The Egyptians managed some initial victories, but by 454 their hopes were crushed when the Persians completely destroyed the Athenian fleet. Athens’ venture had failed and it was left to find another supplier of grain to supplement its Black Sea source. A new Athenian colony in south Italy, at Thourioi, provided a good opening for Athens to access the grain supplies of the western Greek world, in southern Italy and Sicily. However, those trade routes were already within the sphere of influence of Corinth, Sparta’s great ally in the Peloponnese and a colonial power in its own right. During the Peloponnesian War there were two Athenian expeditions to Sicily, the first in the 420s and the second in 415. The latter pitted Athens against

Black Sea is equal to the whole amount from all other places of

export. And this is not surprising; for not only is that part of the world most productive of grain, but also Leukon, who is master of that state, has granted exemption from dues to merchants

conveying grain to Athens, and he proclaims that those bound for your port shall have priority of lading.’

In a speech about Alexander the Great, Demosthenes describes the immediate reaction of the Athenians to any threat to their grain supply:

‘Now, Athenians, you have seen this done before by the Mac-

edonians; for they have grown so arrogant that they forced all

our grain ships coming from the Black Sea to put in at the port

at Tenedos, and using various pretenses have refused to release them until you had to pass a decree to man and launch a hundred warships against them.’

Syracuse, the great Greek city of the island, but it was another calamity for the Athenians, with more than 150 Athenian and allied ships destroyed and thousands of Athenian casualties. To some the ‘Sicilian disaster’ was the beginning of the end for Athens’ imperial domination of the Aegean through the Delian League. The defeat not only ended its hopes of dominating grain supplies from Italy, but it also closed the western trade route to Athens and left the great power once more solely dependent on Black Sea grain. The effort to retain dominion over the Hellespontine route became the main goal of the Athenians for most of the fourth century.

An ancient crossroads In the eyes of the Greeks, the Black Sea

were the natural ports from which to

and indeed merge with their non-Greek

its commodities, from grain to slaves

inland and an attraction for traders from

cal hybrids. Not only is there evidence of

was an area of great wealth because of and from silver to salted fish. Byzantium

controlled all access to the Black Sea from the Aegean, which heralded its rise to

importance as both the city of Constan-

tinople and the keeper of the Europe–Asia and north–south routes during much

of the first millennium ce. The Black Sea

region was settled by Greeks, mainly from

Asia Minor, in the course of the eighth and seventh centuries bc. The Black Sea cities

042-089_Trade_Routes_Chap2.indd 52

transport any commodities from further

the East: the Scythians, the nomadic tribes that roamed the land between the shores of the Black Sea and the Ural Mountains, brought slaves to the Greeks; the great

plains of the Ukraine supplied much-prized wheat; while Dacia offered both gold and grain. Unlike other settlements abroad,

such as those of Sicily and the Kyrenaike (in North Africa), many of those in the

neighbours, creating cultural and politi-

citizenship extending to non-Greeks and intermarriage, but long-standing quasi-

monarchical regimes, such as that of the Spartokids of Pantikapaion in the fourth

century, existed when hereditary kingships were rare in the world of the city-state

(usually being considered a characteristic of the non-Greeks).

Black Sea region found ways to coexist

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THE BLACK SEA GRAIN ROUTES 53

Timber for triremes Athens had the largest, and at times best,

fraction of its fleet. Even as the Athenian

domination over Thrace, and particularly

consisted mainly of triremes, a swift ship

certain that the all-important grain ships

Amphipolis, and sought to have influence

fleet in the Greek world. Greek fleets

with three levels of oars and a bronze

ram. At the Battle of Salamis, the decisive encounter of the Persian Wars in 480bc,

Athens fielded 200 triremes according

to Herodotus; half a century later, at the

fleet dominated the Aegean, making

continued to reach Peiraeus, lives and

political capital were expended in order

to ensure that Athens got the timber it so The best timber for triremes was silver-

fir; the fourth-century philosopher Theo-

middle of the fourth century, the Athenian

terranean that could provide such timber

naval accounts show that the fleet had as

many as 400 ships. Yet Athens did not have the timber supplies to build even a tiny

042-089_Trade_Routes_Chap2.indd 53

over the kings of Macedon for the whole of its classical history.

voraciously required.

beginning of the Peloponnesian War, the number had grown to 300; while by the

the Strymon basin where they founded

phrastus lists the few areas in the Medi-

in any significant quantities: Macedonia, Thrace, Mysia in Asia Minor and central

Italy. It is no surprise that Athens fought for

The design of the reconstructed trireme Olympias (above) was based on a number of ancient sources such as the Enquiry into Plants of Theophrastus, who relates that the main timbers for building ships were fir, pine and cedar. The latter was particularly hard to get until Alexander the Greatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s conquest brought Lebanon into the Greek sphere of dominance.

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54 TRADE ROUTES IN CLASSICAL TIMES

The Frankincense Route from Arabia Felix Frankincense (Boswellia sacra) and myrrh (Commiphora myrrha) are both mentioned by ancient authors as the main products of Arabia Felix, Blessed Arabia, the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula (modern Yemen).The earliest certain evidence of the trade in frankincense comes from Assyria in the eighth century bc, although the story of the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Jerusalem in the Bible might be an indication of earlier trade relations between southern Arabia and the Levant. Both frankincense and myrrh were known to and used by the Greeks and the Romans for religious ceremonies, fumigation and medicinal concoctions. The accounts of Arabia from early writers, such as Herodotus, are rather imaginative, probably due to the fact that the Greeks of the fifth century bc knew little of Arabia beyond the produce that reached their ports. Rich tales of the winged snakes that were said to guard Arabia’s frankincense trees held the same exotic attraction for the ancient Greeks as the fascinating stories circulating about griffins and giant ants that guarded gold in other faraway places. A woman burning incense, from a fifth-century Greek bas-relief (right). The need for incense for use in religious rituals was one of the drivers of the demand for spices from southern Arabia right into Roman times.

A c o n t e s t b e t w e e n ro u t e s The frankincense-growing tribes managed to stay independent from outside domination due to the harsh nature of the terrain and the remoteness of the region, but the transportation routes that supported the incense trade – overland and seabased – were easier to control. For most of the first millennium the main supplier of incense to the Mediterranean remained Arabia, utilizing the overland route from Shabwa to Tamna, Najiran and then finally to Petra in Nabataea. From the end of the Hellenistic period, and particularly during the Roman Empire, the sea-based route from Qana to Berenice and Myos Hormus in Egypt, and then overland to the delta, became much more important. Both routes were very expensive as traders had to pay dues and taxes at every port and way-stop, as well as cover the costs of food, water and shelter, during their 1,550-mile (2,500-kilometre) journey from Arabia Felix to the Mediterranean. The first-century ad author Pliny the Elder attributes these taxes and expenses as the main reason for the great prices that frankincense and myrrh fetched when sold at market in the ports of the Mediterranean. Frankincense and myrrh also grew in Somalia, which became accessible to the Greeks and Romans after places such as Berenice (see box, below) had opened up trade with the eastern coast of Africa, but their price remained steep.

The riches of Red Sea Berenice The port of Berenice Troglodytica (right) was founded by Ptolemy II Philadelphos in 275bc on the Egyptian part of the Red Sea coast

near the border with modern Sudan. Its original purpose was to facilitate the trade in elephants from the Sudan and Ethiopia,

which were used for war against rival Hellenistic dynasties, mainly the Seleucids who had their own supply of elephants from India.

However, the advantageous geographical position of the port for

trade with India and Arabia, as well as the eastern coast of Africa, quickly brought it riches and fame. Archaeological excavations in

recent years have unearthed large houses and warehouses, as well as temples, full of the symbols of wealth: spices, imported ceramics from India and decorative glass.

042-089_Trade_Routes_Chap2.indd 54

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THE FRANKINCENSE ROUTE FROM ARABIA FELIX 55

Herodotus and Pliny on the incense trade Herodotus, writing in Book III of Histories in the fifth century bc,

In his Natural History of the first century ad, Pliny the Elder has

aromatics:

his description of the trade of incense:

connects Arabia and frankincense, as well as other spices and

several chapters on Arabia and types of incense. Most important is

‘Again, Arabia is the southernmost of all inhabited countries.

‘Next to them live the Minae, the people of another community,

and casia and cinnamon and ladanum. All of these products

incense, along a single narrow road. The Minae were the first

This is the only country which produces frankincense and myrrh except myrrh are difficult for the Arabians to get. They harvest frankincense by burning the fragrant gum which the Phoeni-

cians often carry to Greece. They burn this gum and thus get the frankincense; for the frankincense trees are guarded by small

dappled winged snakes, of which there are many around each tree. These are the snakes that attack Egypt, and it is only the smoke of the gum that can drive them from the trees.’

042-089_Trade_Routes_Chap2.indd 55

through whose country is the only trade route for the frank-

people who transported frankincense abroad and they still do

so more than any other people; this is why frankincense is often called “Minaean”. Yet it is the Sabae, who are the only ones of the Arabians that have incense trees on their land ....’

This sixteenth-century bc fresco (above) of a priestess holding an incense burner provides visual evidence for the very ancient antecedents of the spice trade in the eastern Mediterranean.

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56 TRADE ROUTES IN CLASSICAL TIMES

The Nabataeans Before reaching the shores of the Mediterranean at Gaza, the Wa x a n d wa n e last stop during the great overland trade route of frankincense, myrrh and other valuable commodities from southern Arabia By the second century bc, the Nabataeans were a fully fledged was at Petra, in the kingdom of the Nabataeans. kingdom and no longer nomadic. Under such great leaders as Aretas I they schemed successfully between the Romans, the surrounding Hellenistic kingdoms and the Maccabeans. The T h e m e rc h a n t- t r a d e r s kingdom of Nabataea reached its peak in the first century bc, f ro m t h e r e d c o u n t ry under Aretas III, given the surname ‘the Friend of Greeks’, when it controlled the region from Damascus, Syria, to Dedan, The Nabataeans were once identified with the descendants of Saudi Arabia, and became a Roman ally. The Nabataeans’ Nebaioth, named in the book of Genesis as a son of Ishmael, control of the trade route from Arabia brought them riches and but archaeological and linguistic studies have shown that the power for more than a century, as can be seen in the impressive identification is incorrect. The Nabataeans first appear in the remains of Petra, as well as increased contact with the Graecohistorical record just after the death of Alexander the Great, Roman civilization, aspects of which they adopted. as the successor kingdoms were founded. Antigonus, who was The political importance of the Nabataeans waned after the trying to exert his dominance over the region, ran afoul of first century ad, when in ad106 Emperor Trajan annexed their the nomadic Nabataean tribe, which controlled the trade route kingdom into the province of Arabia, putting Rome firmly in from Arabia Felix to the Mediterranean via Petra.The Nabatae- control of the trade route. The economic importance of the ans’ control of the trade route and the defensibility of the rocky, region continued into the Byzantine period, and although the fortress-like area meant that although they were only a small A nineteenth-century impression of a caravan (below) coming up from the tribe they had a lot of influence. Antigonus tried to conquer Gulf of Aqaba towards the Nabataean capital of Petra. The Nabataean port the region twice, once with his son Demetrius, nicknamed the at Aila (Aqaba) at the northern tip of the Red Sea gave them control over the ‘Besieger’, in command; he failed both times, but the Nabatae- shipping of spices by sea from southern Arabia, as well as over those that ans did submit to paying tribute to the new Hellenistic kings. came up through the longer overland route in western Arabia.

042-089_Trade_Routes_Chap2.indd 56

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THE NABATAEANS 57

Nabataeans were no longer independent, they became even more prosperous as the trade route grew in importance. The main Nabataean city was Petra, which had been a settled area since the Neolithic period, but became urbanized from the late fourth century bc. During the Hellenistic period, Petra grew with new houses and public buildings, but the true peak of the city did not come about until the first century bc and the Nabataeans’ alliance with Rome. Excavations at Petra have revealed an impressive system of water supply, clearly inspired by the Romans, together with massive, well-decorated temples and a theatre. The natural resources of the area were exploited vigorously for the new town, with tombs and houses hewn from the rock, and a wealth of sculptures were produced that combined local themes with Graeco-Roman aesthetic. The creation of the Roman province of Arabia brought about the decline of Petra, because the trade route was now redirected towards Palmyra, in the Roman province of Syria.Yet the city retained some of its prosperity because of its religious significance in the surrounding region. The Khazneh or “Treasury” (right) is the most spectacular of the rock-cut façades of the Nabataean capital of Petra. It was most probably built during the reign of King Aretas IV (9bc–ad40/41) at the height of the Nabataeans’ prosperity. It sits at the exit of the siq – the narrow defile through a cliff, which made the city almost inaccessible to invaders from one side.

The rise of Aila (Aqaba) At the height of Nabataean influence in

Egypt and the great port of Alexandria.

ings as well as warehouses for both the

Aqaba, was established on the Red Sea.

Trajan had instigated the demise of the

and the long-distance trade with Arabia.

the first century bc, the port of Aila, modern Although the area had been settled previ-

ously – when Persia was at its greatest, the city was controlled by the Phoenicians –

Aila provided a short-cut on the Mediterra-

nean route because it facilitated trade with

042-089_Trade_Routes_Chap2.indd 57

Aila’s importance became greater after

Nabataeans, when the Romans strengthened the old Achaemenid trade route of the King’s Highway and it became the

Via Traiana Nova. Excavations at Aila have

unearthed domestic and municipal build-

produce of local industry (mainly pottery) Some scholars have argued that the earli-

est Christian church in the Middle East has

been found at Aqaba, dating from the early fourth century ad, although the identifica-

tion is still disputed.

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CHAPTER 3

Trade in the MIDDLE AGES The collapse of the politically integrated system of the Roman Empire

China through the lands of the caliphate all the way until Morocco (and

pearance of the Han dynasty in 220 and the fall of the Sasanid rulers of

was the design of Baghdad, itself a new foundation, whose circular

in the fifth century, the long period of disunity in China after the disap-

Persia in the 640s seemed to herald an era when trade routes, with the protective umbrella of those mighty empires removed, might wither and retract.

That they did not do so, in fact experiencing quite considerable

for a while into Spain, also). Aptly symbolic of this enormous network

walls were punctuated by four gates: in the northeast leading to Iran and Transoxiana; in the northwest to Syria; in the southeast to Mesopotamia; and in the southwest to Arabia and Egypt.

