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.The Italian and the German cities became less active and wealthy, while London, Lisbon, Antwerp, and manyother centres grew richer.Individual cities and even leagues of cities ceased to be able to negotiate with othermunicipalities or with potentates to obtain trading privileges for their citizens, since such matters were nowprovided for by commercial treaties formed by national governments.One of the main characteristics ofearlier commerce, its dependence on city governments, thus passed away.Then came the opening up of direct commerce by sea with the East Indies, the discovery of America, and theawakening of ambition, enterprise, and effort on the part of new nations to make still further explorations andto develop new lines of commerce.The old organization of commerce was profoundly altered when its centreof gravity was shifted westward to the Atlantic seaboard, and Europe got its Oriental products for the mostpart by an ocean route.Cities which had for ages had the advantage of a good situation were now unfavorablyplaced.Venice, Augsburg, Cologne, and a hundred other towns which had been on the main highways oftrade were now on its byways.Many of these towns made strenuous, and in some cases and for a timesuccessful, efforts to conform to the new conditions.[Footnote: Mayr, in Helmolt, History of the World, VII,64-66.] Vigorous industry, trade, and commerce continued to exist in many of the old centres, and some ofthe most famous "merchant princes" of history, such as the Fuggers and the Medici, built up their fortunes inthe old commercial cities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.Nevertheless, these were the exception ratherthan the rule, and such successes were due to financial rather than commercial operations.In a general sensethe old commerce of Europe, so far as it followed its accustomed lines, suffered a grievous decline.Moreimportant than the decay of the old method was the growth of the new.A vast mass of new trade came intoexistence; spices and other Oriental products, now that they were imported by the Portuguese and afterwardsby Spanish, Dutch, French, and English, by direct routes and by water carriage, were greatly cheapened inprice, and thus made attainable by many more people and much more extensively consumed.The earlyexplorers of America failed to find either the route to the East or the Eastern goods which they sought, butthey found other articles for which a demand in Europe either already existed or was ultimately created.Sea-fish abounded on the northeastern coasts of America to a degree that partially made up their loss to the CHAPTER VII 51disappointed seekers for a northwest passage.Whale oil and whalebone were obtained in the same waters.Dye-woods, timber, and ship stores were found on the coasts farther south.Furs became one of the mostvalued and most permanent imports from America.Gradually, as habits in Europe changed, other productscame to be of enormous production and value.Sugar stands in the first rank of these later products; tobacco,cocoa, and many others followed close upon it.As colonists from Europe became established in the NewWorld they must be provided with European and Asiatic goods, and this gave additional material forcommerce.Besides creating an increased commerce with the East and a new commerce with the West, theawakened spirit of enterprise and the new discoveries widened the radius of trade of each nation.Men learnedto be bold, and the merchants of each European country carried their national commerce over all parts ofEurope and far beyond its limits to the newly discovered lands.English, Dutch, French, and Danish merchantsmet in the ports of the White Sea and in those of the Mediterranean, and competed with one another for thecommerce of the East and the New World.Trading to a distance was the chief commercial phenomenon of thesixteenth century, and was more influential than any other one factor in the transformation of commerce thenin progress.Distant trading proved to have different requirements from anything that had gone before: itneeded the political backing of some strong national government; it needed, or was considered to need, amonopoly of trade; and it needed the capital of many men.These requirements were not felt in Portugal and Spain as they were in the other countries of Europe, becauseeach of those countries had control of an extensive and lucrative field of commerce, and because in themgovernment itself took the direction of all distant trading.The Portuguese monopoly of the trade with thecoast of India and with the Spice Islands was practically complete.Through most of the sixteenth century herships alone rounded the Cape of Good Hope; her only rivals in trade in the East were the Arabs, who had beenthere long before her, and their traffic was restricted to a continually diminishing field
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