For centuries, the pepper and spice trade had followed the same routes. Before refrigeration, spices kept meat and other foods palatable for longer periods. Necessary for armies at first and then through the 1200-1400's the northern climes developed a taste for all manners of spices including pepper and cinnamon, nutmeg. Cloves and myrrh and frankencense populated the spaces of official church ritual throughout Europe.
Venice had been the middle man for a very long time buying the goods in the east and taking them around Spain and Portugal to the north and the markets like Bruges in the Lowlands.
Merchants from Germany, England, Flanders came to sell their woolens and furs, mined copper and silver. These eventually would be sold to the sultan when the return trip would reach its destination in Alexandria or in Acre in exchange for spice on a massive scale.
When the Portuguese Magellan sailed around the Cape of Good Hope (that is around the south of Africa in 1498) the spice trade for the sultan in Alexandria could at last be circumvented. It was this that made the sultan in Cairo unhappy about his port in Alexandria. [photo-set at the link] This story had been ongoing for some months.
The previous October, this Captain Polo Calbo had been briefed by the Senate and given his strict instructions, the least that Venice would accept in their trade there at the mouth of the Nile and a list of names of people to avoid and those to seek out. When he arrived in Alexandria, in December he discovered that the previous embassy and some Venetian merchants had been captured and were held in Cairo. And was officially told by the envoy to wait at first. Then not to go. All winter long.
Then as contagion from a local plague in Alexandria began to infect his crews sitting where they were told to sit and still being told to wait for the right audience and then threatened lest he do leave, he made motions to escape.
The mortar mounted on the famed lighthouse of Alexandria, was trained on the Venetian galleys. They had been proscribed by Venetian law, indeed part of the law that superseded the direction by the Senate for this captain, was for him to leave by a certain predetermined date, if trade wasn't successfully accomplished. By law established in Venice, a captain with such goods in a given port could not stay in that port if business had not been concluded by a prearranged amount of time. This date had long since passed.
The sultan was long used to the pepper trade that came up from the Red Sea to Cairo and when it was disrupted by the Portuguese buying it directly in Indonesia - a brand new force gutting the market of an inelastic product - the sultan dramatically raised his own prices. When the Venetians from the year before wouldn't buy it he threw them in jail. When the newcomers wouldn't accept the new price they were threatened and their strongboxes ransacked for money. In March, Sanudo got word that his brother-in-law, also in Alexandria, died of the plague found there.
The captain of the galleys then in Alexandria learned two things, that on the one hand the sultan had threatened that 'others' would attack Venetian cargoes if they tried to leave and were found out in open waters and also that the sultan's envoys were acting entirely in bad faith. Detaining them to attack their ships secretly and plunder their cargoes.
So they moved and were bombarded and boarded. A mast was broke in two, another lost control but they made it out of the port. They landed in a nearby port and got help from some french ships who showed them instructions that they personally had received from the sultan to capture the Venetians and their cargoes if they were seen. They then sailed directly to Cyprus, then Candia on Crete where word was sent back to Venice to warn any travelers to avoid Alexandria.
[here's a map]
Editor's note: "...when the story of the escape reached Venice a week before the captain himself arrived, there was much rejoicing, "many praised this captain, while others deplored the misfortune that might derive," " from the news of the collapse of the pepper trade. People figuring the gains and losses both within Venice and radiating out from there would be messengers, speeding news of the delay in pepper. [More on these networks is coming.] News that within a couple months would reach Cologne and Munich and Bruges It would be the end of 1506 before a new arrangement was fixed by Venice with the sultan, about the same as the old arrangement and so, it had to be 1507-8 before they could see any proceeds back in Venice, at the earliest. By then the sultan had figured out who was 'stealing' his market and turned to find them. pp. 262-3, Sanudo Diaries, 6:154; (con't below)
Venice , cita excelentissima : selections from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo edited by Patricia H LaBalme, Laura Sanguineti White, translated by Linda L Carroll
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It was just these types of setbacks and interruptions that most characterized their lives as they seem like our own. But the simple fact that these were noteworthy - out of the ordinary - also, almost inadvertently show the very sameness, the continuity, that a rich and vibrant culture like Venice needed and could inevitably depend on and thrive on despite these constant interruptions and tragedies of whatever kind. If not pepper this year than there will be something else. If not war with one group there may be war with someone else. Later the same day as the exploits of ser Calbo came in, Sanudo had bad news in his own family which in it's way gives an intimate portrait on how important honorary membership of the right group could seem to mean, even after death. I include it especially because it rings such a familiar note. The fact that the Council of Ten considered the notion was itself noteworthy even if they felt they couldn't act on it. Call it tradition, call it greediness or regulatory strictness, it was just the way it was and had to be accepted. The mark of a well ordered or a subservient populace, depending on how you look at it.
"April 22, 1505: 6:154: "At about twenty-three hours after sunset don Marco Sanudo, my in-law and first cousin, who had been elected a savio de Collegio, died of the illness from which he had been suffering .... he enjoyed a fine reputation as a savio and one of the most outstanding patricians who had ever lived in this city or will live in it for years to come. ... I must say that everyone mourned his death. It was noted that he apparently was accepted into the Scuola di San Zuanne at the moment of his death. After he died he was clothed in their robes. The guardian of the scuola went to the heads of the Ten to say that there is a law that all acceptances into the scuola must take place at the altar; it is also necessary that before the new member dies, the acceptance be approved by all seventeen members of the Ten. Thus it was decided that on the following day ... the Council of Ten would be convoked to grant this permission. The meeting took place, but they were unable to do anything because he was already dead. Thus the body had to be stripped of the flagellant's robes and dressed in a velvet robe."
from p 315.
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