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THE AMERICAN NATION
A HISTORY
LIST OF AUTHORS AND TITLES
GROUP I.
FOUNDATIONS OF THE NATION
Vol. 1 European Background of American History, by Edward Potts
Cheyney, A.M., Prof. Hist. Univ. of Pa.
Vol. 2 Basis of American History, by Livingston Farrand, M.D., Prof.
Anthropology Columbia Univ.
Vol. 3 Spain in America, by Edward Gaylord Bourne, Ph.D., Prof. Hist.
Yale Univ.
Vol. 4 England in America, by Lyon Gardiner Tyler, LL.D., President
William and Mary College.
Vol. 5 Colonial Self-Government, by Charles McLean Andrews, Ph.D.,
Prof. Hist. Johns Hopkins Univ.
GROUP II.
TRANSFORMATION INTO A NATION
Vol. 6 Provincial America, by Evarts Boutell Greene, Ph.D., Prof. Hist,
and Dean of College, Univ. of Ill.
Vol. 7 France in America, by Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D., Sec.
Wisconsin State Hist. Soc.
Vol. 8 Preliminaries of the Revolution, by George Elliott Howard,
Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Univ. of Nebraska.
Vol. 9 The American Revolution, by Claude Halstead Van Tyne, Ph.D.,
Prof. Hist. Univ. of Michigan.
Vol. 10 The Confederation and the Constitution, by Andrew Cunningham
McLaughlin, A.M., Head Prof. Hist. Univ. of Chicago.
GROUP III.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATION
Vol. 11 The Federalist System, by John Spencer Bassett, Ph.D., Prof.
Am. Hist. Smith College.
Vol. 12 The Jeffersonian System, by Edward Channing, Ph.D., Prof. Hist.
Harvard Univ.
Vol. 13 Rise of American Nationality, by Kendric Charles Babcock,
Ph.D., Pres. Univ. of Arizona.
Vol. 14 Rise of the New West, by Frederick Jackson Turner, Ph.D., Prof.
Am. Hist. Univ. of Wisconsin.
Vol. 15 Jacksonian Democracy, by William MacDonald, LL.D., Prof. Hist.
Brown Univ.
GROUP IV.
TRIAL OF NATIONALITY
Vol. 16 Slavery and Abolition, by Albert Bushnell Hart, LL.D., Prof.
Hist. Harvard Univ.
Vol. 17 Westward Extension, by George Pierce Garrison, Ph.D., Prof.
Hist. Univ. of Texas.
Vol. 18 Parties and Slavery, by Theodore Clarke Smith, Ph.D., Prof. Am.
Hist Williams College.
Vol. 19 Causes of the Civil War, by Admiral French Ensor Chadwick,
U.S.N., recent Pres. of Naval War Col.
Vol. 20 The Appeal to Arms, by James Kendall Hosmer, LL.D., recent
Librarian Minneapolis Pub. Lib.
Vol. 21 Outcome of the Civil War, by James Kendall Hosmer, LL.D.,
recent Lib. Minneapolis Pub. Lib.
GROUP V.
NATIONAL EXPANSION
Vol. 22 Reconstruction, Political and Economic, by William Archibald
Dunning, Ph.D., Prof. Hist, and Political Philosophy Columbia Univ.
Vol. 23 National Development, by Edwin Erle Sparks, Ph.D., Prof.
American Hist. Univ. of Chicago.
Vol. 24 National Problems, by Davis R. Dewey, Ph.D., Professor of
Economics, Mass. Institute of Technology.
Vol. 25 America as a World Power, by John H. Latane, Ph.D., Prof. Hist.
Washington and Lee Univ.
Vol. 26 National Ideals Historically Traced, by Albert Bushnell Hart,
LL.D., Prof. Hist. Harvard Univ.
Vol. 27 Index to the Series, by David Maydole Matteson, A.M.
COMMITTEES APPOINTED TO ADVISE AND CONSULT WITH THE EDITOR
THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Charles Francis Adams, LL D, President Samuel A Green, M.D., Vice-
President James Ford Rhodes, LL D, ad Vice President Edward Channing,
Ph.D., Prof History, Harvard Univ Worthington C Ford, Chief of Division
of MSS Library of Congress
THE WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Reuben G Thwaites, LLD, Secretary Frederick J Turner, Ph.D., Prof Hist
Univ of Wisconsin James D Butler LLD William W Wright, LLD Hon Henry E
Legler
THE VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Captain William Gordon McCabe, Litt D, President Lyon G Tyler, LL D,
Pres William and Mary College Judge David C Richardson J A C Chandler,
Professor Richmond College Edward Wilson James
THE TEXAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Judge John Henninger Reagan, President George P Garrison, Ph.D., Prof
Hist Univ of Texas Judge C W Rames Judge Zachary T Fullmore
THE AMERICAN NATION: A HISTORY
VOLUME 1
EUROPEAN BACKGROUND OF AMERICAN HISTORY
1300-1600
BY EDWARD POTTS CHEYNEY, A M.
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
WITH MAPS
TO MY FATHER
CONTENTS [Proofer's Note: Original page numbers included in CONTENTS
for reference purposes.]
