Goods Sold, Transferred; The Idea of the Map, 1490

One of the necessary means of asserting control over a territory for a future thinking prince or duke in the renaissance era was in knowing one's limits. Specifically, how big was this region? Who could be included as the inhabitants? Who, and crucially, where exactly were the neighbors? People who travelled frequently, often kept to their own charts and methods. But as houses and duchies and cities grew larger into broader territorial concerns, and universal knowledge of far off - or even nearby - places became more important, a handy repository of such collected information became necessary.

Books were good and could even maintain contact information as well as prices, official's titles who handled business, and all other manner of data. But there were so many places. Some of them, like those that sold pepper and other spices were also very far away. So far away, that not many had actually been there. There were as well, so many places in between that, in fact, it was hard to find someone who merely may have met anyone who had been there. Information on these places was scarce and unverifiable and it could take years, if word or a person were sent, before they came back. Even first hand knowledge could be very vague and unspecific, or just wrong.

The proliferation of books at the very least revealed a thirst for accurate information. Similarly, a quest for maps and mapmakers spread through Europe. Thomas A Brady tells us that 'an administrative transformation' was occurring in German lands which took up legal methods, admisinistrative processes, scholastic rigor and accurate accountancy methods to further state efficiency and strength. [p. 100] They even begin to send out mapmakers across the countryside to accurately pinpoint whose land was who's. Maps in the cities were being drawn up, districts were being named, and the science of cartography had new purpose.

An example of a very famous map is shown in Lisa Jardine's Worldly Goods, her take on the intersections that resulted from (and that were gleaned through) the products of commerce in those times. The 'city fathers of Nuremburg' commissioned a map as 'part of a plan to extend trade along the west African coast'. Everyone was focused on the east and the spices that came from there: pepper, cloves, nutmeg, myrrh and frankincense. This trade that extended eastward had existed for centuries. Venice had caravans that went twice a year to Alexandria, and Genoa and Venice still had ports on the Black Sea. But there were enterprising groups in Portugal, Spain and German and Dutch lands that yearned to find a way to cut out the traditional middle men.

It was a bit of 'German commercial sponsorship' to help propel 'German trading involvement' that led to the hiring of one Martin Behaim of Nuremburg to craft a new kind of map. He had the highest rated technical skill having been taught by Regiomontanus a unique teacher. In 1490, Georg Holzschuher a Nuremburg merchant approached Marin Behaim to construct a 'terrestrial globe':

"... detailing the commodities and the nature of the business opportunities at various key commercial locations in the world. The long legend... carefully itemized the cumulative customs duties incurred by the spice trade. It gave a meticulous account of the nature of the duties currently payable at each exchange point in the long chain of transactions preceding the spices' arrival in Europe." [p. 296]

It said they collected and bought them in Java Minor, took them to 'Seilan or Ceylon' where they were unloaded, charged customs and sold again to Aurea Chersonesus. There they were charged customs, sold to Taprobana, charged customs, bought and taken to Aden, unloaded and charged customs there again. In Aden, merchants from Cairo bought them and took them north. There they were bought by Venice, brought home and sold there to Germans who paid customs and fees. This would happen again in Frankfurt, Bruges, and again in France and England. They claimed that these customs duties amounted to a pound for every ten in every exchange along the way leaving the retail price for spice 'as much as that for gold.'

The merchants approached future Emperor Maximilian in 1492 for money to fund the search for a new route. Jardine says the notion didn't suit his' temperament' and that he wasn't inclined to 'speculate in trade' but passed word of the idea on to the Portuguese king as well as a letter of reccomendation for Martin Behaim. They could set out from the Azores and explore. But Portugal's interest lay south along the coast of Africa, not west. So Behaim worked in Lisbon. It was the globe made and credited to him that was taken by Magellan in 1519.
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Jardine, Lisa: Worldly Goods: a new history of the Renaissance; Bantam Doubleday Dell; London 1996