For a long time it was believed – principally under the influence

growth, was through the agency of the Islamic caliphate carved by the

of the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne – that the Islamic conquests

ern and North African provinces of the Roman and Sasanid empires.

trading) life of western Europe for centuries. Yet the coalescence of

successors of the Prophet Muhammad out of the former Middle East-

The establishment of its political centre, first at Damascus (under the

Umayyads) and then (under the ‘Abbasids from around 762) at Baghdad, enabled it to link into established trade routes that crossed through Mesopotamia, the Iranian Plateau and then into Central Asia. The vast

extent of the Islamic empire meant that merchants could travel from

090-151_Trade_Routes_Chap3.indd 90

disrupted trade in the Mediterranean and throttled the economic (and

much of northwestern Europe under the control of the Carolingians from the mid-seventh century and the rise of a network of wics, or trading emporia – such as Quentovic in Francia, Hedeby in Denmark and

Hamwic (Southampton) in England – showed once again that political stability fostered trade, whatever the external pressures.

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Even the activities of the Vikings contributed to the growth in

sian trading networks occurred with the advent of the Mongols, who

network of wics, especially in Flanders and Wessex from the early ninth

rule and shattered the constellation of Islamic states elsewhere in the

European trade. Although these Scandinavian raiders did disrupt the century, they also pioneered trade routes far to the east, from the Baltic

coast down the Russian river system to Byzantium and, through the

lands of the Volga Bulgars and the Khazars, as far as Baghdad itself. In the west, Francia finally overcame the Viking threat and saw a renais-

between 1206 and 1260 united Central Asia, China and Iran under their Middle East. Yet again, however, the appearance of a new empire in fact

promoted trade as once more merchants, such as the Polos, could travel the length of the Silk Road under the protection of the Great Khan.

Inevitably, by the fourteenth century the Mongol hegemony was

sance in trade coming up from Italy via the Rhﾃｴne to feed the trade fairs

badly frayed. The impact of the Black Death, the pestilence that began

large quantities in Scandinavia as the fruit of settled trading links (and

carried off one-third of the population of Europe, dealt the Pax Mongol-

of Champagne from the eleventh century, while Islamic silver arrived in the occasional disruptive raid).

Even after the eclipse of the 窶連bbasid caliphate, their Fatimid succes-

sors from the tenth to twelfth centuries still controlled most of the Mediterranean and Red Sea trade routes, with direct access to the Indian Ocean and dominance of the North African trade routes through ports

such as Tunis, which served as a conduit for slaves and gold from sub-

Saharan Africa. At the same time a new series of trading nations arose among the Italian city-states, beginning with Amalfi, and culminat-

ing (with a brief period of prominence by Pisa) in the long struggle for Mediterranean trading dominance between Venice and Genoa in the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries.

Trade was diverted rather than disrupted by the Crusades, which

in their domains and which at its peak from 1346 to 1350 may have

ica a coup de grﾃ｢ce. The great trade routes of Central Asia and the Middle East entered a period of uncertainty, while in western Europe the impact of the population loss was mitigated by the vibrancy of the Italian trading cities, which had already established instruments such

as marine insurance in the mid-fourteenth century, and by the estab-

lishment of the Hanseatic League, a federation of Baltic trading towns, which oversaw a significant expansion of trade in northwestern Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

As ever, where there was profit to be made, the ingenuity to exploit

it, and sufficient political power to safeguard it, trade and trading networks expanded and flourished.

left the Levantine coast in Christian hands for much of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. A much more radical reshaping of the Eura-

090-151_Trade_Routes_Chap3.indd 91

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At O

92 TRADE IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The Growth of the Islamic Empire and Its Effect on Trade While it was originally based on the moderately successful trading city of Mecca, deep in the Arabian Peninsula, the centre of Islamic power moved further north in the second half of the seventh century to the Levant, promoting the further expansion of the already established trading centres and routes in Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, the Iranian Plateau and Asia Minor. In addition, Muslim rulers founded newer urban and commercial centres such as Baghdad, Kufa and Basra, which were in fact quite close to the older centres of commercial activity.

fold, redirecting the grain flow of Egypt from Constantinople to Damascus and then Baghdad, while caravans that originated in China could now continue undisrupted to Morocco. Even after the break-up of a centralized Islamic empire, the similarity of laws among the different regions allowed for the continuation of this trade activity. Late seventh-century monetary reforms, introducing a dual currency based on both gold and silver, assured a reliable financial backbone to the commercial activity, and provided incentives for the mining and trade of gold from western Africa and silver from Central Asia.

A n i n c lu s i v e p o l i t y T h e c o m m e rc i a l w o r l d o f I s l a m Further in the east and west, the commercial world of Central Asia, including the Bactrian and Sogdian trade networks, as well Another consequence of the spread of Islam and the integraas the North African trade routes were incorporated into the tion of the various trade networks was the exchange of skills. Islamic world. In fact, one can argue that the greatest success of Seafaring expertise around the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea Islam in the world of Central and West Asia and the Mediterranean was its success at incorporating different trade routes into ‘A Merchant from Isfahan flying’ (below, left) from a treatise by the the same commercial system. fourteenth-century Persian geographer Zakariya-ibn Muhammed al-Qazwini. By creating an inclusive cultural zone, which occasionally, but Although it reached its apogee under the Safavids from the sixteenth century, not always, also enjoyed a political unity, the Islamic expansion when it was Iran’s capital, Isfahan was an important trading post as early as managed to integrate different economic zones and create lasting the Sasanian period from the third century. contacts. Sogdian merchants were attracted to Baghdad, while A map of Iraq by the cartographer Ibn Khurradadhbih (825–912), showing the Syrian trade enjoyed the freedom offered by the removal Kufa and Baghdad (below). His position as a postmaster gave him access to of the border between the Sasanian and the Byzantine empires, official archives and so his ‘Book of Routes and Provinces’ contains invaluable because Muslim caliphs controlled both sides of the border after information about trade routes within the ‘Abbasid empire (and accounts of the seventh century. North Africa was also brought into the same lands as far afield as Japan and China).

090-151_Trade_Routes_Chap3.indd 92

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Venice

KHAZAR EMPIRE

Maximum extent of Umayyad caliphate

Rome

A RMENIA

Tunis Fez

Maghreb

Kairouan

M e d i t e r r a n e a n Tripoli

Crete

Cyprus

S e a

Eu ph r

Tripoli

Damascus

Barka

ate

Samarqand Bukhara B ACT R I A

Kabul

Herat

Isfahan

P E R S I A

Multan

Shiraz Pe

Nishapur

K H O R A SA N

s Baghdad

Tabuk e d

a S e

and the Persian Gulf was combined with the commercial prowess of the Sogdian and Syrian traders, as well as the networking facilities of the Jewish and Persian merchants. Taking advantage of a single currency and advanced financial services, merchants spread themselves via the sea routes to the central Indian Ocean and eastern Africa and established centres in the Malay Archipelago and India itself. Successor powers to the caliphate, including the Samanids in Central Asia, the Umayyads in Spain, and the Fatimids in Egypt and North Africa, further expanded their commercial interests to beyond the Islamic world and became more active in southern Russia and eastern Europe, south and southwestern Europe, as well as deep into Africa. Still, the system was integrated enough that a thirteenth-century Muslim merchant from Shiraz, in southern Iran, could envision trading minerals from Persia to China, Roman textiles to India and chinaware to Rome.

Hamadan

Samarra

Jerusalem

By the mid-eighth century, Alexandria the Islamic empire stretched EGYPT from Samarqand in the east to northern Spain in the west (map, above), occupying the whole of the southern Mediterranean. This allowed the empire to control all trade across the Sahara and for centuries to act as the intermediary for trade between Europe and India, Central Asia and Southeast Asia.

Merv

Mosul

Antioch

Tigris

Tangier

B Y Z A N T I N E E M P I R E

u Ox

Sicily

Cordova

Constantinople

T R A N S OX I A N A

a S e

Sardinia

Aral Sea

x Ja

Black Sea Corsica

Toledo S P A I N

Main trade routes

n i a s p C a

Oviedo

Toulouse Narbonne

Rhône

Atlantic Ocean

Medina

Hormuz f

Makran

Hiji

In d SI N D

Muscat

Mecca

r ua

Q y p t Zufar

Najran

I N D I A

Arabian Gulf

Em Dhofur

Shabwa Aden

The huge demands of the political and cultural centres such as Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad and Isfahan created a new incentive for the industrial and raw goods of China (including paper, chinaware and silk) and India (textile, dye, gold and spices) to enter the Muslim world. This had the effect of intensifying the demand and commercializing the economy in the Muslim world, and effectively isolating the Byzantine Empire and the rest of Europe from the contemporary sources and centres of wealth and economic progress. This, one can argue, eventually led to consequences that determined the future of the Middle Eastern economy up to the modern period.

E m b r ac i n g t h e E a s t Among the most important points of integration was the inclusion of the Central Asian–Chinese commercial world, as well as India, into the trading activities of the Islamic world.

A twelfth-century Arab map of the Red Sea and the coastline of Arabia (south is at the top), showing the cities of Mecca and Medina (below). The Arab conquest of both sides of the Red Sea in the seventh century increased the trade flows in the area by providing a secure political environment.

The Golestan of Sa’adi This is an anecdote from the Golestan, a collection of ethical tales by Sa’adi of Shiraz, a thirteenth-century traveller and poet who

had travelled through much of the Islamic World and wrote his works in Persian:

‘… and [the merchant said] “Oh Sa’adi, I have one more trip to

make, and after that, I shall spend the rest of my life in peace.” I asked him which that is, and he said: “I shall take Persian phos-

phorous to China, where I hear it is worth much, and from there, I will bring Chinese bowls to Rome, and then Roman textiles to

India, then some Indian steel to Aleppo, and then Aleppan glass to Yemen, then some Yamani clothing to Persia, and then I shall give up on trading and start being a shopkeeper! ...”’

Translated by Khodadad Rezakhani from Sa’adi, Moshreffoddin.

Golestan. (Edited by M.A. Forughi.) Sarayesh: Tehran, 1382 (2003).

090-151_Trade_Routes_Chap3.indd 93

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Trade under the Umayyad and ‘Abbasid Caliphates The Muslim world’s gateway to both India and China was the strategic region of Central Asia, particularly the province known to Europeans as Bactria (referred to locally as Tokharistan), which lay at the southern side of the Oxus and to the north of the Hindu Kush Range, controlling access into Gandhara and Kashmir in northern India. The southern land route, through the province of Makran, passed through a difficult and dry terrain, which was less favoured and was only marginally controlled by the various powers that ruled over the Iranian Plateau. As such, the route to India through Bactria was a more popular access than the one straight across the Iranian Plateau from Iraq and Syria.

role of the Khorasani troops in bringing the ‘Abbasids to the caliphate meant that a greater degree of autonomy, and more funds, was devoted to Khorasan, allowing for its early economic development. Additionally, the strong commercial cultures of Sogdiana and Bactria, as well as the presence of a large class of land-owning entrepreneurs, coupled with access to great trade routes, provided a unique opportunity for trade in this region.

Trade with China

Through the already existing Sogdian network, the Islamic ruling class of northern Khorasan (essentially classical Transoxiana) formed a closer relationship with China and the Chinese The rise of Khorasan commercial and manufacturing market. Early Umayyad relationships with China were somewhat strained, because the Tang Central Asia was conquered several times by the Muslims, dynasty had provided support to the son and grandson of the starting in the mid-seventh century. Bactria (Tokharistan) itself deposed Sasanian emperor, Yazdgerd III (reigned c.636–c.651), was subdued in the last two decades of that century. It was and had even aided the Sogdians in their struggle against the not, however, until the 720s that Transoxiana was completely conquered and its last independent, Sogdian king removed. The Poli-Kalon mosque in Bukhara, with the eleventh-century Büyük Kalon After that point, both Transoxiana and Bactria were incorpominaret (top). Under the Samanids in the ninth and tenth centuries and rated by the Umayyads into the larger province of Khorasan, the Kara-Khanids in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, Bukhara became a created originally by the Sasanians. Khorasan played an impor- cultural, political and trading centre to rival even Baghdad, until its destruction tant role in the ‘Abbasid revolution of the 750s. The pivotal by Genghis Khan in 1220.

090-151_Trade_Routes_Chap3.indd 94

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TRADE UNDER THE UMAYYAD AND ‘ABBASID CALIPHATES 95

Seaborne riches from the east Writing in Baghdad in about 914, ‘Ubayd-Allah ibn Khurradadhbih, a versatile writer and the first scholar of world geography writing in Arabic, described in his major work Al-Masalik wa-l-Mamalik

(Roads and Kingdoms) the items made available through sea trade with East Asia:

‘What they bring from this eastern sea: from China, silk, spices,

silk cloth, musk, incense, horse saddle, utter [skin?], green pottery, a sort of medical herb, cinnamon, and medical roots. From

Waqwaq [the Philippines?] gold and ebony, and from India, all kinds of incense, sandalwood, camphor, aromatic nuts, clove,

qaqulat, nutmeg and coconut, all sorts of clothing woven from cotton, and elephants. From Sarandib [Sri Lanka] all sorts of

colourful rubies and agate, diamonds, pearls and clear crystals, as well as sanding stone which is used to cut the gems…’

Translated by Khodadad Rezakhani from Ibn Khurradadhbih, ‘Ubayd-Allah. Al-Masalik wa-l-Mamalik. (Editor J. de Goeje.).

Al-Muthanna: Baghdad, 1961.

Muslim conquerors in the first quarter of the eighth century. However, the commercial ties between China and Transoxiana were too strong to fall into disuse, and trading activities were renewed via a series of agreements between the caliphal court and that of the Chinese emperor. The cities of Turfan, Kashghar, Bukhara and Samarqand were the most important trading posts along this route, often continuing a tradition from the preIslamic period. Goods were moved further along via the newly founded trading depots of Neishapur, Isfahan and Hamedan, before reaching Baghdad or Damascus. Chinese products such as chinaware, silk cloth and raw silk, and paper, as well as works of art, were imported into Khorasan and further exported to Iraq and Syria. Paper, in fact, became an important good in the early ninth century with the rise of the translation movement in Baghdad and other cities of the Muslim world. Samarqand at this point appears to have imported and developed paper-making techniques from China, although the best quality paper still remained that produced in China proper. In exchange, Central Asia traditionally traded horses and some staple products – such as grain, timber and wine – with China, although most of the trade deficit with the east was covered through the trade of silver. A twelfth–thirteenth century inkwell from Khorasan, Iran (right). Encompassing vital trading cities such as Bukhara, Merv and Samarqand, Khorasan grew rich on the Central Asian trade, and its control by independent dynasties such as the Samanids (from the tenth century) dramatically reduced the ‘Abbasid caliphate’s revenues from trade.