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES...XV
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION...XXVII
AUTHOR'S PREFACE...XXI
I. THE EAST AND THE WEST (1200-1500)...3
II. ORIENTAL AND OCCIDENTAL TRADE-ROUTES (1200-1500)...22
III. ITALIAN CONTRIBUTIONS To EXPLORATION(1200-1500)...41
IV. PIONEER WORK OF PORTUGAL(1400-1527)...60
V. SPANISH MONARCHY IN THE AGE OF COLUMBUS (1474-1525)...79
VI. POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS OF CENTRAL EUROPE (1400-1650)...104
VII. THE SYSTEM OF CHARTERED COMMERCIAL COMPANIES (1550-1700)...123
VIII. TYPICAL AMERICAN COLONIZING COMPANIES (1600-1628)...147
IX. THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION ON THE CONTINENT (1500-1625)...168
X. RELIGIOUS WARS IN THE NETHERLANDS AND GERMANY (1520-1648)...179
XI. THE ENGLISH CHURCH AND THE CATHOLICS (1534-1660)...200
XII. THE ENGLISH PURITANS AND THE SECTS (1550-1689)...210
XIII. THE POLITICAL SYSTEM OF ENGLAND (1500-1689)...240
XIV. THE ENGLISH COUNTY AND ITS OFFICERS (1600-1650)...261
XV. ENGLISH JUSTICES OP THE PEACE (1600-1650)...274
XVI. ENGLISH PARISH OR TOWNSHIP GOVERNMENT (1600-1650)...290
XVII. CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES...316
INDEX...333
MAPS
[Proofer's Note: Maps and illustrations omitted.]
MEDIAEVAL TRADE-ROUTES ACROSS ASIA (in colors)
CONQUESTS OF THE OTTOMAN TURKS (1300-1525) (in colors)
THE LAURENTIAN PORTOLANO OF 1351
PORTUGUESE DISCOVERIES ON THE COAST OF AFRICA (1340-1498)
TERRITORIAL GROWTH OF SPAIN (1230-1580)
SPHERES OF INFLUENCE ASSIGNED TO ENGLISH COMMERCIAL COMPANIES ABOUT
1625 (in colors)
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES
That a new history of the United States is needed, extending from the
discovery down to the present time, hardly needs statement. No such
comprehensive work by a competent writer is now in existence.
Individual writers have treated only limited chronological fields.
Meantime there, is a rapid increase of published sources and of
serviceable monographs based on material hitherto unused. On the one
side there is a necessity for an intelligent summarizing of the present
knowledge of American history by trained specialists; on the other hand
there is need of a complete work, written in untechnical style, which
shall serve for the instruction and the entertainment of the general
reader.
To accomplish this double task within a time short enough to serve its
purpose, there is but one possible method, the co-operative. Such a
division of labor has been employed in several German, French, and
English enterprises; but this is the first attempt, to carry out that
system on a large scale for the whole of the United States.
The title of the work succinctly suggests the character of the series,
The American Nation. A History. From Original Materials by Associated
Scholars. The subject is the "American Nation," the people combined
into a mighty political organization, with a national tradition, a
national purpose, and a national character. But the nation, as it is,
is built upon its own past and can be understood only in the light of
its origin and development. Hence this series is a "history," and a
consecutive history, in which events shall be shown not only in their
succession, but in their relation to one another; in which cause shall
be connected with effect and the effect become a second cause. It is a
history "from original materials," because such materials, combined
with the recollections of living men, are the only source of our
knowledge of the past. No accurate history can be written which does
not spring from the sources, and it is safer to use them at first hand
than to accept them as quoted or expounded by other people. It is a
history written by "scholars"; the editor expects that each writer
shall have had previous experience in investigation and in statement.
It is a history by "associated scholars," because each can thus bring
to bear his special knowledge and his special aptitude.
Previous efforts to fuse together into one work short chapters by many
hands have not been altogether happy; the results have usually been
encyclopaedic, uneven, and abounding in gaps. Hence in this series the
whole work is divided into twenty-six volumes, in each of which the
writer is free to develop a period for himself. It is the editor's
function to see that the links of the chain are adjusted to each other,
end to end, and that no considerable subjects are omitted.
The point of view of The American Nation is that the purpose of the
historian is to tell what has been done, and, quite as much, what has
been purposed, by the thinking, working, and producing people who make
public opinion. Hence the work is intended to select and characterize
the personalities who have stood forth as leaders and as seers; not
simply the founders of commonwealths or the statesmen of the republic,
but also the great divines, the inspiring writers, and the captains of
industry. For this is not intended to be simply a political or
constitutional history: it must include the social life of the people,
their religion, their literature, and their schools. It must include
their economic life, occupations, labor systems, and organizations of
capital. It must include their wars and their diplomacy, the relations
of community with community, and of the nation with other nations.
