England was far behind most of the
Continent in industrial matters, so that there was much that could be
brought into the country that would be in demand, both of the natural
productions of foreign countries and of their manufactured articles.

Trade relations existed between England and the Scandinavian
countries, northern Germany, southern Germany, the Netherlands,
northeastern, northwestern, and southern France, Spain and Portugal,
and various parts of Italy. Of these lines of trade the most important
were the trade with the Hanse cities of northern Germany, with the
Flemish cities, and with those in Italy, especially Venice.

*22. The Italian and Eastern Trade.*--The merchandise which Venice had
to offer was of an especially varied nature. Her prosperity had begun
with a coastwise trade along the shores of the Adriatic. Later,
especially during the period of the Crusades, her training had been
extended to the eastern Mediterranean, where she obtained trading
concessions from the Greek Emperor and formed a half commercial, half
political empire of her own among the island cities and coast
districts of the Ionian Sea, along the Dardanelles and the Sea of
Marmora, and finally in the Black Sea. From these regions she brought
the productions peculiar to the eastern Mediterranean: wines, sugar,
dried fruits and nuts, cotton, drugs, dyestuffs, and certain kinds of
leather and other manufactured articles.

[Illustration: Trade Routes between England and the Continent in the
Fourteenth Century. Engraved by Bormay and Co., N.Y.]

Eventually Venice became the special possessor of a still more distant
trade, that of the far East. The products of Arabia and Persia, India
and the East Indian Islands, and even of China, all through the Middle
Ages, as in antiquity, made their way by long and difficult routes to
the western countries of Europe. Silk and cotton, both raw and
manufactured into fine goods, indigo and other dyestuffs, aromatic
woods and gums, narcotics and other drugs, pearls, rubies, diamonds,
sapphires, turquoises, and other precious stones, gold and silver, and
above all the edible spices, pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and
allspice, could be obtained only in Asia. There were three principal
routes by which these goods were brought into Europe: first, along the
Red Sea and overland across Egypt; second, up the Persian Gulf to its
head, and then either along the Euphrates to a certain point whence
the carav