090-151_Trade_Routes_Chap3.indd 95

A r i va l c a l i p h at e : t h e S a m a n i d s The caliphate’s trade with India and China was eventually cut off and redirected by the powers that came to dominate Khorasan. The Tahirids (821–873) and the Saffarids (861–901) in the ninth century became the autonomous rulers of the eastern part of the caliphate, paying minimal respect to the caliph in Baghdad and undertaking their own endeavours in state building, relying on the eastern trade as the lifeline of their power and further developing cities such as Neishapur and Zaranj as important trading and regional centres. In the tenth century, the Samanids gained full independence, with only nominal acknowledgment of the Baghdad caliphs as their overlords. After conquering the smaller autonomous states around them, including the Khwarazmian kings, and both the Tahirids and the Saffarids, the Samanid state straddled both of the famous trade routes into India and China. Additionally, enriched by the new sources of silver found in the Badakhshan Valley, the Samanids managed to gain an important position for themselves in the trade with China, and they also opened a new trade route, via Khawarazm (known to the Greeks as Choresmia) into the Russian Steppe. In fact, much of the profit of the trade from China and India was diverted to Bukhara, the capital of the Samanids, and the transit trade from both of these trading partners was now passed through the plains of Oxus and over the Caspian Sea to the Russian Steppe, where the paper, chinaware, textiles, jade and so on were traded for furs and slaves, via the Bulgar and Khazar middlemen, with Byzantium and the incipient Kievan Rus. The caliphate in Baghdad was effectively cut off from the benefits of the trade with the east from the tenth century onwards, with only minimal taxation or tribute received from the powers that dominated Khorasan and the rest of the east. Attempts in the middle of the tenth century to circumvent the Samanid dominance, such as missions to the Bulgar khanate, recorded in the travelogue of Ibn Fadlan, were thwarted by Samanid diplomacy. In 999 the Samanids were overthrown by a joint force of the Kara-Khanid khanate and the Afghanistanbased Ghaznavid dynasty, working with the blessing of the ‘Abbasids, but the caliphate in Baghdad still failed to regain control of its eastern trade. Subsequent regional powers the Seljuks and the Khwarazmshahid dynasty, followed the same basic pattern as the Samanids, diverting the trade to their capitals of Isfahan, Neishapur or Urgench and preventing anything but trickles of the trade from reaching Baghdad. The weakening caliphate thus continued to be impoverished, and its power was relentlessly diminished until its final destruction as a result of the Mongol attacks, incidentally originating in Central Asia, in the thirteenth century.

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TRADE WITH India Bactria’s connexions with India, dating back to the Kushan period, was evident in the strong presence of Buddhism in the region. In fact, the Barmakid clan, which dominated the politics of the ‘Abbasid caliphate in its first century of rule, were descendants of the old priestly clan of Balkh and its Nawbihar Buddhist temple. Members of the clan, acting as governors of Khorasan, were famed for trading with India and bringing much wealth to the caliphate, as is evident by anecdotes regarding their great presents to the caliphs, including Harun al-Rashid, in the eighth and the ninth centuries. Other local dynasties, including the rulers of Kabul and Zawulistan, fought with the forces of the ‘Abbasid caliphate for control of the eastern regions and the access routes to India, necessitating repeated conquests and subjugation of the region throughout the first three centuries of Islamic rule. The southerly route, passing through the central Iranian Plateau and the province of Sistan into India, was also the scene of much political upheaval, including the unrest by the Kharijites (870) who defied the caliphs on religious grounds and sought to establish their own independent state in Sistan and the east. Even when caliphal politics managed to elevate friendly powers to the control of the region, these powers – most significantly that of the Saffarid dynasty – quickly gained a de facto independence and established their own states, relying largely upon trade with India for the financial basis of their power. Writing products, specifically Indian ink, were also among the items imported from India through the Bactrian trade route. Building upon a pre-Islamic tradition, the trade route

090-151_Trade_Routes_Chap3.indd 96

Mahmoud of Ghazna crosses the Ganges (above), in a miniature from Rashid ad-Din’s History of the World (c.1307). Mahmoud first invaded northern India in 1002, conquering most of it by 1027. His acquisition of this rich new territory made his capital, Ghazna, into a major trading centre.

across the Hindu Kush into northern India was used to provide the caliphate with various items of staple and luxury goods, most significantly cotton products, dyes and other textiles, as well as ivory, spices, gems and gold. The demand for Indian cotton gave rise to the local production of cotton in the fertile regions of Khuzistan and southern Mesopotamia, although higher quality Indian cotton still dominated the market. The riches of India eventually proved too attractive for the Muslim powers, and a wave of invasions were initiated, mostly under the command of the zealous Sultan Mahmoud, the strongest monarch of the Ghaznavid Empire (960s–1187). Disguised under the pretense of exporting Islam, these invasions had a strong economic incentive, evident through the ruthless pillaging of luxury goods from India. The Ghaznavid seat in Ghazna was soon made into a glorious capital, thanks to the gold and other goods from India, and became a rival for Bukhara and Samarqand. The reliance of the Ghaznavids on India is also evident by the fact that eventually, faced with the pressure of the Seljuks and the Ghurids, the seat of Ghaznavid power was moved in 1151 to Lahore in India, making this Central Asian empire an essentially Indianized one. This was, in fact, identical to a trend dating back to the Graeco-Bactrian period, whereby powers of Central Asia eventually gave way to subsequent pressures from further inside the Eurasian Steppes and took refuge in India and its resources.

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ISLAMIC TRADE WITH EUROPE BEFORE THE CRUSADES 97

Islamic Trade with Europe Before the Crusades The so-called Islamic world, geographically covering Central and West Asia, as well as North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, bordered Christian Europe at several points, via both land and sea. Traditional commercial contacts as well as new trade relations connected the two political zones, and the desire for access to the products of the Middle East, as well as those originating in India and China and passing westwards through West Asia, drove the European states to foster economic links with the various central and regional powers of the Islamic world.

L a n d ro u t e s The most important land trade routes passed through the Eurasian Steppes, the Syrian–Anatolian borderlands or the one between Muslim Spain and its Christian neighbours. From its earliest decades, the empire of the Umayyad and ‘Abbasid caliphs had paid ample attention to the Syrian trade. Rooted The Medina Azahara Palace, built under Abd ar-Rahman III (reigned 929–961), the first Umayyad caliph of Córdoba, Spain. Under Islamic rule from the eighth century, most of the Iberian Peninsula refocussed its trade south towards North Africa, and its access to the rich trans-Saharan trade routes enabled the construction of lavish buildings such as this.

090-151_Trade_Routes_Chap3.indd 97

in the pre-Islamic era of Sasanian–Roman relations, the interdependence of the Syrian and Anatolian regions was too deep to be disrupted by changing political systems.Although the disruption in the export of grain from Egypt to Constantinople caused by the growth of Islam had initiated a more robust agricultural production in Byzantine Anatolia, the resources of Syria were still too essential for the Byzantines to give them up completely. In exchange, the raw material from Byzantine Anatolia, including the trade in metals, was essential to the expanding caliphate and further kept the trade routes opened, despite frequent border conflicts. The reforms of the monetary system of the caliphate under the Umayyad ‘Abdulmalik I, incorporating the Byzantine gold standard, is evidence of the continuation of this trade. Further west, the destruction of the Visigothic kingdom and the dominance of an Umayyad cadet branch in the Iberian Peninsula had created a new economic reality in that region. No longer part of a western European network of Germanic kingdoms, the Iberian economy quickly grew due to the centralizing economic policies of the state, as well as closer contacts with the commercial routes of North Africa,

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98 TRADE IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Samanid and caliphal coins in Scandinavia In the pre-modern world, due to the value

Empire and those of the caliphate of

of these coins were even carried to Anglo-

or silver), most currency imported as the

or the Volga Bulgar state through trade,

for trade. King Offa of Mercia (reigned

of the metal used for minting coins (gold

result of trade was re-minted by the states that had gained it. In some cases, the lack of a state with a minting tradition meant that the coins were used in their original

form and used for further trade. This was the case with the coins of the Samanid

Baghdad, which had reached the Khazar but were then looted by the Vikings. The

coins were carried by the Swedish Vikings

to the Baltic region, where we can still find a large number in the islands of Oland, in

the Bay of Finland, or on the eastern coast

of Sweden and the island of Gotland. Some

including access to the imported trans-Saharan gold. As a result, neighbouring kingdoms, including that of the Frankish kingdom of Gaul, were forced to quickly reform their political and economic systems. Indeed, one theory promoted by the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne, is that the organization of western European polities – including the Carolingian Empire, which essentially ushered in the ‘mediaeval period’ – is essentially a reaction to the Muslim dominance of the Mediterranean, most significantly Iberia. The land trade of Iberia, which included luxury items such as precious stones, silk and gold (desired in the courts of western Europe), had a mostly north–south direction, bringing slaves from eastern Europe, timber and grain from northern and central Europe, and agricultural products from France and southern Europe to Iberia. In the extreme east, on the Eurasian Steppes, the trade routes that originated in western China and northern India mostly led, through the Iranian Plateau, to the rich cities of Iraq, Syria and Egypt, where the Sino–Indian products had their largest markets. Some of this trade, however, also took a north and northwesterly route, over the plains of Transoxiana and Khwarazm, then to the north of the Caspian Sea, and ended up in the steppes of the northern Pontic, where modern Ukraine is located and where the empire of the Khazars, the kingdom of the Volga Bulgars, and the early Viking state of Kievan Rus flourished. The benefits of this business, with its goods often traded further to the southwest with the Byzantine Empire and central Europe, reached the caliphate via the Caucasus and the tributes received from the eastern province of Khorasan. In the tenth century, however, the Central Asian empire of the Samanids dominated Khorasan and gained control of both trade routes. By completely A water jug of cloisonné enamel (right) presented to the ‘Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (reigned 786–809) by the Frankish ruler Charlemagne. Envoys from Charlemagne travelled to Baghdad to negotiate over access for Christian pilgrims to sites in the Holy Land and the exchange of gifts that followed included an elephant sent by Harun to Charlemagne.

090-151_Trade_Routes_Chap3.indd 98

Saxon England, where they were also used 757–796) in fact used the prototype of an

Islamic dinar to mint his own coins, which even carried on their reverse side the

Muslim profession of faith, copied from the obverse of the caliphal coins.

diverting the commercial activities to their centres of Bukhara, Samarqand and Neishapur, the Samanids deprived the Baghdad caliphate of the benefits of this trade and instead concentrated their efforts in expanding the northern route to the Russian Steppe. By some estimates, more than 70 percent of the coins minted in Samarqand, from the silver-mines of Badakhshan in northeastern Khorasan, was exported to the Russian Steppe in exchange for slaves, fur and timber. These coins were then used for trade with the Byzantine Empire and the states of eastern and central Europe, while a large portion were looted and carried away by Swedish Vikings, who would routinely sail down rivers such as the Don and Dnieper to pillage Itil and other urban centres of trade. With the downfall of the Samanids, probably as the result of a diminishing supply of silver, the northern trade route was weakened, although it was never completely abandoned. In fact, a few centuries later the Mongols revived this trade with astonishing results, providing the financial basis for a new political power under the name of the Golden Horde.

S e a ro u t e s The Mediterranean, the Mare Nostrum of the Romans, had ceased to be ‘Our Sea’ of the Roman Empire upon the conquest of its eastern, southern and western shores by the Muslims in the seventh and the eighth centuries. Its trading relationships were forced through certain political modifications but were nonetheless too ancient to be truly disrupted. As such, and as with the land routes elsewhere, a continuation of the situation that had existed from late antiquity can also be witnessed in the general patterns of trade in the ‘Muslim’ Mediterranean. The most important change of routes in the eastern Mediterranean, however, was the redirection of Egypt’s grain from Constantinople to the Levant. While Egypt, as the bread-basket of the Roman Empire, had been accustomed to supplying Rome, and then Constantinople, with most of its grain, its conquest by the Muslims, who now established their own centres of power in Syria and Iraq, meant that the produce of Egypt

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ISLAMIC TRADE WITH EUROPE BEFORE THE CRUSADES 99

had a new market in the east. With the slow normalization of the relationship between the Muslim world and the Byzantine Empire, some of this trade was restored to Constantinople, which had to pay a high premium, resulting in a new effort to increase corn production in Byzantine Anatolia. Manufactured products, such as the cotton and silk textiles of Syria, were also in demand in Constantinople while the caliphate was interested in the gold production of the Byzantines, as well as their access to the eastern European supply of slaves, fur and amber. Of course, many of the goods traded in the eastern Mediterranean originated in India and China and were originally destined for Damascus or Baghdad, from where they were re-exported at high premiums to the Byzantine Empire and eastern Europe. Further west, the trade routes of the central Mediterranean were strengthened as a result of the Muslim conquest of Sicily and southern Italy. Goods – including cotton, food products such as olive oil and garum, as well as gold originating from Mali – were in demand in both papal-dominated Italy and the Frankish empire of the Carolingians. Again, slaves, timber, fur and amber were among the items imported from Europe by the Muslims. In the western Mediterranean, the sea trade was an extension of the land trade between Francia and Muslim-controlled Iberia. Irregular trade also took place between North Africa, where it faced the Atlantic Ocean, and regions in western Iberia, Francia, the Low Countries, and even as far north as the British Isles. This was mostly a derivative trade in staple goods – quite small, but useful for supplying regional needs. The contacts between northwestern Europe and the Muslim world were in fact mostly via intermediaries, significantly the Vikings, whose trade (and often pillaging) with the Russian Steppe resulted in the re-exporting of goods, including minted silver coins, into the Carolingian Empire as well as Anglo-Saxon England.