The true history, nevertheless, must include the happenings which mark
the progress of discovery and colonization and national life. Striking
events, dramatic episodes, like the discovery of America, Drake's
voyage around the world, the capture of New Amsterdam by the English,
George Rogers Clark's taking of Vincennes, and the bombardment of Fort
Sumter, inspired the imagination of contemporaries, and stir the blood
of their descendants. A few words should be said as to the make-up of
the volumes. Each contains a portrait of some man especially eminent
within the field of that volume. Each volume also contains a series of
colored and black-and-white maps, which add details better presented in
graphic form than in print. There being no general atlas of American
history in existence, the series of maps taken together will show the
territorial progress of the country and will illustrate explorations
and many military movements. Some of the maps will be reproductions of
contemporary maps or sketches, but most of them have been made for the
series by the collaboration of authors and editor. Each volume has
foot-notes, with the triple purpose of backing up the author's
statements by the weight of his authorities, of leading the reader to
further excursions into wider fields, and of furnishing the
investigator with the means of further study. The citations are
condensed as far as is possible while leaving them unmistakable, and
the full titles of most of the works cited will be found in the
critical essay on bibliography at the end of each volume. This constant
reference to authorities, a salutary check on the writer and a
safeguard to the reader, is one of the features of the work; and the
bibliographical chapters carefully select from the immense mass of
literature on American history the titles of the most authentic and the
most useful secondary works and sources. The principle of the whole
series is that every book shall be written by an expert for laymen; and
every volume must
therefore stand the double test of accuracy and of readableness.
American history loses nothing in dramatic climax because it is true or
because it is truly told. As editor of the series I must at least
express my debt to the publishers, who have warmly adopted the idea
that truth and popular interest are inseparable; to the authors, with
whom I have discussed so often the problems of their own volumes and of
the series in general; especially to the members of the committees of
the Massachusetts Historical Society, Virginia Historical Society,
Texas Historical Society, and Wisconsin State Historical Society, whose
generous interest and suggestions in the meetings that I have held with
them were of such assistance in the laying out of the work; to the
public, who how have the opportunity of acting as judges of this
performance and whose good-will alone can prove that the series
justifies itself.
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART.
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION This first volume of the series supplies a needed
link between the history of Europe and the history of early America;
for whether it came through a Spanish, French, English, Dutch, or
Swedish medium, or through the later immigrants from Germany, from
Italy, and from the Slavic countries, the American conception of
society and of government was originally derived from the European.
Hence the importance at the outset of knowing what that civilization
was at the time of colonization. Professor Cheyney (chapters i. and
ii.) fitly begins with an account of mediaeval commerce, especially
between Europe and Asia, and the effect of the interposition of the
Turks into the Mediterranean, and how, by their disturbance of the
established course of Asiatic trade, they turned men's minds towards
other routes to Asia by sea. Thence he proceeds to show (chapter iii.)
how the Italians in navigation and in map-making exhibited the same
pre-eminence as in commerce and the arts, and why Italy furnished so
many of the explorers of the western seas in the period of discovery.
It is an easy transition in chapter iv. to the dramatic story of the
efforts of the Portuguese to reach India round Africa. The next step is
to describe in some detail (chapters v. and vi.) the system of
government and of commerce which existed in Spain, France, and Holland
in the sixteenth century; and the book will surprise the reader in its
account of the effective and far-reaching administration of the Spanish
kingdom, the mother of so many later colonies. This discussion is very
closely connected with the account of Spanish institutions in the New
World as described by Bourne in his Spain in America (volume III. of
the series), and we find the same terms, such as "audiencia,"
"corregidor," and "Council of the Indies" reappearing in colonial
history. A much-neglected subject in American history is the
development of great commercial companies, which, in the hands of the
English, planted their first permanent colonies. To this subject
Professor Cheyney devotes two illuminating chapters (vii. and viii.),
in which he prints a list of more than sixty such companies chartered
by various nations, and then selects as typical the English Virginia
Company, the Dutch West India Company, and the French Company of New
France, which he analyzes and compares with one another. It is
significant that not one of these companies was Spanish, for that
country retained in its own hands complete control both of its colonies
and of their commerce.
Since English colonization was almost wholly Protestant and added a new
centre of Protestant influence, Professor Cheyney has, in two chapters
(ix. and x.), given some account of the Reformation and of the
religious wars of the sixteenth century. He brings out not only the
differences in doctrine but in spirit, and shows how, by the Thirty
Years' War, Germany was excluded from the possibility of establishing
American colonies, a lack which that country has found it impossible to
repair in our day.
The mother-country for the American nation was in greater part England;
even Scotland and Ireland contributed their numbers and their
characteristics only in the third and fourth generations of the
colonies. A considerable part of this volume, therefore (chapters xi.
to xvi.), is given up to a description of the conditions of England at
the time of the departure of the first colonists. Everybody knows, and
nobody knows clearly, the religious questions in England from Elizabeth
to James II. Here will be found a distinct and vivid account of the
struggle between churchmen, Catholics, Puritans, and Independents for
influence on the Church of England or for supremacy in the state. Why
did the Catholics in general remain loyal? Why were the Puritans
punished? Why were the Independents at odds with everybody else? Why
did not Presbyterianism take root in England? These are all questions
of great moment, and their adjustment by Professor Cheyney prepares the
way for the account of the Pilgrims who founded Plymouth colony in
Tyler's England in America (volume IV. of the series). An absolute
essential for an understanding of colonial history before the
Revolution is a clear idea of the political system of England, both in
its larger national form and in its local government. Hence the
importance of Professor Cheyney's chapters on English government. The
kings' courts, council, and Parliament all had their effect upon the
governors' courts, councils, and assemblies of the various colonies.
