striking external expression
was embodied in the Crusades. Strangely compounded of religious
enthusiasm and political ambition, of the redeless spirit of the
knight-errant and the cool calculation of the commercial bandit, these
half-military and half-migratory movements of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries mark the beginning of that return of the West upon the East
which is so persistent a factor in all modern history. Christendom, so
long isolated, now first broke the barriers that had closed it in, and
once more extended its frontier into western Asia: Norman nobles,
establishing the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Latin Empire, enabled the
Church to guard the Holy Sepulchre, while Italian cities reaped a rich
harvest from the plunder of Constantinople and the Levantine trade.

The Latin Empire and the Kingdom of Jerusalem did not outlast the
thirteenth century, but the extension of commercial activity was a
permanent result of vital importance for the relations of Orient and
Occident. The swelling volume of Mediterranean trade which accompanied
the crusading movement depended upon the growing demand in the West for
the products of the East. Europe could provide the necessities for a
simple and monotonous life, without adornment or display. But the rise
of a burgher aristocracy, the growth of an elaborate and symbolic
ritualism in religious worship, the desire for that pomp and display
which is half the divinity of kings, created a demand for commodities
which only the East could supply,--spices for flavoring coarse food,
"notemege to putte in ale," fragrant woods and dyes and frankincense,
precious stones for personal adornment or royal regalia or religious
shrines, rich tapestries for bare interiors, "cloths of silk and gold."

All these products, and many more besides, so attractive to the unjaded
mind of Europe, celebrated in chronicle and romance from the thirteenth
to the fifteenth century, were to be found in those cities of the
Levant--in Constantinople, in Antioch or Jaffa or Alexandria--which were
the western termini to long established trade routes to the Far East.
Wares of China and Japan and the spices of the southern Moluccas were
carried in Chinese or Malay junks to Malacca, and thence by Arab or
Indian merchants to Paulicut or Calicut in southern India. To these
ports came also ginger, brazil-wood, sandal-wood, and aloe, above all
the precious stones of India and Persia, diamonds from Golconda, rubies