090-151_Trade_Routes_Chap3.indd 99

Vikings actually had made attempts before to gain access to the sea routes of the Muslim world. A tenth-century Muslim account narrates the story of Viking traders who had sailed down the Caspian Sea and had reached the northern shores of the Iranian Plateau, from where they attempted to transport and sell their goods in Baghdad. The experiment had been unsuccessful, most likely due to the unfamiliarity of the Norse traders with the Middle Eastern market and the high cost of such a journey. However, various other traders from the north, mostly the Bulgars and the Khazars, made occasional appearances in the Muslim markets and marketed their wares of slaves and furs, carrying back luxury items and works of art in return. The routes that these traders took normally involved the Black Sea, which they crossed from the Crimea to the ports of the Caucasus and then continued overland to Tabriz, Hamedan and Baghdad. The sea trade between Christian Europe and Muslim North Africa and West Asia mostly provided the incentive needed for the European merchants to gain access to the markets and goods of the Middle East. Aside from its economic value, this commerce had the additional benefit of keeping the channels of communication and cultural exchange between the two regions sufficiently open for a sort of mutual coexistence to be shown to be possible.The stifling of these channels, and the consequent isolation of Europe, eventually gave rise to the violent conflicts between the two zones that are known as the Crusades. A forest of columns in the former prayer hall of the Mezquita of Córdoba (below). The building’s history reflects the mixed heritage of Córdoba, having begun life as the Church of St. Vincent under Christian Visigothic rule, then becoming a mosque in 784 under the Umayyads, before being converted to a cathedral when the city came back under Christian rule in 1236.

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216 TRADE IN THE AGE OF EMPIRES

Trade AND the NEW GLOBAL EmpireS Over the course of the eighteenth century, the commercial reach and colonial ambitions of a number of European countries – France and Britain in particular – expanded considerably. New markets were exploited and the volume of global trade controlled by European powers continued to grow throughout the nineteenth century. This economic success relied on a sophisticated infrastructure of port facilities, dock systems and financial services to support an ever-increasing share of the world’s trade. It was accompanied by revolutionary advances in communications and technology as the world was transformed by steam power. By the dawn of the twentieth century, there were very few places that did not experience the influence of European and North American technology, trade and culture.

G l o ba l r e ac h – f ro m t h e A m e r i c a s to A s i a Long-distance maritime trade characterized the development of European empires in the period. In the North Atlantic Ocean, increasing numbers of ships sailed the transatlantic route to the Americas, where a network of colonies flourished. Established by several European powers from the sixteenth century onwards, many of these colonies were ‘plantation economies’, relying on the unpaid labour of slaves to produce sugar, tobacco, cotton and other crops for manufacturers and consumers in Europe. The transatlantic slave trade supplied American and Caribbean colonies with millions of African labourers. Their bondage was paid for in Africa with European-made goods such as firearms, metalwares (see box, page 257) and alcohol.

214-277_Trade_Routes_Chap5cor.indd 216

At the same time, the maritime route to Asia around the Cape of Good Hope encouraged European commercial connections with the East. These expanded dramatically in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as many European countries established companies to trade in Asia. The Portuguese and the Dutch led the way, but by the late eighteenth century Britain had come to dominate. London’s East India Company, with its monopoly on British trade to the region, became one of the most powerful and influential commercial organizations in the world. Between 1600 and 1833, ships sailing under the company’s colours made about 4,600 voyages from London to Asia. These vessels – known as East Indiamen or Indiamen – brought back goods such as Southeast Asian spices, Indian textiles and Chinese tea that were in huge demand in Europe.

A technological and c o m m u n i c at i o n s r e vo lu t i o n The principal tool delivering this commercial success was the merchant ship. In general appearance, a merchant vessel of the 1830s was much as it had been two centuries earlier, but it had grown in size, seaworthiness and efficiency. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, technological revolution gave a number of European countries a powerful economic advantage. The development and refinement of iron shipbuilding and steam propulsion for ships were key advances. Steamships replaced sailing vessels during the century and were able to provide regular and increasingly rapid communication with every corner of the globe.

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TRADE AND THE NEW GLOBAL EMPIRES 217

London as an imperial entrepôt During the eighteenth century the volume

tional instruments. By the early nineteenth

example, the Brunswick Dock was built

Imports and exports increased because of

the world’s largest port and the centre

Blackwall. The development of this facility

of London’s trade grew dramatically.

the industrial and agricultural revolutions in Britain and the expansion of the coun-

try’s overseas interests. The importance of Britain’s Atlantic trade led to the development of ports such as Bristol, Liverpool

and Glasgow. But London was always the largest and most important British port.

It became a major centre for shipbuilding and the making of scientific and naviga-

century, London was unchallenged as

of international finance. Throughout the

century, a series of enclosed dock systems was built, offering greater security and

efficiency in loading, unloading and storing goods. London’s commercial success relied on highly developed shipbuilding and

ship-repairing operations, which provided the transportation for a global fleet and

employment for thousands of people. For

As maritime trade developed, new port and harbour facilities were required. Certain ports, such as New York, London, Liverpool, Le Havre and Marseilles, adapted to cater for longdistance trade. Sometimes their development was aided by technological advances. Glasgow expanded rapidly by progressively deepening the River Clyde. In Liverpool, enclosed areas of water called wet docks were built, where ships could be unloaded away from tidal influences. In the 1860s, Hamburg on the River Elbe

by John Perry adjacent to his shipyard at reflected the vital importance of mari-

time trade to Britain in the period. In the

1820s, managing interest in the shipyard transferred to Perry’s son-in-law, George

Green. His son, Richard, made it famous as the home of ‘Blackwall frigates’, the last

development of large East Indiamen, and

of Green’s Blackwall Line, which traded to both India and Australia.

began a programme of constructing open basins and by 1913 it handled more than 30,000 ships a year. These developments were aided by similar advances in land-based technology. Europe and Asia were brought 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometres) closer with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 (see pages 245–246). The idea of a canal, cutting through the Isthmus of Suez and linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, had been mooted by Napoleon and in the middle of the nineteenth century

The Blackwall frigate Owen Glendower at anchor off the south coast of England (below). The ‘Blackwall frigates’ were built from the 1830s to replace the East Indiamen on runs to the Far East and Australia. Based on a naval frigate design they were slower than the clippers, which in turn replaced them in the 1840s.

214-277_Trade_Routes_Chap5cor.indd 217

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218 TRADE IN THE AGE OF EMPIRES

endured and developed through imperial ties and technological innovations. Trade brought wealth, but European commercial dominance also created powerful forces whose consequences influenced many other areas of life: the insatiable demand for resources and markets encouraged greater exploration of the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps took up the idea when world’s oceans; commercial and business links facilitated transhe served as vice-consul in Cairo. He formed the Suez Canal oceanic migration on a vast scale; and European overseas trade Company in 1859. The canal took ten years to complete and went hand in hand with the development of global empires in became increasingly crucial for trade: by 1900, for example, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. India consumed almost one-fifth of British exports. Sustained by these global commercial links and technologi‘Trade has two daughters...’ cal developments, the volume of world trade increased tenfold between 1850 and 1913 alone. Britain and its global empire Daniel Defoe (c.1660–1731) is probably best remembered as the dominated trade in the period. Between 1890 and 1914, Britauthor of Robinson Crusoe. But as well as being one of the first ain’s merchant shipping carried up to 60 percent of the world’s novelists in English, he was also a journalist and pamphleteer. His trade, and British shipyards built two-thirds of the world’s ships.

A map showing British colonial possessions in 1886 (above), just prior to the ‘Scramble for Africa’, which followed the Berlin Conference in 1884. Within ten years, British territory would expand to include Egypt, Sudan, much of West Africa and a string of colonies between South Africa and modern Kenya.

economic writings acknowledged the increasingly international

A world of trade

and interdependent nature of trade in the early eighteenth century: ‘Trade is the wealth of the world. ... Trade nourishes industry,

Worldwide commercial networks made a whole host of new commodities available to European consumers, altering consumption patterns in the process. The classic British beverage – a sweet cup of tea – was a product of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century global trade, with the tea coming from China and the sugar to sweeten it being grown in the Caribbean. Such patterns of European overseas trade, first created by individual merchants and monopoly trading companies,

214-277_Trade_Routes_Chap5cor.indd 218

industry begets trade; trade dispenses the natural wealth of

the world, and trade raises new species of wealth, which nature knew nothing of; trade has two daughters, whose fruitful progeny in arts may be said to employ mankind; namely manufacture and navigation.’

From a tract by Daniel Defoe, ‘A Plan of English Commerce’, London, 1728, page 68.

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COFFEE IN THE AGE OF EMPIRE 219

Coffee in the Age of Empire Mocha was first visited by European merchants in the early years of the seventeenth century. John Jourdain, an East India Company factor (trader), was the first of these to make a trip inland and to see coffee growing in 1609. ‘The seeds of this cohoo is a greate marchandize,’ he wrote in his journal, ‘for it is carried to Grand Cairo and all other places of Turkey, and to the Indias. And, as it is reported, this seede will growe at noe other place but neere this mountaine (Nakil Sumara), which is one of the highest mountaines in Arabia.’ Coffee had indeed arrived at the Mughal court in Agra by this time, as attested by a Mughal artist’s painting of European traders drinking it there. In fact, Jourdain was on the East India Company’s Fourth Voyage (since its foundation in 1600, each small fleet was individually financed and called a ‘Voyage’), which had been ordered to visit Mocha precisely to gather intelligence on the coffee trade in the Arabian Sea sector of the Indian Ocean. By 1618 the East India Company had established a factory (trading post) at Mocha, shipping coffee to Bandar Abbas in Persia and Surat in India.

practice, before being brought back to England, where it was auctioned for 71 shillings and 11 pence a hundredweight. A second order for double the amount had already been placed, and the next 100 years would see the explosion of coffeehouses in Britain.Those of the City of London gave rise to institutions such as Lloyd’s and the Stock Exchange, further facilitating the very trade that had taken the East India Company’s ships to the East in the first place. The French Le Compagnie Française des Indes Orientales had also joined in the Mocha trade by this time, fuelling a similar coffeehouse boom in Paris and provincial French cities. A 1693 French illustration of a coffee plant and a Turk drinking coffee (below). Coffee reached France from the Ottoman Empire in the late seventeenth century and soon proved very popular, with the first coffee house in Paris commencing business in 1672 (four years after Edward Lloyd opened his coffee house in London).

The rise of the ‘Penny Universities’ The East India Company’s involvement in the trade predates the rapid development of coffeehouses in 1650s’ urban Britain, but ironically the coffee that fuelled it came from the Netherlands. While the East India Company concentrated on the Indian Ocean trade, its Dutch rival, the Vereenigde Ooste-Indische Compagnie (VOC), had brought a small consignment of coffee from Mocha in 1616, although the first substantial sale was in Amsterdam in 1640 by a German merchant. The Dutch city continued to be the source of all coffee sold in Britain until 1660, when the ten tons of ‘coho seed’ the Court of Directors had ordered in 1657 finally arrived in London. It had been first shipped to Surat, as was common

The coffee seed spreads In 1733, at the suggestion of the Court of Directors, Francis Dick-

inson wrote to John Hanys at Bait-al-Faqih, asking him to procure

some coffee trees for ‘the Company’s station on St Helena’. He later reported his assistant’s response to the Court: ‘… as to the coffee trees we ordered him to procure, he believes it is impracticable,

the Government having formerly fined one of our Banians [Indian merchant] Five Hundred Spanish Dollars for attempting to get

some, but if we desire it, he will get some Coffee Seed which the

planters make use of for raising young trees which he believes will answer to the same purpose.’ Dickinson ordered him to proceed, adding ‘if a little of the mould that is most natural to the Coffee

Plant can be got without inconveniency from the Places where the best soil grows, it would be acceptable’.

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T h e d e c l i n e a n d fa l l o f t h e c o f f e e m o n o p o ly This European trade, on top of the growing business in the Islamic world, was still exclusively supplied by the port of Mocha, although some of the coffee itself would have come from Africa. The port prospered; coffee merchants built themselves elaborate villas there, and the farmers in the mountains nearby did well, too, as demand rocketed. Most of the increase came from the Ottoman Empire, Persia and Mughal India; even at its height, Europe accounted for only one-eighth of the coffee exported from Mocha. Nearly all the coffee came through the inland entrepôt of Bait-al-Faqih, jokingly called ‘Beetlefuckee’ by the English merchants who plodded across the broiling Tihama Desert to reach the town. One such was John Hanys, who was sent there by Francis Dickinson, the ‘Commissary for Affairs of the English Nation at Mocha’ – a grand title for a senior East India Company merchant. Dickinson kept a journal in the 1730s, in which he complained about light-fingered camel drivers and wrote instructions to Hanys to buy coffee that was ‘good, dry, clean and well-garbled’ (that is, of even colour and regular appearance) and suggested he should take advantage of the coming ‘Hodge’ (the Hajj pilgrimage), when prices might be lower owing to the absence of Muslim traders. The authorities in Yemen made strenuous efforts to preserve their grip on the coffee trade by strictly forbidding the export of plants and spreading rumours among the European merchants that the beans were infertile, having been boiled. But their precautions were in vain: the seeds of Mocha’s downfall had already been sown.

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A coffee house in Restoration London, around 1668 (above). The first coffee house in London was established in a shed in the churchyard of St. Michael’s Cornhill (one of the Wren churches rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666), but they spread rapidly and became such a centre of political gossip that in 1673 King Charles II issued a proclamation seeking to close them down.

T h e p l a n tat i o n s y s t e m a n d t h e s l av e e c o n o m i e s The natural instinct of a trader is to buy what he needs at the lowest price; the instinct of the colonizer is to use the newly acquired property and native population of his colony to produce what he needs at a yet lower price. It was inevitable that European merchants sweltering on the coast of Yemen should wonder whether they might be able to cultivate coffee themselves in a more congenial climate. The first coffee plant to leaveYemen was taken to Amsterdam with the initial Dutch coffee consignment in 1616. There it propagated and seedlings were sent to the VOC’s colony of Ceylon in 1657, but the initiative to produce it there failed. The trees were then transplanted to the Dutch-held Malabar colonies, where they formed the foundation of what became the Indian coffee industry. The Indians prefer to give the credit for coffee’s introduction to a Muslim hermit called Babu Budan, who passed through Yemen in around 1600 on his way back from a pilgrimage to Mecca and smuggled some seeds out, ‘strapped to his belly’, which he planted outside his cave. Although the Arabian Sea was busy with traders and pilgrims at the time, there is unfortunately no documentary evidence to support this colourful tale and the first reliable sighting of coffee in India is 1697.

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COFFEE IN THE AGE OF EMPIRE 221

A coffee kiosk in Istanbul, around 1850 (right). Coffee houses arrived in the Ottoman capital as early as 1555, when the custom reached the city from Syria. Ottoman coffee houses offered an eclectic variety of entertainment from poetry readings to puppet shows and often mixed ‘special coffee’ with pepper, saffron, tobacco or even marijuana and opium.