Prom the English practice came the superb, fundamental notion of a
right of representation and of the effectiveness of a delegated
assembly. In local government the likeness was in some respects even
closer; and Professor Cheyney's account of the English county court,
and especially of the township or parish, will solve many difficulties
in the later colonial history. In some ways Professor Cheyney's
conclusions make more striking and original the development of the
astonishing New England town-meetings. As the volume begins with the
rise of the exploring spirit, it is fitting that Prince Henry the
Navigator should furnish the frontispiece. The bibliography deals more
than those of later volumes with a literature which has been a tangled
thicket, and will shorten the road for many teachers and students of
these subjects. The significance of Professor Cheyney's volume is that,
without describing America or narrating American events, it furnishes
the necessary point of departure for a knowledge of American history.
The first question to be asked by the reader is, why did people look
westward? And the answer is, because of their desire to reach the
Orient. The second question is, what was the impulse to new habits of
life and what the desire for settlements in distant lands? The answer
is, the effect of the Reformation in arousing men's minds and in
bringing about wars which led to emigration. The third question is,
what manner of people were they who furnished the explorers and the
colonists? The answer is found in these pages, which describe the
Spaniard, the French, the Dutch, and especially the English, and show
us the national and local institutions which were ready to be
transplanted, and which readily took root across the sea.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE The history of America is a branch of that of Europe.
The discovery, exploration, and settlement of the New World were
results of European movements, and sprang from economic and political
needs, development of enterprise, and increase of knowledge, in the Old
World. The fifteenth century was a period of extension of geographical
knowledge, of which the discovery of America was a part; the sixteenth
century was a time of preparation, during which European events were
taking place which were of the first importance to America, even though
none of the colonies which were to make up the United States were yet
in existence. From the time of the settlement forward, the only
population of America that has counted in history has been of European
origin. The institutions that characterize the New World are
fundamentally those of Europe. People and institutions have been
modified by the material conditions of America; and the process of
emigration gave a new direction to the development of American history
from the very beginning; but the origin of the people, of their
institutions, and of their history was none the less a European one.
The beginnings of American history are therefore to be found In
European conditions at the time of the foundation of the colonies.
Similar forces continued to exercise an influence in later times. The
power and policy of home governments, successive waves of emigration,
and numberless events in Europe had effects which were deeply felt in
America. This influence of Europe upon America, however, became less
and less as time passed on; and the development of the American nation
has made its history constantly more independent. It is, therefore,
only with some of the most important and earliest of these European
occurrences and conditions that this book is occupied. The general
relation of America to Europe is a subject that would require a vastly
fuller treatment, and it is a subject which doubtless will increasingly
receive the attention of scholars as our appreciation of the proper
perspective of history becomes more clear. In so wide a field as that
of this volume, it has been necessary to use secondary materials for
many statements; their aid is acknowledged in the footnotes and in the
bibliography. Other parts, so far as space limits allowed, I have been
able to work out from original sources. For much valuable information,
suggestion, and advice also, I am indebted to friends and fellow-
workers, and here gladly make acknowledgment for such assistance.
EDWARD POTTS CHEYNEY.
EUROPEAN BACKGROUND OF AMERICAN HISTORY
CHAPTER I THE EAST AND THE WEST
(1200-1500)
To set forth the conditions in Europe which favored the work of
discovering America and of exploring, colonizing, and establishing
human institutions there, is the subject and task of this book. Its
period extends from the beginning of those marked commercial,
political, and intellectual changes of the fifteenth century which
initiated a great series of geographical discoveries, to the close, in
the later years of the seventeenth century, of the religious wars and
persecutions which did so much to make that century an age of
emigration from Europe. During those three hundred years few events in
European history failed to exercise some influence upon the fortunes of
America. The relations of the Old World to the New were then
constructive and fundamental to a degree not true of earlier or of
later times. Before the fifteenth century events were only distantly
preparing the way; after the seventeenth the centre of gravity of
American history was transferred to America itself.
The crowding events, the prominent men, the creative thoughts, and the
rapidly changing institutions which fill the history of western Europe
during these three centuries cannot all be described in this single
volume. It merely attempts to point out the leading motives for
exploration and colonization, to show what was the equipment for
discovery, and to describe the most significant of those political
institutions of Europe which exercised an influence on forms of
government in the colonies, thus sketching the main outlines of the
European background of American history. Many political, economic,
intellectual, and personal factors combined to make the opening of our
modern era an age of geographical discovery. Yet among these many
causes there was one which was so influential and persistent that it
deserves to be singled out as the predominant incentive to exploration
for almost two hundred years. This enduring motive was the desire to
find new routes, from Europe to the far East.
Columbus sailed on his great voyage in 1492, "his object being to reach
the Indies." [Footnote: Columbus's Journal, October 3, 21, 23, 24, etc
Cf. Bourne, Spain in America, chap, 11] When he discovered the first
land beyond the Atlantic, he came to the immediate conclusion that he
had reached the coast of Asia, and identified first Cuba and then Hayti
with Japan. A week after his first sight of land he Reports, "It is
certain that this is the main-land and that I am in front of Zayton and
Guinsay" [Footnote: Columbus's Journal, November 1] Even on his third
voyage, in 1498, he is still of the opinion that South America is the
main-land of Asia. [Footnote: Columbus's will] It was reported all
through Europe that the Genoese captain had "discovered the coast of
the Indies," and "found that way never before known to the East."
[Footnote: Ramusio, Raccolta de Navigazioni, I, 414] The name West
Indies still remains as a testimony to the belief of the early
explorers that they had found the Indies by sailing westward.
