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By Root 459 0

of the tenth century. Circa A.D. 1000, Erik’s son Leif reached North America. These feats were a prelude to the expansion of Europe, but they cannot be regarded as the first stages of that expansion. Ireland itself was virtually undiscovered, and to people south of Scandinavia the Vikings were pagan plunderers, almost as remote as Orientals and certainly not part of the civilized world. Moreover, Norse and Celtic medieval discoveries were never followed up. Since they were scarcely known outside the ranks of the explorers, they had no impact on the rest of the continent.

The Middle East was another matter. While the vast majority of Europeans knew almost nothing of the real Asia, some of them had been toiling busily on its fringes for three centuries. They were traders, which is significant; profit, not curiosity, was to be the prime motive behind the age of exploration. Because they were Genoese, Venetian, and, to a lesser degree, Pisan, and because they were highly successful, these merchants became major stokers of Italy’s prosperity. Their subsequent decline —after audacious Spaniards and Portuguese had discovered new ways to reach the Orient—dealt a mortal blow to that boom. The slump that followed was as responsible for the end of the Italian Renaissance as the religious rebellion against Rome.

Beginning with the crusades—from A.D. 1100 to nearly 1300—Oriental goods had reached the West through three main arteries. One was overland, on caravan roads across northern China and central Asia to the shores of the Black Sea. The other two reached the Middle East via the Indian Ocean. Cargoes were either sailed around the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, past Yemen, up the Red Sea, and from there by land to Alexandria and Gaza; or—this way was favored by dealers in the highly profitable spice trade—up the Persian Gulf and thence by caravan to the Levantine coast. The entrepreneurs who awaited them at the end of each route transshipped the goods to Italy, southern France, and the Iberian Peninsula. There wagons took over, hauling the payloads to northern Europe.

Competition between the Italians for this lucrative traffic was fierce. Even if only one out of five dhows survived a three-year voyage, the trader owning the fleet was enriched; a sack of pepper, cinnamon, ginger, or nutmeg was worth more than a seaman’s life, and a shipment from Araby would include fragrant ambergris, musk, attar of roses, silks, damasks, gold, Indian diamonds, Ceylonese pearls, and, very likely, hallucinogenic opiates. Shrewd merchants greased palms at every stage of a journey. In Middle Eastern wars they chose sides, knowing they would be rewarded by the winners. The Venetians were granted trading privileges during the fifty-seven-year Latin occupation of Constantinople, but they lost these after 1261, when the city fell to Greek troops led by Michael Palaeologus—henceforth the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII. Enterprising Genoese then replaced the Venetians by strengthening their ties with the Palaeologi. Using Constantinople as a base, they penetrated northern Persia, the Crimea, and distant reaches of the Black and Caspian seas; so ingenious were they, and so vigorous, that their central Asian contacts survived the breakup of the Mongol Empire. In Africa they sailed up the Nile as far as Dongola, in the Sudan; thrusting out from Tunis, they explored the Sahara and the Niger basin. Meantime the Venetians had established a monopoly in the Egyptian trade. Their cargoes came from South Asia—from the Moluccas, Malaya, and India’s Malabar Coast. Then, in the fifteenth century, such Venetians as Niccolò de’ Conti and John Cabot (he was born Giovanni Caboto) began penetrating the Orient directly from the west.

Yet even then the Atlantic beckoned. The traditional arteries of trade were cumbersome. Indian spices had to pass through at least twelve hands before they reached the consumer. The farther merchants were from the Middle Eastern scene, the greater their handicap. Spain and Portugal were particularly ill situated, but the Italians also