The Malabar coffee plants were then transported to Java, where the VOC cultivated them with astonishing success – so much so that by the 1730s the Dutch had ceased to buy coffee at Mocha altogether. American merchants were buying so much coffee in Java by the late eighteenth century that they still call it by that name. Other Indonesian islands under VOC control were also planted with coffee, so that by 1820 45 percent of world production came from the region. The Compagnie Française des Indes Orientales followed the Dutch initiative, taking plants in 1715 from Mocha to the Île Bourbon (now Réunion) in the Indian Ocean. By 1727 the island was producing 100,000 pounds (45,000 kilograms) of coffee. But in the meantime King Louis XIV had been given some coffee plants by the mayor of Amsterdam for the greenhouses at Versailles, seeds from which, in 1715, were planted by the French in their Caribbean possessions of Martinique and Hispaniola. All these new plantations used arabica plants of the type found in Yemen and Abyssinia, but later French colonization of parts of western Africa led to the discovery of the harsh and rubbery-tasting robusta species, which accounts for the inferiority of French coffee until relatively recently. Considering how early they had become involved in trade at Mocha, the English were slow to export the plants. This was largely because the East India Company was initially interested only in trade, not conquest, and it held very little suitable territory – hence the Court of Directors’ request for plants to be taken to St. Helena, effectively being the only place where

The fall of Mocha From the moment the Dutch planted coffee in Java in 1698, the writing was on the wall for the port that had controlled the coffee

trade for over 200 years. It is estimated that 20,000

tonnes of coffee was exported in Mocha’s heyday of 1700, but its decline was precipitate, and in 1737 the port was

subjected to an ignominious French naval bombardment

when its governor broke a treaty undertaking. With their new plantations in Île Bourbon and the Caribbean, the French

risked nothing in enforcing their will. Mocha’s problem was

cultivation was possible.The plants grew well there, but nothing remotely resembling a coffee industry was created. However, the British islands in the Caribbean were eminently suitable for coffee cultivation and the celebrated coffee of Jamaica was introduced from Martinique in 1730. Coffee, unlike sugar, thrived in high mountains, so it didn’t compete for land. Many of Spain’s former colonies in South America and Central America are now major coffee producers, but it wasn’t until demand in the home country grew in the middle of the eighteenth century that coffee was introduced, again from Martinique. Shortly after, the United States gained its independence, turning against tea (identified with a hated British tax) and embracing coffee as the national drink. In the nineteenth century many coffees from Spanish-speaking Central America supplied that burgeoning demand. The world’s largest coffee-producing country, Brazil, introduced plants from French Guyana in 1752. The country was under Portuguese control until 1822, and like all the colonial countries of the western hemisphere it was a dubious beneficiary of the Atlantic slave trade. Using slave labour on large plantations, Brazil was able to cultivate coffee of largely indifferent quality in vast quantities and at a low cost previously undreamed of. As one MP remarked in 1880, a few years before slavery was finally abolished there, ‘Brazil is coffee and coffee is the negro’.

compounded by the fact that it had never really been a very good anchorage. Its shallow waters gradually started to

silt up, not helped by the fact that American ships used to dump their ballast before filling up with coffee.

Even if its trade has gone, Mocha’s name has remained

remarkably resilient, used to brand coffees themselves, coffee-making machines and coffee recipes. It is even

applied to Ethiopian coffees, the same ‘Abyssine’ beans that the port used to export alongside its native produce. Some trading habits die hard.

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A young Ottoman courtier carrying a cup of coffee (left), around 1720. Although the authorities had initially tried to suppress coffee drinking, with edicts banning it in Mecca in 1525 and in Cairo in 1539, the custom soon became established and by 1573 there were more than 600 coffee-drinking establishments in Istanbul.

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222 TRADE IN THE AGE OF EMPIRES

The Cot ton Trade: Chintzes and Calicoes Cotton textile manufacturing drove the Industrial Revolution in Britain. It accounted for the rise of the factory system of production, and was integral to the development of overseas markets and international trade. A parallel existed between the importance of the textile industry and the high point of Britain’s empire in the nineteenth century. Cotton’s role in promoting both industrial and trade supremacy began in the late eighteenth century, in the mid-1770s, and continued until the First World War.

A v i rt u o u s c yc l e o f d e v e l o p m e n t A series of technological advancements in spinning and weaving cotton fibre initiated textiles’ growth and importance. In 1770 James Hargreaves patented the spinning jenny that had 16 spindles, twice the usual number. By the mid-1780s there were jennies with 80 spindles. In 1769 Richard Arkwright had invented the water-frame that increased the output of warps, and in 1775 he developed a carding machine. Samuel Crompton’s The cotton market in Khangaon, India, 1870 (below). There are traces of Indian cotton as far back as the Indus Valley civilization in the second millennium bc, but India became a leading exporter only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, before its replacement as the leading cotton producer by the United States in the mid-nineteenth century.

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spinning mule appeared in 1779. These machines helped move spinning out of homes and cottages and into factories or waterpowered cotton mills. These advances, along with other improvements such as carding and finishing, brought a significant increase in textile production. Demand for cotton goods grew in the British home market and in Europe. After the cessation of hostilities with the newly independent United States of America in 1783, trade resumed with the former colonies, and until 1793, when war broke out in Europe with revolutionary France, the textile industry prospered and grew, though some short-term lapses occurred owing to surplus production or shortages of credit. The rise of British textiles, however, should be seen in the context of the world economy. Along with the technological advancements already referred to, the world population and food supply began increasing by about 1800. The construction or improvement of ports among trading partners, the development of railroads and warehouses, and an increase in capital funding, all combined to create an infrastructure for the production of raw cotton and made for greater ease in shipping and storing cotton goods. As each of these steps advanced, they reinforced one another, bringing economic growth and further demand for clothing. Liverpool, for example, became a major trading port because of the cotton trade, and cotton brokers in the city supplied the mills in Manchester and Lancashire.

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THE COTTON TRADE: CHINTZES AND CALICOES 223

F ro m I n d i a to t h e U n i t e d S tat e s India provided an interesting perspective on the world cotton trade. The production of raw fibre for human use, based on the gossypium plant, was documented in India as far back as 400bc. Indian cotton fabrics led the world in quality, in terms of bleaching and colouring as well as spinning and weaving, which made India the leading exporter of raw fibre and cloth. Indian calicos – brightly printed fabric – were popular in Britain and elsewhere in Europe thanks to brilliant and colourful designs, and because of the light weight of the fabric. Indian calicos attracted the attention of the East India Company, which started importing calico goods into Britain as early as the 1500s. According to one source, the first recorded use of ‘calico’ in the English language occurred in 1505, and the first use of ‘chintz’, a general term used to refer to calico with prints of floral patterns in different colours, came in 1614. So popular were the Indian calicos that English weavers complained about these imports, and duties were imposed on them, so that by the mid-1700s British weavers had protection from Indian competition. The popularity of calico in the British home market stimulated innovation and the development of the technologies of bleaching, dyeing and printing, and by the mid-1790s India had lost its supremacy as the leader in textile goods. By the 1820s it was no longer the leading producer of raw cotton either, a title that now belonged to the United States.

A steamboat loaded with cotton bales in Baton Rouge, Louisiana (above). From its early centres in South Carolina, where cotton-growing began on the Sea Isles around 1787, production shifted to Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Missouri, which by the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, represented half of the world’s production.

A large part of the overseas market for British textiles was either reduced or shut down during 1793–1815. Starting with the French Revolutionary Wars in 1793, followed by the Napoleonic Wars of 1803–1814, plus the American War of 1812, shippers found that trading vessels were at risk of

The American cotton trade Starting about 1800, cotton production

the two countries had a natural commer-

textile production, which lasted until 1914,

owing to Eli Whitney’s invention of the

in the United States, cotton farming

United States. At the end of the First World

increased massively in the United States cotton gin in 1793. Its fertile soil and semitropical climate made cotton profitable,

and with the growth of textiles in Britain,

214-277_Trade_Routes_Chap5cor.indd 223

cial link. Even after the end of slave labour remained lucrative and acreage, such as

this cotton field in South Carolina (above), expanded. During Britain’s golden era of

‘King Cotton’ reigned triumphantly in the

War, when Britain’s textile industry began to decline, cotton farming in the United States also declined.

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African slaves being led in shackles to the slave markets along the coast (left). Many slaves died even before they boarded ship. One raiding party in 1851 captured 1,000 slaves, of whom 170 adult males (who may have resisted) were killed by severing a limb and letting them bleed to death. Ivory traders in Zanzibar at the end of the nineteenth century (bottom). After Zanzibar supplanted Mozambique as the shipment port for ivory in the 1780s, it became the sultanate’s second most lucrative commodity (after slaves) – a situation reinforced in the 1860s, when Zanzibari traders reached the large ivory-producing regions west of Lake Tanganyika.

slave markets of Arabia. Driven principally by demand from the sultanates of the Middle East, African slaves ended up as sailors and pearl divers in the Persian Gulf, soldiers in the Omani army Africa and the Indian Ocean and workers on the saltpans of Mesopotamia. Many became domestic slaves, working in rich households. Women were On the east coast of the continent, an equally important trade taken as concubines. There was also a huge demand for ivory was developing as Swahili (derived from an Arabic word mean- in the Indian Ocean trading system and enslaved Africans were ing ‘coastal dwellers’) traders connected the region with the used as porters to carry it from the interior to the coast. vast and complex trading networks stretching across the IndiZanzibar was famous worldwide for its spices and its slaves. an Ocean from the Cape of Good Hope to the South China It was eastern Africa’s main slave-trading port. Scholars estiSea. These connections brought imports of goods as diverse mate that, in total, nearly half a million Africans may have as Chinese pottery and Indian fabrics in exchange for gold, been forcibly transported from the eastern coast of Africa in ivory and slaves. Elephant ivory has been exported from Africa the nineteenth century. About 20,000 enslaved people were for centuries, with records that date back to the fourteenth exported per annum from Zanzibar alone in the 1860s, and century bc. The slave trade in eastern Africa was much more another one-third may have perished on the way to the coast. established and longstanding than that on the western seaboard. During this time Zanzibar became one of the most prosperThe Periplus Maris Erythraei (Periplus of the Erythraean Sea; see ous ports in the Indian Ocean. The period between 1840 and page 79) reported Arab slave traders operating along the Somali 1856 marked the golden age of the Zanzibari slave trade. The coast in the first century ad. island is a natural entrepôt of the eastern African littoral, and its In the second half of the eighteenth century, the slave trade geographical location encouraged caravans to penetrate inland expanded and became more organized, with the island of in search of slaves, ivory and gum copal (a type of resin), until Zanzibar becoming a central hub. A nineteenth-century boom they reached the area of the Great Lakes and bartered for slaves in the eastern African slave trade was inspired by the domestic at the source of the Congo and the Nile rivers.

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THE CHINA TEA TRADE AND THE TEA CLIPPER 233

The China Tea Trade and the Tea Clipper Tea had been imported from China since the seventeenth century. The trade was conducted by Britain’s East India Company, which brought the tea home in the annual convoy of stately East Indiamen, which left China each October and took several months to reach home. The end of the company’s monopoly on the China trade in 1834, however, threw the tea trade open to competition. No longer did all of the tea depart China or arrive in London at once, and demand started to grow for the first and freshest teas of the new season, which could command the highest prices.

Pac e m at t e r s Speed therefore began to become important, just at the time when the opium-smuggling business from India to China, which helped to finance tea purchases, was spawning a new breed of fast, manoeuvrable ships. These ‘opium clippers’ were comparatively small vessels, with very sharp hulls and large rigs. Previously the formula used to calculate a ship’s tonnage for tax purposes had encouraged builders to produce narrow, deep ships with the maximum carrying capacity in relation to their tonnage, but at the expense of speed and manoeuvrability. The removal of these limitations in 1835 gave owners and builders greater freedom to experiment and to import ideas from overseas competitors, The clippers Taeping and Ariel are shown passing the Lizard, off southwestern England, in September 1866 (below). The two ships took part in the most famous tea clipper race. They both departed from Fuzhou in China on 30 May and arrived within half an hour of each other at London Docks on 6 September, with Taeping being the narrow victor. Tea picking in Sichuan, China (overleaf). The tea industry in China has a very ancient pedigree. It was said to have been discovered by the Emperor Shennong in 2737bc, when camellia leaves from the wood he was using to boil his drinking water fell into the cauldron to produce a new flavoured drink.

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restrictions on whose participation in trade with Britain and the colonies were lifted by the repeal of the protectionist Navigation Acts in 1850. Some of the resulting opium clippers, such as Baring Brothers’ Falcon, also carried occasional cargoes of tea. Competition in the China trade came mainly from the American merchant marine, then in the ascendancy and supported by a shipbuilding industry the equal of any in the world. The California Gold Rush of the late 1840s provided a fillip to American shipping, and encouraged shipowners to order vessels to make the passage around Cape Horn as speedily as possible. These ships were fine-lined, with towering rigs, some of them carrying skysails above their royals, and sometimes yet another tier of sails above those. There was little to carry back to the east coast, so after dropping off their passengers in San Francisco many clippers instead began to cross the Pacific and pick up tea in China for London. Among the first of these was the Oriental, which arrived in London in December 1850, after a passage of just 99 days. She created a sensation, as well as some agonizing over the apparent decline of British seafaring in the face of American competition – an impression heightened by the arrival of more American clippers in the next couple of years. Within a short space of time, however, British shipowners had started to meet the competition head on.

The spur of competition In the 1840s Alexander Hall, an Aberdeen shipbuilder, had started building ships with sharper bows and sleeker hull forms. Some of these ships were already proving their worth in the opium trade by the time Oriental arrived on the scene, and her success encouraged British shipowners to order more such vessels for the tea trade. Among the first of these were Jardine Matheson & Co.’s Stornoway and Taylor & Potter’s Chrysolite,

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236 TRADE IN THE AGE OF EMPIRES

The main tea clipper routes ran from the English ports of Liverpool and London to eastern China (map, right) but also to Australia, with the ships being used for runs across the Atlantic. The crews of the first ship to round the Cape of Good Hope and reach Europe could receive a cash bonus of £500.