When John Cabot, in 1496, obtained permission from Henry VII. to equip
an expedition for westward exploration, he hoofed to reach "the island
of Cipango" (Japan) and the lands from which Oriental caravans brought
their goods to Alexandria. [Footnote: Letter of Soncino, 1497, in Hart,
Contemporaries, I., 70.] It is true that he landed on the barren shore
of Labrador, and that what he descried from his vessel as he sailed
southward was only the wooded coast of North America; but it was
reported, and for a while believed, that the king of England had in
this manner "acquired a part of Asia without drawing his sword."
[Footnote: Ibid. Cf. Bourne. Spain in America, chap v.] In 1501 Caspar
Cortereal, in the service of the king of Portugal, pressed farther into
the ice-bound arctic waters on the same quest, and with his companions
became the first in the dreary list of victims sacrificed to the long
search for a northwest passage. [Footnote: Harrisse, Les Cortereal]
When the second generation of explorers learned that the land that had
been discovered beyond the sea was not Asia, their first feeling was
not exultation that a new world had been discovered, but chagrin that a
great barrier, stretching far to the north and the south, should thus
interpose itself between Europe and the eastern goal on which their
eyes were fixed. Every navigator who sailed along the coast of North or
South America looked eagerly for some strait by which he might make his
way through, and thus complete the journey to the Spice Islands, to
China, Japan, India, and the other lands of the ancient East.
[Footnote: Bourne, Spain in America, chap viii.] Verrazzano, in 1521,
and Jacques Cartier, in 1534, 1535, and 1541, both in the service of
the king of France, and Gomez, in the Spanish service, in 1521, were
engaged in seeking this elusive passage. [Footnote: Pigeonneau,
Histoire du Commerce de la France, II, 142-148.] For more than a
hundred years the French traders and explorers along the St. Lawrence
and the Great Lakes were led farther and farther into the wilderness by
hopes of finding some western outlet which would make it possible for
them to reach Cathay and India. Englishmen, with greater persistence
than Spaniards, Portuguese, or French, pursued the search for this
northwestern route to India. To find such a passage became a dream and
a constantly renewed effort of the navigators and merchants of the days
of Queen Elizabeth; the search for it continued into the next century,
even after colonies had been established in America itself; and a
continuance of the quest was constantly impressed by the government and
by popular opinion upon the merchants of the Hudson Bay Company, till
the eighteenth century.
A tradition grew up that there was a passage through the continent
somewhere near the fortieth parallel. It was in the search for this
passage that Hudson was engaged, when, in the service of the Dutch
government, in 1609, he made the famous voyage in the Half Moon and hit
on the Hudson River; just as in his first voyage he had tried to reach
the Indies by crossing the North Pole, and in his second by following a
northeast route. [Footnote: Asher, Henry Hudson, the Navigator, cxcii.-
cxcvi.] Much of the exploration of the coast of South America was made
with the same purpose. To reach India was the deliberate object of
Magellan when, in 1519 and 1520, he skirted the coast of that continent
and made his way through the southern straits. The same objective point
was intended in the "Molucca Voyage" of 1526-1530, under the command of
Sebastian Cabot, [Footnote: Beazley, John and Sebastian Cabot, 152.] as
well as in other South American voyages of Spanish explorers. Thus the
search for a new route to the East lay at the back of many of those
voyages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which gradually made
America familiar to Europe.
The same object was sought in explorations to the eastward. The
earliest voyages of the Portuguese along the coast of Africa, it is
true, had other motives; but the desire to reach India grew upon the
navigators and the sovereigns of that nation, and from the accession of
John II., in 1481, every nerve was strained to find a route to the far
East. Within one twelvemonth, in the years 1486 and 1487, three
expeditions left the coast of Portugal seeking access to the East. The
first of these, under Bartholomew Diaz, discovered the Cape of Good
Hope; the second was an embassy of Pedro de Cavailham and Affonso de
Paiva through the eastern Mediterranean to seek Prester John, a search
which carried one of them to the west coast of India, the other to the
east coast of Africa; the third was an exploring expedition to the
northeast, which reached, for the first time, the islands of Nova
Zembla. [Footnote: Beazley, Henry the Navigator.] The Portuguese
ambition was finally crowned with success in the exploit of Vasco da
Gama in reaching the coast of India by way of the southern point of
Africa, in 1498; the Spanish expedition under Magellan reached the same
lands by the westward route twenty years afterwards. Even after these
successes, efforts continued to be made to reach China and the Indies
by a northeast passage around the northern coast of Europe. Successive
expeditions of Portuguese, English, French, and Dutch were sent out
only to meet invariable failure in those icy seas, until the terrible
hardships the explorers endured gradually brought conviction of the
impracticability of this, as of the northwestern, route. What was the
origin of this eagerness to reach the Indies? Why did Portuguese,
Spaniards, English, French, and Dutch vie with one another in centuries
of effort not only to discover new lands, but to seek these sea-routes
to the oldest of all lands? Why were the old lines of intercourse
between the East and the West almost deserted, and a new group of
maritime nations superseding the old Mediterranean and mid-European
trading peoples? The answer to these questions will be found in certain
changes which were in progress in those lands east of the Mediterranean
Sea, which lie on the border-line between Europe and Asia. Through this
region trade between Europe and the far East had flowed from immemorial
antiquity; but in the fifteenth century its channels were obstructed
and its stream much diminished.
