It is known that trade with the East was a matter of exceptional importance for Western Europe. It is also known that trade with the East permeated the entire "antique" era, including the Roman. And until the 19th century, this was one of the most "sore spots" in Western European foreign policy relations.
That is why AM Petrov in his book The Great Silk Road mentions the following facts: “The Roman Pliny the Elder … writes that annually from the Roman Empire in this direction (to the East. - Author) 100 million sesterces, 50 million. went to India, the second half was taken by trade with China and Arabia … The dissatisfaction of the Roman statesmen with such a leak of precious metals and high prices is an almost invariable leitmotif of messages related to Chinese, Indian or Arabian goods."
The same motives sounded loudly in the 17th century. “The French traveler of the 17th century, François Bernier, compared, for example, Hindustan with an abyss that consumes a significant part of the gold and silver of the whole world,“which, as he wrote, “find many ways to get there from all sides, and almost none - for exit from there (AM Petrov).
At the beginning of the 17th century, the English economist Edward Misselden stated with alarm: “The money is getting smaller as a result of trade with non-Christian countries, with Turkey, Persia and the East Indies … The money that is exported for trade with non-Christian peoples in the above countries is always spent and never come back."
“There are a great many such written evidence of statistics,” sums up A. M. Petrov, “it was only in the 19th century that the European industrial revolutions, having made a revolution in the production of marketable products, made them of high quality and very cheap, were able to stop this flow (of Western European gold to the East. - Auth.), And western goods in the eastern markets for the first time became more than competitive."
Since the Middle Ages, continues this modern author, “the whole ships were transported to the shores of the eastern Mediterranean… medieval European states. And from there she was transported along the trade routes by merchants … throughout Asia. The Venetian Doge Tomaso Mocenigo (his reign dates back to 1414-1423) noted in his will that Venice annually mints 1.2 million gold and 800 thousand silver ducats, of which about 300 thousand ducats are sent to Syria and Egypt.
Sometimes the numbers were higher. For example, in 1433, 460 thousand ducats were delivered to Alexandria and Beirut … Apparently, these were mainly gold coins … They brought money in exchange for oriental goods and the French, the British, and all other European nations."
The Great Silk Road.
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“The outflow (of gold and silver from Western Europe to the East. - Author) did not stop after the Great Geographical Discoveries. About him with indignation in 1524 wrote … Martin Luther.
Over time, the flow of silver from Western Europe to Russia stopped. And then in Russia they began to look for their own silver sources of precious metals. Found.
At the very beginning of the 18th century, the first and then the only Russian silver mine began operating in Nerchinsk. However, according to IG Spassky, he "did not give even a couple of poods in a year."
Let us recall that before the opening of the first, still low-capacity mine, Russia was literally flooded with silver and gold in the absence of its own enterprises for their extraction. And no wonder.
According to A. M. Petrov, since the "ancient" times, the trade "connection between the two extreme points - the Roman Empire and the Celestial Empire" was carried out through the "monopoly mediation of the Persians and some other red-haired and blue-eyed intermediaries … whom the Romans often mistaken for the Chinese. ". "Pliny writes that the value of Indian goods on the Roman market was a hundred times higher than the original."
But now we perceive the meaning of the word "China" in the Middle Ages differently. This is Kitia or Scythia, that is, Russia. Therefore, it was not for nothing that the Romans "mistook" the red-haired and blue-eyed merchants-intermediaries for the Chinese. Moreover, they met with them, most likely, at fairs in cities on the Volga, Don, or, later, in Moscow Kitay-Gorod.
The residents of Kitai-gorod were called Chinese?
AM Petrov rightly notes: "The fact that the West paid the East with precious metals testified not to its wealth, but to its poverty."
Western European states did their best to stop the outflow of their gold and silver. But nevertheless, gold was transported to the East by ships. But to load these ships, one had to tremble over every penny.
“There were bans and restrictions on the export of hard coins and ingots, a taboo on wearing silk clothes, etc., etc. But this did not help much. Goods were needed to eliminate the passivity of trade. However, Europe had almost nothing to offer: its handicrafts were rough, of poor quality, and were not in demand among the eastern consumer. The East provided itself with everything necessary”(AM Petrov).
It is possible that due to such a one-way trade exchange, the medieval West was in a difficult economic situation for a long time. Western Europe, writes A. M. Petrov, “in the early Middle Ages, relying only on its own, I'm not afraid to say, beggarly resources, was forced to sharply curtail ties with Asia … V. Sombart, speaking about the underdevelopment of Western European society at that time, emphasizes the following eloquent circumstance: "In the vast empire of the Frankish king there was, in fact, not a single city, there was no city life." Another authority on the history of the Western European Middle Ages - I. M. Kulischer gives the following description: the needs of a European were limited to “simple and rough food, a rather primitive dwelling and a few items of clothing and utensils, reminiscent in their simplicity of the environment of … wild peoples. And the estates lived a little better up to the dukes and kings."