Liverpool London San Francisco

Boston

Atlantic

New York

Shanghai Foochow Canton Hong Kong

Ocean

Delhi

Veracruz

Pacific Ocean

Indian Ocean

Pacific Ocean

Santiago

Cape Town

China tea-clipper routes Other clipper routes

both of which made their maiden voyages in 1851. These were the first true British ‘tea clippers.’ They were a success, although Chrysolite was delayed on her first departure from the Whampoa anchorage when some of her crew refused to sail. Tea clippers did not then have the prestige among seamen that they enjoyed later, and the constant sail-handling needed to maintain speed made them hard work for their crews. They were also uncomfortable, and the very sharp bows of the early clippers tended to cut through the waves rather than riding over them, making them wet and, when men had to work out on the bowsprit, hazardous. Chrysolite eventually sailed with a crew of only 16, but still made Liverpool in only 103 days.

Loading tea in Fuzhou English traveller F.W.H. Symondson recalls loading at Foochow (above) in 1873:

‘The tea came down but slowly. One day would see perhaps 200 to 250 half-chests stowed away in the hold, while the follow-

Adelaide fastest London to Melbourne passage 60 days by Thermoplyae in 1882

Sydney Melbourne

Rivalry between British and American clippers in the China trade peaked in 1852. The fastest passage, early in the year, was made by Witch of the Wave, which took in 19,000 chests of tea at Whampoa and picked up a pilot at Dungeness after a passage of only 90 days. Only three British clippers were able to obtain tea cargoes. Large bets were placed on the outcome of a close race between Richard Green’s Challenger and the much larger American Challenge, which the British ship narrowly won. Chrysolite and Stornoway left Whampoa together and raced head to head for three weeks before Stornoway drew ahead. Chrysolite had the better winds in the latter stages of the race, and arrived in Liverpool after 104 days at sea, three days ahead of her rival, earning her captain a gratuity from the owners. From 1856, the owners of the first ship to arrive in the London docks received a premium of £1 per ton on top of the usual freight rate, which at the time was usually around £5 per ton. Buoyed by such outcomes, order books grew, with owners demanding larger ships to compete more effectively with the Americans. Jardine Matheson’s Cairngorm was the first of this new breed, and on her first voyage in 1853 she ran from Shanghai to London in just under 110 days. The fastest passage in that year was made by the Architect of Baltimore, but despite the impressive performances of the American ships they were beginning to lose ground. In 1855, four of the five American ships in the trade made slow passages and American interest in the trade began to wane. Only two American ships loaded tea for London in 1858, and except for a brief revival in the following year their involvement in the tea trade was over. In any case, the American shipping industry in general was starting to decline in the face of more efficient and cheaper British competition, and the American Civil War dealt the nation’s merchant marine a blow from which it did not recover until the twentieth century.

ing day and the next … would pass without any “chop” coming alongside. Each “chop” carries the flag of its shipping house, so

that whenever one hove in sight with its huge mat sail, we could

H e y day o f t h e t e a r ac e s

loading a ship with tea in Foochow ranges from a fortnight to

The 1860s were the heyday of the China tea trade. The tea clippers left Britain early in the year and usually went straight to China with a general cargo, although in later years it became increasingly common to sail first for Australia with a general cargo, and then load with coal for China. Either way, by May

tell at once to what vessel she was bound. The time occupied in two months and even more.’

From Symondson, F.W.H. Two Years Abaft the Mast, or Life as a

Sea Apprentice. Blackwood: Edinburgh, 1876, page 201.

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the new season’s tea had started to come down the river to the loading points. Foochow (Fuzhou, in Fujian) had now become the principal port, and the Pagoda Anchorage just below the city became a hive of activity as sampans discharged their cargoes into the waiting clippers. As soon as a ship was full she was made ready for sea in haste, and departed on the next tide, with a race in prospect against any other ship leaving at the same time. The most famous, and most dramatic, of these contests was the so-called ‘Great Tea Race’ of 1866, which generated immense interest in London, and large bets were placed on the outcome. Freight rates were high, with the first half a dozen ships receiving £7 a ton, and 11 of the fastest clippers of the day were waiting at Pagoda Anchorage.The tea began to arrive on 24 May, and four days later Ariel, Fiery Cross, Taeping and Serica left at the same time, with the others not far behind. The four raced across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope and into the Atlantic with never more than a few days between them, sometimes even sighting one another. All four passed the Azores on the same day, but then Ariel and Taeping had the best of the wind as they entered the English Channel, and drew ahead. Ariel was first to pick up her pilot at Dungeness, but Taeping managed to engage a faster tug and made the London docks first, by just 20 minutes, after 99 days at sea. Their owners agreed they should share the prize.

For centuries almost all the tea traded into Europe came from China, shipped through Guangzhou (Canton) via the intermediaries of the East India Company (above). Only when this monopoly was about to end did Europeans try to promote tea growing elsewhere, with the Dutch smuggling tea plants into Java from 1827, and the British importing plants into Assam in the 1830s.

could use. Although some prophesied that it would silt up, that stokers would be unable to cope with the heat in the Red Sea, or that iron hulls and fumes from the stokehold would spoil the tea (beliefs which clipper owners did their best to foster), the first steamships on the China run showed they could make London in 60 days – at least 30 quicker than even the fastest clipper, and the tea was perfectly drinkable. Freight rates began to drop sharply. Whereas in 1866 the ruling price had been £7 per ton, in 1870 Cutty Sark had to accept £3 10s, and rates fell further in the next few years. Even so, the competition between Cutty Sark and Thermopylae was fierce.They left China together only once, in 1872, when both left Shanghai on the same tide and raced head to head across the Indian Ocean. Cutty Sark was ahead when she lost her rudder in a storm. Thermopylae thus won the race, but Captain Moodie of the Cutty Sark was praised for his seamanship in rigging a jury rudder at sea in bad weather, and then getting his semi-crippled ship 8,000 miles (nearly 13,000 kilometres) home. Despite the drama, the tea clipper’s days were numbered and the racing was almost over. One by one, the clippers were Steamships and the transferred onto other trades, sold off or broken up. After a few decline of the clipper years of struggling to find profitable cargoes, Willis gave up on the tea trade and instead put Cutty Sark onto the Australian The tea races were never quite so competitive again after the wool run, where she joined several other former China clippers. ‘Great Tea Race’ and the premium for the first cargo home was Steamships were then only just establishing their viability on withdrawn in 1867 as tea prices fell. However, new ships were the haul to Australia, and for a few years former clippers were still being built, and in 1868 one of the most famous of all, the able to make good money. However, by the 1890s there were no Thermopylae, was launched. She proved her worth on her maiden profits to be made here either. Thermopylae ended her days as a voyage by setting a record for the passage to Melbourne – one Portuguese training ship and then coal hulk, and was sunk with that still stands (60 days). Two years later, her famed rival Cutty full military honours as target practice for the Portuguese navy Sark, built for London shipowner John ‘White Hat’ Willis, also in 1907. Cutty Sark also went to Portugal, but was brought back entered service. By now, however, the Suez Canal was open, in 1922 and now lies preserved at Greenwich, London, the last creating a shorter route – but it was one that only the steamships survivor of the most renowned sailing ship trade of all.

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238 TRADE IN THE AGE OF EMPIRES

From Sail to Steam The transition from sailing ships to steamships was the single most important development in world trade in the nineteenth century, but was itself the product of a much wider process of industrialization on land, which created the demand for the steamship and supplied the prerequisites for its emergence: iron plating for the hull, and an efficient engine to power it. The steamship quickly established itself in some trades, but until the second half of the century it was confined to the relatively few routes on which it could make a profit. Meanwhile the sailing ship benefited from many of the same developments, and it remained a major presence in world trade well into the twentieth century.

F ro m r i v e r s t e a m e r to o c e a n l i n e r Experiments with steamboats were made in France, the United States and Britain from the 1770s, but all of them suffered from technical problems and none was commercially viable. This began to change with William Symington’s Charlotte Dundas of 1803, which successfully hauled barges along the Forth and Clyde Canal, although she was expensive to operate and the canal’s proprietors feared she would damage the banks with her wash, so her career was short. Nevertheless, the steamdriven craft was now a practical proposition. The first commercially successful steamboat began work on the Hudson in New York in 1807, followed a few years later by the Comet, which

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conducted the first successful steamboat service in Europe, between Glasgow and Greenock. Over the next few years steamboats appeared on numerous rivers and coastal routes, and also began to venture further afield. The first crossing by steam of the English Channel was made in 1817 and a regular Irish Sea crossing was established the following year. By the mid1820s a spreading network of short-sea steam services existed around Europe, including a service to the Iberian Peninsula run by the emergent Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O). In 1837, the Sirius made the first fully steam-powered crossing of the Atlantic, and three years later Samuel Cunard initiated the regular transatlantic steam ferry when the first Cunarder, Britannia, left Liverpool for Boston on 4 July 1840. At this stage the steamship was still very much a marginal part of world shipping. Early steam engines were unreliable and inefficient, and the crude box-type boilers then in use ran at very low pressures, which meant that fuel consumption was very high. Engines and coal took up a great deal of space, reducing the amount available for paying cargo and passengers. All of this meant that steam vessels were viable only as tugs – The paddle steamer President at anchor in the River Mersey off Liverpool (below). She was designed as a luxury cargo and passenger vessel, but was rather top-heavy. She made only three transatlantic voyages and on the final one, setting out from New York to Liverpool on 11 March 1841, she disappeared after two days at sea, with the loss of all 136 passengers and crew.

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FROM SAIL TO STEAM 239

Exhilarating sail Eric Newby recalling his first voyage as an apprentice aboard the four-masted barque Moshulu, in 1938–1939:

‘I loved the ship after a great storm. At first, as the sails

were re-set, tier upon tier, upper topsails, topgallants, royals,

staysails, spanker sails, and jibs, the canvas would be dark and

wet; and then when the whole edifice rose completed into the air it would dry quickly to a dazzling whiteness with the sun and wind playing on it.’

From Newby, Eric. The Last Grain Race. Secker & Warburg: London, 1956, page 201.

The Preussen, the only five-masted full-rigged ship ever built (above). Completed in 1902 ,the ship mainly operated the saltpetre trade to Chile. The 47 sails produced remarkable speed, but in 1910 an accidental ramming by a British cross-channel steamer grounded the ship, which then sank in a storm. The P&O passenger liner Deccan at Southampton, c.1870 (below). The company, which was founded in 1822, began a regular steamer service between London and Portugal in 1835 and expanded to routes into the Mediterranean in the 1840s and then to India. The Deccan initially carried 182 First Class and 82 Second Class passengers and made its maiden voyage to Calcutta in 1869.

in which role they increased the efficiency of sailing ships by speeding their entry and exit to and from ports – and on shortsea routes where passengers and low-bulk, high-value goods (principally mail, but also miscellaneous light cargo shipments – perishables, for example) gave a steady income, and refuelling facilities were available at either end. Over longer distances the steamship was still uneconomic, but its costs could be offset by government contracts providing a subsidy in return for carrying mail. Cunard and P&O, among others, were early beneficiaries of these subsidies. All of these early steamships were paddle-steamers, and as such were handicapped by the fact that paddle wheels took up a lot of space and were easily damaged in heavy seas. In 1840, however, a solution emerged in the form of the much

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more efficient screw propeller, first applied to the small steamer Archimedes. Yet the screw propeller shook wooden hulls to pieces and was of limited use until it was combined with iron construction, which also offered the advantage of lighter weight and more internal space than a similar-sized wooden hull. Iron construction had first been successfully tried with the Aaron Manby in 1821, but it took some time to work out how to prevent the ship’s compass being affected by the iron around it. By the early 1840s this had been overcome, and in 1843 the brilliant engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel launched the iron screw-propelled steamship Great Britain. She was a commercial failure, but also arguably the first ‘modern’ ship.

T h e c l a s s i c ag e o f s e a t r av e l Powered ships could operate to a schedule in a way sailing ships never could, and with the steamship emerged modern liner shipping. The most important, and the most glamorous, route was the Atlantic crossing, where during the 1850s Cunard and the American Collins Line, both heavily subsidized by their respective governments (and aided by a secret agreement to share the traffic), vied for supremacy. The battle was settled in Cunard’s favour as the Collins Line’s fast wooden

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paddle-steamers were expensive to run, and the sinking of the Arctic in 1854, with the loss of 350 lives, and the disappearance without trace of the Pacific in 1856 dealt the company two blows from which it never recovered. The US Congress withdrew its subsidy and the Collins Line folded in 1858. By then, however, new firms were emerging, such as the Inman Line, which established the first unsubsidized transoceanic steamship service. Inman made the bulk of its profits from the millions who emigrated from Europe to North America in the second half of the century, although the commercial battle between the steamer companies was played out more visibly in the sumptuous accommodation they offered to First Class passengers, and the competition to make the fastest crossing. With increasing competition on the Atlantic and the spread of steamship services elsewhere, such as the service from Britain to West Africa established in 1852, the classic age of sea travel was dawning. Despite this, however, the three decades after 1850 saw what has been described provocatively as ‘the ascendancy of the sailing ship’ – because, far from dying away in the face of steam-driven competition, the sailing ship flourished. Steamships created new, scheduled services that sailing ships could never manage, and they took over coastal passenger traffic, but beyond that their usefulness was limited by their high running costs. Meanwhile, the sailing ship took advantage of many of the developments that created the steamship: iron construction enabled larger, lighter hulls, and steam power could be applied on a small scale to assist with cargo and sail handling. Moreover, changes in the way in which ships’ tonnage was calculated in 1835 and 1854 freed builders to experiment with new hull

Perilous maindeck

The SS Great Britain, the world’s earliest iron-hulled, screw propellerdriven, steam-powered passenger ship (above). At her launch in 1843 her 3,675 tonnage was twice that of any other vessel afloat. She made her maiden voyage to New York in 1845 and operated on the transatlantic route until 1852, after which she transferred to service carrying migrants to Australia.

forms, and rigs became simpler but more efficient, with more but smaller sails that required less manpower to handle. By the 1880s, the oceangoing sailing ship had assumed its final form, the ‘windjammer’. This was typically an iron or steel vessel of 3,000 tons and more, with three, four or even five steel masts carrying a ship or, increasingly, a barque rig, and ‘donkey’ engines and brace winches among the laboursaving devices used to assist in handling the massive steel spars. Despite their size, most windjammers carried crews of 30 or less, and in favourable winds they could outrun all but the fastest steamships. They also cost far less to maintain, and could lie in wait for a cargo for long periods at minimal cost. This made windjammers ideally suited to carrying bulky, low-value cargoes over long distances. Coal from Britain and wheat from Australia were but two of the staple cargoes. Another was nitrates from South America, and whole fleets of ships were constructed to service this lucrative traffic, not least by F. Laeisz & Co. of Hamburg and A.D. Bordes of Dunkirk, companies that continued to build big, bulk-carrying sailing ships for the nitrate run well into the twentieth century. Further down the hierarchy, the steam engine needed skilled maintenance and did not miniaturize well; so, with the exception of passenger and mail traffic, sailing ships held their own in many coastal and short sea trades until the arrival of the internal combustion engine between the wars.

