rs and merchants. The progress of English commerce was,
however, facilitated by the decay in the prosperity of many of these
older trading towns. The growth of strong governments in Denmark,
Sweden, Norway, Poland, and Russia resulted in a withdrawal of
privileges which the Hanseatic League had long possessed, and internal
dissensions made the League very much weaker in the later fifteenth
century than it had been during the century and a half before. The
most important single occurrence showing this tendency was the capture
of Novgorod by the Russian Czar and his expulsion of the merchants of
the Hanse from their settlement in that commercial centre. In the same
way most of the towns along the south coast of the Baltic came under
the control of the kingdom of Poland.

A similar change came about in Flanders, where the semi-independent
towns came under the control of the dukes of Burgundy. These
sovereigns had political interests too extensive to be subordinated to
the trade interests of individual towns in their dominions. Thus it
was that Bruges now lost much of its prosperity, while Antwerp became
one of the greatest commercial cities of Europe. Trading rights could
now be obtained from centralized governments, and were not dependent
on the interest or the antagonism of local merchants.

In Italy other influences were leading to much the same results. The
advance of Turkish conquests was gradually increasing the
difficulties of the Eastern trade, and the discovery of the route
around the Cape of Good Hope in 1498 finally diverted that branch of
commerce into new lines. English merchants gained access to some of
this new Eastern trade through their connection with Portugal, a
country advantageously situated to inherit the former trade of Italy
and southern Germany. English commerce also profited by the
predominance which Florence obtained over Pisa, Genoa, and other
trading towns. Thus conditions on the Continent were strikingly
favorable to the growing commercial enterprise of England.

*43. The Merchants Adventurers.*--English merchants who exported and
imported goods in their own vessels were, with the exception of the
staplers or exporters of wool and other staple articles, usually
spoken of as "adventurers," "venturers," or "merchants adventurers."
This term is used in three different senses. Sometimes it simply means
merchants who entered upon adventure or risk by sending their goods
outside of the country