COMMERCE, a mutual exchange, buying and selling, whether abroad or at home, but in a more specific or limited sense it denotes intercourse or trans actions of the character now described with foreign nations or with colonies; mutual exchange or buying and selling at home being designated not commerce but trade.
Phoenicians, whose prim itive seat was at Sidon and their next at Tyre, were the great commercial nation of the old world. The Greeks with all their intellect, and the Romans with their unparalleled opportunities, did not show remarkable aptitude for Commerce, nor was their success high.
In the Middle Ages, the Venetians, the Pisans, the Genoese, the Hanse or Han seatic towns and Flanders, either suc cessively or in some cases two or more together, took the lead in Commerce. The great impulse communicated by the discovery of America brought first the Spaniards and Portuguese, then the Dutch, and finally the British upon the scene. Even before this time London had become a large emporium of trade. The reign of Elizabeth gave an impulse to Commerce, and before the 16th cen tury had closed, the English engrossed, by an exclusive privilege, the Commerce of Russia; they explored the sea of Spitzbergen for a passage to the mar kets of the East; they took an active part in the trade of the Mediterranean, and they excited the jealousy of the Hanse Towns by their operations in Ger many and the continent of Europe.
Other English cities were now engaged in foreign trade, the merchants of Bris tol doing so with the Canary Islands, and those of Plymouth with the coasts of Guinea and Brazil. The English traffic with India created the Anglo-In dian empire, and it again favorably re acted on the Commerce which had given it birth.
Commerce of the United States.— Even before the Revolutionary War the Commerce of the colonies had grown to a considerable extent, so much indeed as in some departments to excite the jeal ousy of the mother country and cause the enactment of stringent customs reg ulations, discriminating against the co lonial products. For a long time after the war had ceased, the unsettled condi tion of Europe, while it gave an exten sive market for American products, yet was a source of considerable risk and annoyance to shipping, by reason of the exposure to privateering, piracy, etc., which such a condition of affairs engen dered. Despite these annoyances, how ever, American Commerce continued to increase, until the stars and stripes were familiar in every port of the earth. At the outbreak of the World War our com merce was at its height, and at the close of the war it continued to increase in volume. For the Commerce of the vari ous countries see section Commerce under those countries.