The same author continues: “Subsequently, the West will have to make tremendous efforts to eliminate this superiority due to scientific and industrial revolutions, a huge and interconnected system of inventions, and the introduction of fundamentally new industries, and while medieval Western European society was struggling to find anything from the products that could somehow interest the East. It was mainly a raw material: some copper, some tin, some other metals; a small part of Asian goods was exchanged with the Middle Eastern rulers for ship timber … The discovery of America and the influx of gold and silver from there made it easier for Europeans to cover imports from the East."
The flow of American gold made it easier for Europe to import from the East.
THE GREAT SILK ROAD
Silk was one of the main commodities that the West bought from the East, beginning in the early Middle Ages. And they paid a lot of money for it.
AM Petrov writes: “We can talk endlessly about the goods that traveled along the Great Silk Road, but it’s impossible to list them at all. Porcelain, furs, slaves (especially women), metal products, spices, incense, medicines, ivory, thoroughbred horses, and precious stones were traded here. But there was also a commodity of goods. It was he who gave the name to this path.
Further, A. M. Petrov notes. “The question should be answered: why… such a constant excitement around silk throughout antiquity and the entire Middle Ages, why is it so expensive?
Of course, this is a lightweight, durable, beautiful and comfortable fabric … But this fabric has one more, much more important … feature - it has disinsection properties. The silkworm thread has a unique … ability to scare away lice, fleas and other arthropods, preventing them from nesting in the folds of clothing. And this, despite the widespread, sometimes monstrous unsanitary conditions in the past centuries, was literally salvation for the owner of a silk dress.
Silk has pest control properties.
What has been said, the author continues, is by no means an exaggeration. Here are quotes from the works of two of the largest researchers in the economic history of medieval Europe - Iosif Mikhailovich Kulischer and Fernand Braudel. The first one writes: “The people, the houses, and the streets were dirty. All sorts of insects nested in the rooms, which in particular found a comfortable place for themselves on difficult-to-clean canopies, arranged above the beds precisely to protect against insects on the ceiling. But they were both in the dress and on the body. " Fernand Braudel adds: "Fleas, lice and bedbugs swarmed in both London and Paris, both in the homes of the rich and in the homes of the poor."
Therefore, silk was a vital necessity. With its high cost, it was available only to the rich. "Let the threads not be worth their weight in gold!" - replied the Roman emperor Aurelian (as we understand, probably in the XIII or XIV century AD) to his wife when she asked permission to buy a crimson silk cloak. The fact is, adds Flavius Vopisk the Syriacusian (author or editor of the 17th century. - Author), who has preserved this conversation for us, that at that time "a pound of silk was worth a pound of gold."
In general, the emperor, the richest citizen of Rome, refused to buy.
And what about the East?
A. M. Petrov: "Travelers of the past constantly paid attention to the seemingly egregious contrasts in the life of nomads: the terrifying unsanitary conditions and dirt and the simultaneous wearing of silk clothes by even the poorest of them."
And what about Russia?
It is well known that even without silk clothes, Russians practically did not have lice at home. Because in Russia they washed in baths, which in the West were almost non-existent due to the high cost of firewood. In the baths, it was easy to wash without soap.
But in the military campaigns of Russia, everyone, even the poorest warrior, had a silk shirt.
It is known that in Western Europe, lice began to disappear only after the invention of soap.
Perhaps many are accustomed to the idea that the "antique" and medieval West, drowning in luxury, could easily buy expensive oriental spices in order to please the refined taste of its aristocrats.
Spices were used as a medicine.
Indeed, in addition to silk, spices were brought from the East to Western Europe, but they were used not so much as food additives, but, more importantly, as medicines.
AM Petrov: “Ancient medicine is already well aware of the pharmacological properties of spices and incense”. Cinnamon, pepper, cardamom, ginger, backgammon, tropical aloe are present in the writings of the outstanding "ancient" scientist Hippocrates and another major authority on "ancient" medicine - Galen. “When at the beginning of the 17th century in England there was a fierce dispute between supporters and opponents of trade with Asia (and she took huge amounts of precious metals for her goods, and in particular for spices), the scales were largely tipped in favor of continuing these ties after English economist Thomas Maine. Spices, he wrote … a thing necessary to maintain health or cure disease."
Thus, the West bought spices, most likely out of dire necessity, and not as a luxury item. And again they had to pay for medicines in silver and gold.
The Middle Ages smells of sewage and the stench of rotting bodies.