Steam triumphant

Rex Clements, recalling conditions aboard the sailing ship Arethusa while approaching Cape Horn in the early twentieth century:

‘Our progress was slow, but not through time lost beating into

the teeth of the wind. The furious gale kept ever on the quarter.

The maindeck was a seething whirlpool, swept by endless tons of green water that made a dash for’ard a matter of life and death.’

From Clements, R. A Gipsy of the Horn: the narrative of a voyage

around the world in a windjammer twenty years ago. Heath,

Cranton Limited: London, 1925, page 215.

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Despite the continued vitality of the sailing ship, the decisive shift in the steamship’s favour came in the 1860s, in the form of the compound engine in which steam was used twice before being exhausted.This engine was far more efficient than previous engines, and made the steamship viable over much longer distances – graphically demonstrated by the Agamemnon, owned by Alfred Holt & Co., which in 1866 ran the 8,500 miles (13,700 kilometres) from her home port of Liverpool to Mauritius without stopping for fuel. Compounding, coupled with developments such as superheating, forced draught and

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improved boilers working at higher pressures, made the steamship far more efficient, and this process was consolidated by the arrival of the triple expansion engine in the 1880s. One authority estimates that, by the 1890s, a modern steamship could move a ton of cargo a mile on the equivalent of the energy released by burning a single sheet of high-quality Victorian writing paper. Not only had the steamship become highly efficient, but it was supported by a worldwide network of coaling stations (ironically, supplied mainly by sailing ships), and on the Europe–Asia routes it had been given a crucial advantage by the opening of the Suez Canal. The steamship had matured into a reliable all-purpose technology, and twentieth-century developments, especially in the form of turbine engines and oil fuel, only consolidated its position. As steamships became more and more efficient, they penetrated further into the Far Eastern and Pacific regions, which until then had largely been the stronghold of sailing ships. Subsidized passenger and mail services between Europe and the Far East already existed, but during the 1870s steamships also began to encroach on the long-haul bulk trades.The classic tramp steamer emerged, and the sailing ship began to decline in numbers. Steam tonnage exceeded sail on the British registry for the first time in 1883, and by the end of the century oceangoing sailing ships flying the Red Ensign of the British merchant marine were a rarity. Sailing ships continued to feature strongly in some national fleets, notably that of Norway, but few were now being built and the end was clearly in sight. Nevertheless, they remained viable in a narrowing range of trades, and there was a brief revival as freight rates soared during the First World War. After the war Gustaf Erikson, based in the Åland Islands, began buying windjammers at scrap value and amassed a considerable fleet, which he kept profitable by slashing running costs to the bone.This last fleet of sailing ships operated profitably on the grain run between Australia and Europe right up to 1939. The effects of the nineteenth-century revolution in shipping were felt all over the world. Steamships made the mass movement of people across oceans viable for the first time, and in doing so they helped to create nations, not least the United States. More importantly still, as sea transport became increasingly efficient, so it became steadily cheaper. In the early nineteenth century shipping was mainly for valuable, low-bulk items, but as freight rates declined so the bulky, low-value goods that were essential for industrialization began to move around the world in everincreasing quantities. The windjammer and the steamship not only transformed the business of shipping but played a leading role in the creation of the modern world economy.

Sail outpaces steam Although the big bulk-carrying sailing ships of the late nineteenth century were not as fast as the clippers, they could still outpace many steamships in favourable conditions, as an officer aboard

the New Zealand Shipping Company steamer Ruapehu found out: 'In 1895 the [steamship] Ruapehu was running her easting

down [a reference to finding the latitude of the port of destination, then simply running eastwards along it] on her outward passage when a sailing ship was reported astern. Orders were given on the Ruapehu to drive the ship, and the patent log

showed a good 14 knots. Three hours later the Turakina passed along our lee side. She held her own with reduced sails until

9.30 p.m. Next day at noon we had run 315 miles. At midnight

the wind came aft and next morning the Turakina had passed

out of sight. It was a wonderful performance and made a man feel glad to be alive to see it.’

Quoted in Brett, H. White Wings: Fifty Years of Sail in the New

Zealand Trade, 1850–1900. Brett Printing Co.: Auckland, 1924,

page 132.

The Cunard steamship Britannia at East Boston, 1844 (right, above). The Britannia was Cunard’s first passenger liner and its most famous passenger was Charles Dickens, who travelled aboard the ship from Liverpool to Halifax Nova Scotia in 1842. He caustically described his stateroom as ‘this utterly impracticable, thoroughly hopeless, and profoundly preposterous box’. The RMS Mauretania sailing down the Tyne, (right) shortly after her launch on 20 September 1906. The ship was the largest and fastest of her generation and won the Blue Riband for the fastest transatlantic crossing during her maiden voyage in November 1907. It was a record the ship held for the next 22 years.

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242 TRADE IN THE AGE OF EMPIRES

Terms of Trade: The Opium Wars Portuguese explorers and traders first encountered opium in India in the early 1500s, and by the sixteenth century opium was well known in Europe. The drug offered the chance of high profits and by the late seventeenth century European merchants were heavily engaged in the opium trade, including dealings with China. Opium was legal and tolerated in Europe, but in China, where the imported practice of smoking rather than ingesting the drug had spread rapidly, its ill effects had become more visible, and in 1729 it was banned, except for medicinal use. However, this law, and subsequent prohibition decrees, were largely ineffective; the state’s attempt to suppress smuggling were similarly ineffectual, and the problem of opium addiction continued to grow.

A n u n ba l a n c e d t r a d e Trade with China expanded during the eighteenth century, even though from 1757 foreign merchants were confined to factories at Canton (Guangzhou) and permitted to trade only with the 13 Hong merchant houses. The British East India Company, like its European counterparts, made a great deal of money exporting tea, porcelain and silk from China. However, the trade was unbalanced for, with the exception of Indian cotton goods, China imported little while tea exports were growing quickly. Attempts to open the country up to trade, notably by Lord Macartney in 1793, were unsuccessful, and the drain of silver from India to China posed a growing problem. The solution to which, despite their moral scruples, East India Company officials turned lay in exporting from India the one low-bulk, high-value commodity for which there was a seemingly limitless Chinese market: opium. After 1806 the revenues from opium smuggling were more than sufficient to offset the cost of the tea.

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The East India Company could not officially connive in opium smuggling, but from 1773 it exerted a monopoly of production of the drug in India, after which it was sold to merchants in the ‘country trade’, who then smuggled it into China, where the enforcement of the prohibition on opium was patchy.The end of the company’s monopoly on the China trade in 1834 allowed new players into the highly lucrative business, prominent among which was the newly established mercantile house of Jardine Matheson & Co. Such firms encouraged the sending of yet another trade delegation to China, this time led by Lord William Napier, but Napier offended the emperor and got no further than Canton (Guangzhou). By the late 1830s the Chinese government was becoming ever more concerned about the widening trade deficit and consequent drain of silver, coupled with the spreading effects of opium addiction, and it appointed Commissioner Lin TseHsu (Zexu) to head a crackdown and vigorously enforce the existing laws. Lin made foreign merchants criminally liable for illegal shipments, jailed Chinese smugglers, and in March 1839 he horrified European merchants at their Canton factories by having dealers publicly beheaded outside them. He then had the premises sealed off and effectively held the merchants hostage until they agreed to sign a bond foreswearing the trade and hand over all stocks of opium on hand. He also wrote to Queen Victoria, requesting her intervention to stop the trade, although there is no evidence that she ever saw the letter. Captain Charles Elliot, the British superintendent of trade, was a Calvinist who detested opium, but he was also a pragmatist. Realizing that resistance would be futile he informed the merchants that the British government would compensate them for their losses. After some resistance they gave in and handed over 20,000 chests of opium, to be burned or thrown into the river.The factors (traders) themselves were expelled, and retreated to Hong Kong, where they pressed Elliot – who had prohib-

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TERMS OF TRADE: THE OPIUM WARS 243

A dishonourable war Opposition to the war in Britain was expressed most strongly by

William Gladstone, then a young Tory MP, who stated in the House of Commons on 8 April 1840:

‘This I can say, that a war more unjust in its origin, a war more

calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know, and I have not read of. The right hon.

Gentleman opposite spoke last night in eloquent terms of the

British flag waving in glory at Canton … But how comes it to pass that the sight of that flag always raises the spirit of Englishmen? It is because it has always been associated with the cause of

justice, with opposition to oppression, with respect for national rights, with honourable commercial enterprise, but now, under

the auspices of the noble Lord, that flag is hoisted to protect an infamous contraband traffic, and if it were never to be hoisted

except as it is now hoisted on the coast of China, we should recoil from its sight with horror.’

From Hansard, 8 April 1840.

ited them from further trading with the Chinese, though not all were to comply – to take action. The British government had now been dragged into an increasingly tense situation in which abductions, killings and skirmishes between smugglers and war junks of the imperial navy were becoming common. The flashpoint came a few months later, when a drunken British sailor on a spree ashore reputedly murdered a local villager. Lin demanded the man be handed over for trial (and probable execution), which Elliot, now also in Hong Kong, refused to do. Lin responded by ordering that all British nationals caught on Chinese soil should be put to death, and he placed a bounty on Elliot’s head. He also cut off supplies of food and drinking water to British ships, which only exacerbated the crisis.

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A Chinese merchant weighing opium in the 1880s (above). The opium trade, which the European powers exploited to balance the deficit that would otherwise have accrued from exports of tea, caused a massive problem of addiction, with an estimated 3.5 million Chinese opium addicts in the 1830s and as many as 13 million by 1906. Shipping off Canton in the 1840s (below). The first Opium War in 1842 opened up the China trade, which had previously been confined to Chinese intermediaries and allowed European merchants to operate from Canton, Amoy, Ningpo, Amoy and Fuzhou. The flags of the European powers are seen here flying at their waterfront headquarters.

Elliot sailed for Canton in HMS Volage in October 1839 to attempt negotiations. As Volage approached the Bogue forts, at the mouth of the river, war junks guarding its entrance fired upon them. Volage responded with devastating fire. Although it was not officially declared until December, the first Opium War had begun. In Britain the pro-war faction, foremost among whom was William Jardine – of Jardine Matheson – won out against strong opposition to the war, expressed most forcefully by a young William Gladstone (see box, above). A small naval force of a dozen vessels, accompanied by a detachment of troops from India, arrived in Chinese waters in June 1840.

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Industrialization and Trade The period sometimes called the Industrial Revolution was the most important development in modern history. It marked a qualitative break with a past where economic growth and rising population were perpetually checked by food shortages and disease, and the beginnings of the continuous economic growth we perhaps unwisely now take for granted. The connections between trade and industrialization were many and complex, and debate continues among economic historians about the precise linkages. Nevertheless, the broad outlines are clear enough.

but late in the century James Watt’s improvements to the steam engine turned it from an important but inefficient device for draining mines into a viable source of industrial power, and the classic steam-powered urban factory began to emerge.

D e m a n d a n d s u p p ly

Britain was already an open and commercialized economy trading all over the world, but exports did not provide the demand for these early developments.The products of the cotton indusE m e rg e n t fac to r i e s try, for instance, were mainly for the domestic market, where they substituted for Indian imports, although as spinning capacIndustrialization started to take root in Britain in the mid- ity expanded Britain began to sell spun cotton to the continent. eighteenth century, with a spate of innovations in the textile Metal goods and pottery from factories such as Wedgewood, and metallurgical industries. Wool had been a staple of British too, were mainly intended for home consumption in the first trade and the domestic economy for centuries, but it was in the instance, although some were exported from an early stage. On comparatively new business of cotton that the important devel- the other hand, imports played a crucial part in the process, opments took place. Spinning was made dramatically more effi- especially in the form of raw cotton from the United States and, cient by a clutch of inventions in the mid-century, culminating until the second half of the century, iron ore from Scandinavia. in Samuel Crompton’s ‘mule’ of 1779, although it was not until Trade was important in other ways. Merchants’ profits from the 1820s that power was successfully applied to weaving. Linked commodity trades were invested – usually indirectly – in induswith these were improvements in the production of the chemi- try, and the exchange of peoples and ideas created a climate in cals used to bleach and dye the cotton. Meanwhile, the adop- which innovation was encouraged. The British cotton industry tion of coke, rather than charcoal, for iron-smelting early in the had been established in the seventeenth century by immigrants century, and then in the 1780s Henry Cort’s ‘puddling’ process from western Europe, illustrating how an open economy could for producing wrought iron, improved by Richard Crawshay in help to foster innovation, though it remained relatively small – the following decade, greatly increased productivity here too. compared to the long-established wool trade – until a cluster Industry at this stage was still almost entirely powered by water, of innovations led to it becoming the first factory textile industry. Moreover, rising incomes and increasing imports since the seventeenth century had created a consumer society in which Industrial tools are displayed at the 1851 Great Exhibition (above), including a mass market for manufactured goods could develop. a spinning machine and a wrought iron crane – potent symbols of the economic However dependent the early steps towards an industrial lead Britain had acquired through its early entry into the Industrial Revolution, but it was an advantage that would be eroded as other countries industrialized. economy were upon trade, as industrialization progressed the

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INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TRADE 251

A world of goods William McFee was a seaman and writer of sea stories. Here he

recalls the work of a typical tramp steamer carrying the staple bulk cargoes of nineteenth and early twentieth century world trade:

‘Coal from Barry Dock to Las Palmas, case-oil from Philadelphia to Yokohama; sugar from Surabaya to Boston, cotton from

Savannah to Bremen; back to the States for cotton and phos-

phate for the Mersey and Manchester … [and finally] the Bristol Channel once more, for dry-dock and payday.’

From W.P. McFee’s In the First Watch, quoted in Woodman, R.