Mediaeval Europe was dependent for her luxuries on Asia Minor and
Syria, Arabia and Persia, India and the Spice Islands, China and Japan.
Precious stones and fabrics, dyes and perfumes, drugs and medicaments,
woods, gums, and spices reached Europe by many devious and obscure
routes, but all from the eastward. One of the chief luxuries of the
Middle Ages was the edible spices. The monotonous diet, the coarse
food, the unskilful cookery of mediaeval Europe had all their
deficiencies covered by a charitable mantle of Oriental seasoning.
Wines and ale were constantly used spiced with various condiments. In
Sir Thopas's forest grew "notemuge to putte in ale." [Footnote:
Chaucer, Sir Thopas, line 52.] The brewster in the Vision of Piers
Plowman declares:
"I have good ale, gossip, Glutton wilt thou essay? 'What hast thou,'
quoth he, 'any hot spices?' I have pepper and peony and a pound of
garlic, A farthing-worth of fennel seed for fasting days" [Footnote:
Text C, passus VII, lines 355, etc.]
Froissart has the king's guests led to "the palace, where wine and
spices were set before them." [Footnote: Froissart, Chronicles, book
II, chap lxxx] The dowry of a Marseilles girl, in 1224, makes mention
of "mace, ginger, cardamoms, and galangale." [Footnote: Quoted in
Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, II, 433, n.] In the garden in the
Romaunt of the Rose, "Ther was eek wexing many a spyce, As clow-
gelofre, and licoryce, Gingere, and greyn de paradys, Canelle, and
setewale of prys, And many a spyce delitable, To eten when men ryse fro
table." [Footnote: Chaucer (Skeat's ed), lines 1367-1373.]
When John Ball wished to draw a contrast between the lot of the lords
and the peasants, he said, "They have wines, spices, and fine bread,
when we have only rye and the refuse of the straw." [Footnote:
Froissart, Chronicles, book II, chap lxxiii.] When old Latimer was
being bound to the stake he handed nutmegs to his friends as keepsakes.
[Footnote: Froude, History of England.]
Pepper, the most common and at the same time the most valued of these
spices, was frequently treated as a gift of honor from one sovereign to
another, or as a courteous form of payment instead of money. "Matilda
de Chaucer is in the gift of the king, and her land is worth 8 pounds,
2d, and 1 pound of pepper and 1 pound of cinnamon and 1 ounce of silk,"
reads a chance record in an old English survey. [Footnote: Festa de
Nevil, p 16.] The amount of these spices demanded and consumed was
astonishing. Venetian galleys, Genoese carracks, and other vessels on
the Mediterranean brought many a cargo of them westward, and they were
sold in fairs and markets everywhere. "Pepper-sack" was a derisive and
yet not unappreciative epithet applied by German robber-barons to the
merchants whom they plundered as they passed down the Rhine. For years
the Venetians had a contract to buy from the sultan of Egypt annually
420,000 pounds of pepper. One of the first vessels to make its way to
India brought home 210,000 pounds. A fine of 200,000 pounds of pepper
was imposed upon one petty prince of India by the Portuguese in 1520.
In romances and chronicles, in cook-books, trades-lists, and customs-
tariffs, spices are mentioned with a frequency and consideration
unknown in modern times.
Yet the location of "the isles where the spices grow" was very distant
and obscure to the men of the Middle Ages. John Cabot, in 1497, said
that he "was once at Mecca, whither the spices are brought by caravans
from distant countries, and having inquired from whence they were
brought and where they grew, the merchants answered that they did not
know, but that such merchandise was brought from distant countries by
other caravans to their home; and they further say that they are also
conveyed from other remote regions." [Footnote: Letter of Soncino, in
Hart, Contemporaries, I., 70.] Such lack of knowledge was pardonable,
considering that Marco Polo, one of the most observant of travellers,
after spending years in Asia, believed, mistakenly, that nutmegs and
cloves were produced in Java. [Footnote: Marco Polo (Yule's ed.), book
III., chap vi., 217, n.] It was only after more direct intercourse was
opened up with the East that their true place of production became
familiarly known in Europe. Nutmegs and mace, cloves and allspice were
the native products of but one little spot on the earth's surface: a
group of small islands, Banda, Amboyna, Ternate, Tidore, Pulaway, and
Prelaroon, the southernmost of the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, just
under the equator, in the midst of the Malay Archipelago. Their light,
volcanic soil, kept moist by the constant damp winds and hot by the
beams of an overhead sun, furnished the natural conditions in which the
spice-trees grew. Here the handsome shrubs that-yield the nutmeg and
its covering of mace produced a continuous crop of flowers and fruit
all the year around. Cloves grew in the same islands, as clusters of
scarlet buds, hanging at the ends of the branches of trees which rise
to a greater height and grow with even a greater luxuriance than the
nutmeg-bushes. [Footnote: Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, chap. xix.]
Pepper had scarcely a wider field of production. The forests that
clothed a stretch of the Malabar coast of India some two hundred miles
in length, and extending some miles back into the interior, were filled
with an abundant growth of pepper-vines. One of the earliest of
European travellers in India, Odoric de Pordenone, says: "The province
where pepper grows is named Malabar, and in no other part of the world
does pepper grow except in this country. The forest where it grows is
about eighteen days in length." [Footnote: Odoric de Pordenone
(D'Avezac's ed), chap. x.] John Marignolli, in 1348, also speaks of
this district as "where the world's pepper is produced." [Footnote:
Quoted in Marco Polo (Yule's ed), II., 314, n., and Sir John
Mandeville, chap, xviii.] Its habitat was, however, somewhat more
extensive, for in less abundance and of inferior quality the pepper-
vines were raised all the way south to Cape Comorin, and even in the
islands of Ceylon and Sumatra.