More Days, More Dollars: The Universal Bucket Chain 1885–

1920. A History of the British Merchant Navy: Volume Four.

The History Press: Stroud, 2010, page 120.

connection became indispensable. The mechanized cottonspinning business produced far more than the domestic handweaving industry could absorb, and therefore exports of cotton yarn, mainly to Europe, boomed. Later, finished goods were also exported in ever-increasing quantities, and to further and further afield, sometimes at the expense of cotton industries in the recipient countries, which could not compete with the flood of cheap imports. Exports of metal goods, long a trickle, started to assume the proportions of a flood in the 1840s, especially in terms of machinery and railway equipment.The corollary of this was a growth in imports, especially of raw materials and foodstuffs – and all of it was supported by British political dominance and the pre-eminent position of British shipping, which aside from carrying much of the nation’s trade became a major source of ‘invisible earnings’. London had long served as the entrepôt port for Europe, where incoming cargoes were broken down for re-export. Now it became the hub of the world trading order, a centre of finance, shipping and commerce, where goods arrived and were dispatched all over the world.

London Docks in the nineteenth century (above). The opening of the Royal Victoria Docks in 1855, the first specifically adapted to cope with steamships, marked a new era in maritime cargo transportation to London, and by 1900 there were seven enclosed dock systems in the Port of London.

Industrializing world Industrialization spread during the first half of the nineteenth century to mainland Europe, especially the densely populated states of northwestern Europe. Belgium was an early leader, followed later by France and, after unification in 1871, Germany. In the last quarter of the century the American economy, now recovering from the disruption and devastation of its civil war, put on a spurt, making the United States the greatest industrial power in the world by 1890. British coal exports supported the early stages of European industrialization, before the coalfields of the continent were fully exploited, and British machinery was imported for the early textile plants. Movements of people, too, were essential; among them were the

The world is now your market Scottish inventor James Watt did more than anyone else to turn the steam engine (of which a cross-section is shown right) into a

viable source of industrial power. His attempts to commercialize

his inventions met with little success until he went into partnership with the ambitious businessman Matthew Boulton, who in 1769 observed:

‘It would not be worth my while to make [your engine] for three

counties only, but I find it very well worth my while to make it for all the world.’

Quoted in Scherer, F.M. Innovation and Growth: Schumpet-

erian Perspectives. The MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts,

1984, page 13.

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252 TRADE IN THE AGE OF EMPIRES

An endless vista of masts Researcher, journalist and activist Henry

over the port, you read how all corners of

and looked down the endless vista of

influential exposé of the living and working

its peculiar produce. The massive ware-

you could not help feeling how every

Mayhew, best known for his detailed and

the earth had been ransacked, each for

conditions of London’s poor, describes the

houses at the water-side looked like the

serves to emphasize how Britain’s fortunes

while, in the tall mast-like chimneys, with

scene in the port of London, c.1850, which were closely bound to world trade:

‘Look or listen which way you would, the many sights and sounds that fitted the

eye and ear told each its different tale of busy trade and boundless capital. In the

many bright-coloured flags that fluttered

storehouses of the wealth of the world,

their black flags of smoke steaming from

power known to man was used to bring

and diffuse the riches of every part of the world over this little island.’

them, you saw how all around were at

From Henry Mayhew’s Letter XLVII,

into new fabrics. As you beheld the white

Morning Chronicle, 11 April 1850.

work, fashioning the far-fetched produce cloud of the railway engine scudding

‘Labour and the Poor, 1849–50’ in The

above the roofs opposite, and heard the

clatter of the carts and waggons behind,

British engineers who helped to set up factories on the continent, and the countless Europeans who emigrated to Australasia and North America to join the burgeoning workforces there. In many of the industrializing economies, especially among the densely populated societies of northern Europe, the growth of population outstripped the domestic food supply, and the gap was made up with imports on an unprecedented scale. The Great Plains of the American Midwest, the Pampas of Argentina and the sheep stations of Australia supplied more and more of the grain and meat consumed in Britain, and to a lesser extent elsewhere. Moreover, the industrialized nations of the north had long imported tropical produce to augment their diets, and in the nineteenth century imports of goods such as sugar, fruit, tea and coffee expanded, making all of them cheaper and more available to the working-class consumer, who accordingly ate a healthier and more varied diet than his forebears. He and she also consumed far more manufactured goods than before, made out of imported materials and often produced not just for the home market but for export as well. Another effect of industrialization was soaring demand for raw materials, which was met by imports from the rest of the world – a process hastened and made easier by the expansion of colonial empires. Increasingly, the less industrially developed countries came to serve as suppliers of raw materials to the

214-277_Trade_Routes_Chap5cor.indd 252

masts that crowded each side of the river,

industrialized nations, and in return they provided a market for manufactured goods. India is a classic case in point: the Indian cotton industry declined in the face of cheap British imports, and the country entered a period of deindustrialization and growing relative poverty, while it continued to serve as a key supplier of raw cotton, tea and rice, among other things, to the rest of the world. And India did not just serve as a ready-made market for cheap cotton goods: its capital goods and machines were largely imported, while its railways, like those of other less developed countries, whether colonized or not, used rails and rolling stock manufactured in the industrialized world. The Industrial Revolution marked the point at which mankind switched from mainly biological sources of energy – mainly animal power and wood – to mineral energy. Coal became one of the staple bulk cargoes of world trade in the nineteenth century, and exports of it supported British shipping by providing an outbound cargo that could subsidize the return leg, cheapening imports and giving British shipowners the edge over their competitors. From the mid-nineteenth century, The zinc works at Vieille Montagne, Belgium (below), around 1855. The mine, which had opened in 1805, was the world’s earliest major producer of zinc, and significant advances in the smelting of the metal were made there. By the end of the nineteenth century, it was producing around 8,500 tons of zinc annually.

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however, oil began to emerge as a source of energy and an item of world trade. Only two years after William Smith struck oil at Titusville, Pennsylvania, the first transatlantic oil shipments took place, in metal barrels packed into wooden cases, giving the ‘case oil’ trade its name. Mineral oil slowly started to displace animal oils – whale oil, especially – in lighting and mechanical lubrication. ‘Case oil’ was expensive to transport, though, and in the 1880s the specialist oil tanker was developed, although not without some resistance from dockers, who resented the loss of work, and ships’ crews, who feared fires and explosions. By 1914 oil provided only about 2.5 percent of world energy use, but it was clearly going to be a growing factor in the future, both in energy consumption and trade. Trade, then, was central to industrialization, and crucial to trade were developments in transport. Canals were hardly new technology, but during the nineteenth century their numbers multiplied (see pages 245–246) and they were dug broad and deep enough to take the biggest ships of their day, shortening trade routes and cutting transport costs. On land, the spread of railways tied national economies together, promoted further technological innovations and moved produce to and from the seaports. Above all, the application of iron, and later steel, to ship construction, and the development of the steamship and the big iron sailing ship, made ocean trade cheaper and more reliable (see pages 238–241). From mid-century, communications speeded up still further with the electric telegraph: it introduced no new trade routes, but it did make those already in use much more efficient. The effect of all of this was that the cost of transporting goods

Warehouses lining the Aire and Calder Canal (above). The canal began operation in 1704 on the section between Knottingley and Leeds, northern England, but the increasing demands of industrialization, and particularly the transportation of coal, led to the opening of new sections and deeper locks (which by 1835 had all reached 7 feet/2 metres-plus in depth).

around the world plummeted, cutting their prices to consumers and widening the market still further. Eighteenth-century trade was mainly in low-bulk, valuable items, but during the nineteenth century the staples of world trade came to be not silks and tea and spices, but low-value cargoes such as ores, rubber, raw cotton, scrap iron, coal and grain – the staples of industrial economies. Trade and shipping fostered industrialism on land, but when developments from landward industry were applied to shipping they made trade cheaper, thereby creating a virtuous circle of increasing trade, growing industrialization and rising prosperity that lasted until the First World War.

The Coal Trade Industrialization went hand in hand with an unprecedented increase in energy use, which was met by a transition from wood-, water- and animal-derived power to coal-burning. In the process, the scattered coalmines of the pre-industrial age were transformed into a vast industry whose products were shipped and used all over the world.

supplied with coal by sea from the northeast since medieval times, and well into the twentieth century the coal trade along the eastern coastline remained by far the most important sector of British coastal shipping. Most coal was still burned for domestic heating, and well into the eighteenth century, coal-fired steam engines were less important than waterwheels as a power source. As steamdriven industry spread, however, so the coal industry expanded A n a n c i e n t i n d u s t ry to supply it, aided by the development of new coalfields and the use of steam engines to drain deeper mines. By the mid-nineCoal had been mined and scavenged from seams on the surface teenth century Britain accounted for two-thirds of European for centuries, but only on a small scale. In China, for example, production. Exports started to increase quickly from the 1840s, coal was well known and widely used in some areas by the until by 1913 one-third of the industry’s output was for export. eighteenth century, but the pits were too far from areas of industrial development.There was thus no general transition to coal use, of the kind that was starting to happen on the other B l ac k g o l d side of the globe, in Great Britain, where the coal industry was well developed and many of the coalfields were near to the British coal, especially the high-quality steam coal from the coast, so that coal could be shipped to wherever it was wanted coalfields of south Wales, was shipped all over the world. Some – by the late seventeenth century Britain had become a signifi- went to Europe, often as a return cargo for ships bringing cant exporter of coal to mainland Europe. London had been goods to Britain. Much also went to Asia and to South America.

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254 TRADE IN THE AGE OF EMPIRES

Some of this was for domestic and industrial usage, and some – perhaps one-fifth of British exports – was for bunkering.The coaling stations from which the world’s steamships took their fuel were often supplied by the sailing ships that they were starting to displace. Coal was a vast benefit to British shipping, because it provided a cargo for outward voyages that would otherwise have had to be made in ballast. With coal subsidizing the outbound voyage a lower freight rate could be charged for the return haul, providing British ships with a key competitive advantage over their rivals. Some idea of how important this was can be gained from the fact that in Cardiff, where the Coal Exchange was the hub of the world’s coal trade and coal was the port’s main outward cargo, no fewer than 120 shipping companies existed in 1913. Exports from Cardiff alone totalled ten million tons per year by then, up from only a quarter of a million in the 1840s. As the eminent Victorian economist William Jevons put it, in the late nineteenth century coal was the ‘alpha and omega’ of British trade.

Da n g e ro u s g o o d s Coal might have provided employment for British ships, but it was a dirty and antisocial cargo, and it could be dangerous. Coaldust could cause explosions, and spontaneous combustion in the hold was an ever-present threat. The barque Cedarbank, on passage from Newcastle, New South Wales, to San Francisco in 1893, was fortunate to make her destination after her cargo caught fire. Her crew fought the fire for a month, as the heat melted the deck seams and explosions blew off the hatch covers. Had Cedarbank been built of wood she would have joined the long list of ships lost at sea after fires in their coal cargoes.

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A Sandsend collier (above), depicted by William Lionel Wyllie. These ironscrew ships, built from the mid-nineteenth century, significantly cut voyage times and increased coal exports from collieries near Newcastle and Cardiff. Wagons of coal from the North Staffordshire collieries await loading at Birkenhead Docks, c.1924 (opposite, top). The coalfield in Staffordshire is recorded as early as the thirteenth century and in the first part of the eighteenth century it was already exporting coal to the West Indies. At its peak, around 1913, more than 20,000 men were employed there as miners.

As the example of the Cedarbank suggests, by the late nineteenth century the coal trade was changing, and new sources of supply were emerging. Coal had been mined on a small scale in Australia since the early nineteenth century, but production expanded quickly late in that century, increasing fivefold between 1880 and 1910 alone. Japan, too, began to develop a coal industry; there was also some development in India and South Africa. In addition to supporting their own economic development, coal from these countries supplied more and more of the needs of nations around the Pacific Rim, creating a transpacific trade. In the United States, too, coal production took off, and with it exports, such that by 1914 American coal competed strongly with British at the bunkering stations of South America. All of this was driven by industrialization, which it in turn made possible. Cheap shipping – often British shipping – meant that industrialization could take root even far from the coal-mines. Without the coal trade, the history of the last few centuries would look very different. The pithead and coking ovens of a colliery in the Northumberland–Durham coalfield, c.1845 (left). In 1840 total British coal production had been 42.6 million tons annually, but by 1913 this had risen to 287.4 million, whereas the United States, which had produced only 7.5 million tons in 1850, had reached an output of 508 million tons just before the First World War.

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Coal-handling machines Diarist Edward Beck, whose memoirs are a rare insight into life and work at sea in the 1820s, recalls loading coal at Sunderland, which shows that coal-handling was mechanized at an early stage, and

that this generated resistance among those who felt mechanization threatened their livelihoods:

‘At the bottom of the hill the wagons are drawn over a kind of plat-

form, where the bottoms of them are knocked out and, by means of

a large chute, the coals are conveyed to the hold of the vessel loading,

but there are engines for lifting them over the hatchway and letting them drop out … these engines are the means of preventing the

poor from finding employment and frequent attempts are made to injure them and their machinery.’

Quoted in Woodman, R. Masters Under God: Makers of Empire

1816–1884. A History of the British Merchant Navy: Volume

Three. The History Press: Stroud, 2009, page 19.

Copper Refining and South Wales Commercial copper refining started in South Wales as early as 1584, when the Anglo–German Society of Mines Royal, managed by Ulrich Frosse, established works at Aberdulais near Neath handling little more than a ton of ore per day. In the 1690s Sir Humphrey Mackworth’s Company of Mine Adventurers established a second Neath refinery at Melincryddan but, with easier access to rich coal seams, flat land and an established port, Swansea proved a more attractive location to entrepreneurs seeking to exploit the thriving English copper and brass (an alloy of copper and zinc) trades. In 1717 Dr John Lane of Bristol started the Llangyfelach refinery in Swansea, smelting ore from his Cornish mines. Sailing ships in Swansea docks, c.1900 (below). Although copper had been produced in the area for centuries, the arrival of the first consignment of Chilean ore in 1831 marked a new stage in the port’s development. Increased traffic necessitated floating docks, construction of which began in the 1850s.

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T h e e m e rg e n c e o f S wa n s e a a s ‘ C o p p e ro p o l i s ’ The steam pumps essential to work the deep, wet Cornish mineral mines (and those of Cardigan, Anglesey and Ireland) also consumed huge quantities of Swansea coal and many vessels returned to Swansea in ballast; copper ore (and the associated ores of tin, lead, zinc and arsenic) was the obvious return cargo. Other mine-owners – Thomas ‘Copper King’ Williams from Anglesey, Pascoe Grenfell and John Vivian (originally from Truro) – then established copper refineries in Swansea. Robert Morris of Shropshire took over Lane’s refinery and diversified into coal-mining. ‘Adventurers’, rich merchants in search of an investment opportunity, and

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