Cinnamon-bark was the special product of the mountain-slopes in the
interior of Ceylon, but this also grew on the Indian coast to the
westward, [Footnote: Marco Polo (Yule's ed), book III, chaps, xiv.,
xxv.] and, in the form of cassia of several varieties, was obtained in
Thibet, in the interior provinces of China, and in some of the islands
of the Malay Archipelago. Ginger was produced in many parts of the
East; in Arabia, India, and China. Odoric attributes to a certain part
of India "the best ginger that can be found in the world" [Footnote:
Odoric de Pordenone (D'Avezac's ed), chap. x.] and Marco Polo records
its production of good quality in many provinces of India and China.
[Footnote: Marco Polo (Yule's ed), book II, chap. lxxx., book III.,
chaps, xxii., xxiv., xxv, xxvi.] A great number of other kinds of
spices were produced in various parts of the Orient, and consumed there
or exported to Europe. Precious stones were of almost as much interest
to the men of the Middle Ages as were spices. For personal ornament and
for the enrichment of shrines and religious vestments, all kinds of
beautiful stones exercised an attraction proportioned to the small
number and variety of articles of beauty and taste in existence.
"No saphir ind, no rube riche of price, There lakked than, nor emeraud
so grene." [Footnote: Chaucer, Court of Love, lines 78, 79.]
These were as much characteristic products of the East as were spices.
Diamonds, before the discovery of the American and African fields of
production, were found only in certain districts in the central part of
India, especially in the kingdom of Mutfili or Golconda. Marco Polo
tells the same story of the method of getting them there that is
reported by Sindbad the Sailor. [Footnote: Marco Polo (Yule's ed), book
III., chap, xix.; Arabian Nights.] Rubies, the next most admired stone
of the Middle Ages, were also found, to some extent, in India, but more
largely in the island of Ceylon, in farther India, and, above all, in
the districts of Kerman, Khorassan, Badakshan, and other parts of the
highlands of Persia along the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers. [Footnote:
Heyd, Geschichte des Levantehandels, II., App., I.] Sapphires, garnets,
topaz, amethyst, and sardonyx were found in several of the same
districts and also in the mountains and streams of the west coast of
India, from the Gulf of Cambay all the way to Ceylon. The greatest
markets in the world for these stones were the two Indian cities of
Pulicat and Calicut; the former on the southeastern, the latter on the
western shore of the great peninsula. Pearls were then, as now,
produced only in a very few places, principally in the strait between
Ceylon and the mainland of India, and in certain parts of the Persian
Gulf. In the native states in the south of India they were, however,
accumulated in enormous quantities, and scarcely a list of Eastern
articles of merchandise omits mention of them. One of the early
European expeditions brought home among its freight 400 pearls chosen
for their size and beauty, and forty pounds of an inferior sort. The
passion of the native rajahs of India for gems had made the treasury of
every petty prince a storehouse where vast numbers of precious stones
had been garnered through thousands of years of wealth and
civilization. This mass served as the booty of successive conquerors,
and from time to time portions of it came into the hands of traders,
along with stones newly obtained from natural sources. An early
chronicler, in describing the return of the Polos to Venice from the
East, tells how, from the seams of their garments, they took out the
profits of their journeys in the East, in the form of "rubies,
sapphires, carbuncles, diamonds, and emeralds." [Footnote: Ramusio,
Raccolta, quoted in Marco Polo (Yule's ed.), book I., chap, xxxvii.]
Drugs, perfumes, gums, dyes, and fragrant woods had much the same
attraction as spices and precious stones, and came from much the same
lands. The lofty and beautiful trees from which camphor is obtained
grew only in Sumatra, Borneo, and certain provinces of China and Japan.
Medicinal rhubarb was native to the mountainous districts of China,
whence it was brought to the cities and the coast of that country on
the backs of mules. Musk was a product of the borderlands of China and
Thibet. The sugar-cane, although it grew widely in the East, from India
and China to Syria and Asia Minor, was successfully managed so as to
produce sugar in quantities that could be exported only in certain
parts of Arabia and Persia. Bagdad was long famous for its sugar and
articles preserved in sugar. Indigo was grown and prepared for dyeing
purposes in India. [Footnote: Heyd, Geschichte des Levantehandels, II.,
App., I.] Brazil wood grew more or less abundantly in all parts of the
peninsula of India and as far east as Siam and southern China. This
wood, from which was extracted a highly valued dye, made a particularly
strong impression on the mediaeval imagination. European travellers in
India gave accounts of its being burned there for firewood, as their
strangest tale of luxury and waste. It gave its name to a mythical
island of Bresil, in the western seas, which was the subject of much
speculation and romance. The same name was eventually applied to the
South American country that now bears it, because it produced a similar
dye-wood in large quantities. Sandal-wood and aloe-wood, which were
valuable for their beautiful surface and fragrance when used in
cabinet-work, and for their pleasant odor when burned as incense, grew
only in certain parts of India.
Many articles of manufacture, attractive for their material, their
workmanship, or their design, came from the same Eastern lands. Glass,
of superior workmanship to anything known in Europe, came from
Damascus, Samarcand, and Kadesia, near Bagdad. Objects of fine
porcelain came from China, and finally became known by the name of that
country. A great variety of fabrics of silk and cotton, as well as
those fibres in their raw state, came from Asia to Europe. Dozens of
names of Eastern origin still remain to describe the silk, cotton,
hair, and mixed fabrics which came to Europe from China, India,
Cashmere, and the cities of Persia, Arabia, Syria, and Asia Minor.
Brocade, damask, taffeta, sendal, satin, camelot, buckram, muslin, and
many varieties of carpets, rugs, and hangings, which were woven in
various parts of those lands, have always since retained the names of
the places which early became famous for their manufacture. The metal-
work of the East was scarcely less characteristic or less highly valued
in the West, though its varieties have not left such specific names.
[Footnote: Heyd, Geschtchte des Levantehandels, II., App., 543-699.]
Europe could feed herself with unspiced food, she could clothe herself
with plain clothing, but for luxuries, adornments, refinements, whether
in food, in personal ornament, or in furnishing her palaces, her manor-
houses, her churches, or her wealthy merchants' dwellings, she must, in
the fifteenth century, still look to Asia, as she had always done. It
is true that in the later Middle Ages many articles of beauty and
ornament were produced in the more advanced Western countries; but not
spices nor drugs, nor precious stones, nor any great variety of dyes.
Oriental rugs are even yet superior to any like productions of the
West; and a vast number of other articles of Eastern origin then held,
and indeed still hold, the markets.
In return for the goods which Europe brought from Asia a few
commodities could be shipped eastward. European woollen fabrics seem to
have been almost as much valued in certain countries of Asia as Eastern
cotton and silk goods were in Italy, France, Germany, and England.
Certain Western metals and minerals were highly valued in the East,
especially arsenic, antimony, quicksilver, tin, copper, and lead.
[Footnote: Birdwood, Hand-book to the Indian Collection (Paris
Universal Exhibition, 1878), Appendix to catalogue of the British
Colonies, pp. 1-110.] The coral of the Mediterranean was much admired
and sought after in Persia and India, and even in countries still
farther east. Nevertheless the balance of trade was permanently in
favor of the East, and quantities of gold and silver coin and bullion
were used by European merchants to buy the finer wares in Asiatic
markets. There was much general trading in Eastern marts. Numbers of
Oriental merchants, like Sindbad the Sailor and his company, "passed by
island after island and from sea to sea and from land to land; and in
every place by which we passed we sold and bought and exchanged
merchandise." The articles enumerated above were almost without
exception in demand throughout the whole East, and were bought by
merchants in one place and sold in another. Marco Polo, in describing
the Chinese city of Zayton, says: "And I assure you that for one
shipload of pepper that goes to Alexandria or elsewhere destined for
Christendom, there come a hundred such, aye and more too, to this haven
of Zayton." [Footnote: Marco Polo (Yule's ed), book II., chap. lxxxii]
Even as late as 1515, Giovanni D'Empoli, writing about China, says:
"Ships carry spices thither from these parts. Every year there go
thither from Sumatra 60,000 cantars of pepper and 15,000 or 20,000 from
Cochin and Malabar--besides ginger, mace, nutmegs, incense, aloes,
velvet, European gold-wire, coral, woollens, etc." [Footnote: Quoted in
ibid, book II., 188.] Nevertheless the attraction of the West was
clearly felt in the East. Extensive as were the local purchase and sale
of articles of luxury and use by merchants throughout India, Persia,
Arabia, Central Asia, and China, yet the export of goods from those
countries to the westward was a form of trade of great importance, and
one which had its roots deep in antiquity. A story of the early days
tells how the jealous brothers of Joseph, when they were considering
what disposition to make of him, "lifted up their eyes and looked, and,
behold, a travelling company of Ishmeelites came from Gilead, with
their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down
to Egypt." [Footnote: Genesis, xxxvii. 25.] When the prophet cries,
"Who is this that cometh from Edom, with garments dyed red from
Bozrah?" he is using two of the most familiar names on the lines of
west Asiatic trade. Solomon gave proof of his wisdom and made his
kingdom great by seizing the lines of the trade-routes from Tadmor in
the desert and Damascus in the north to the upper waters of the Red Sea
on the south. The "royal road" of the Persian kings from Sousa to
Ephesus made a long detour through northern Asia Minor, which was
inexplicable to modern archaeologists until it was perceived that it
was following the line of a trade-route much more ancient than the
Persian monarchy. [Footnote: Ramsay, The Historical Geography of Asia
Minor, chap. i.] The harbor of Berenice, named after the mother of
Ptolemy Philadelpnus, was built by him as a place of transit for goods
from India which were to be carried from the Red Sea to the Nile.
[Footnote: Hunter, Hist. of British India, I., 40.] Roman roads
followed ancient lines through Asia Minor and Syria, and medieval
routes in turn, in many places, passed by the remains of Roman
stations. Thus the East and the West had been drawn together by a
mutual commercial attraction from the earliest times, an attraction
based on the respective natural productions of the two continents, and
favored by the vast superiority of the East in the creation of articles
of beauty and usefulness.