GROWTH OF COMMERCE. The repeated inva sions of Italy by the Goths and Huns gave rise to the founding, for defense and for trade, of the city of Venice, about the middle of the fifth een tury—a city that for more than a thousand years stood foremost in the trade of the world. The Venetians trailed with Constantinople, Greece, Syria, Egypt. India, and Arabia, and their vessels carried the products of the East to the ports of western Europe. They had posses sions on the coast of Greece, and became rulers in the Ionian Islands and in Cyprus. Their rivals, the Genoese, planted colonies on the shores of the Hellespont and the Black Sea, the most flourishing of which was Kaffa (the modern Feodosia). in the Crimea, a great emporium of the commerce between Europe and Asia. A vast eommerce was carried on in the Middle Ages by the towns of the Hanseatic League, situated on the shores of the North Sea. and the Baltic. and the rivers flowing into them. When the chief objects of commerce were the skilled produCts of the East. the South German cities—Nuremberg and Augsburg—t h rough which trade flowed in land, vied with Venice as centres of the Eastern trade. The ports of France and Spain were busy distributing centres. At the close of the Mid dle Ages, Antwerp, having outstripped Bruges and Ghent, became the greatest mart in Chris tendom. The inventions and discoveries of the fifteenth century transferred the centres of trade successively to Lisbon, Amsterdam, and London. The mariner's compass made distant voyages pos sible on the open sea. By 14S7 the Portuguese had explored the whole western coast of Africa, and in 1497 Vasco da Gama passed round the Cape of Good Tlope, to land in India in the fol lowing year. Before the end of the century Co lumbus had thrice crossed the Atlantic, and Cabot, sent out by England, had discovered North America. Nearly all this daring enterprise had for its prime object the finding of some easy route to the fabulously wealthy East, to India and China. But a century elapsed before the English fixed their first establishment or factory in India. The discovery of the New' World, how ever, was destined eventually to change the course and the nature of trade.
From such rapidly spreading exploration and colonization there necessarily arose new wants, new products, new manufactures, and rapidly increasing trade; interrupted more or less by wars. but in the main marching steadily and rapidly on. The nineteenth century witnessed an extension of the commercial relations of man kind to which there is no parallel in history. The history of commerce in the past century ould be an epitome of the world's economic de velopment during its most intense and active period, and any enumeration of the causes of the tremendous strides which commerce has made must be partial. The progress of coloniza
tion in the widest sense, and the improvement of the means of transportation, are primary fac tors which cannot be overlooked. In the nine teenth century the greater part of the North American continent was opened up to occupa tion, Australia and South Africa were peopled by men of white race, while large portions of Asia were brought under the influence of West ern rule or Western ideas. This, together with the great increase of popnlation in Europe, has greatly augmented the productive power and con suming power of widely distant parts of the earth, dependent commerce for the supply of their mutual wants. Application of steam to transportation alike by land and by water has intensified the progress of colonization as we have here used the term, and made possible the commerce which has resulted from it.
In 1.819 the Atlantic Ocean was first crossed by a steam vessel, and regular transatlantic steam communication was inaugurated in 1838. Since then the increase of steam navigation has been rapid, particularly in the last fifty years. until DOW' the greater part of maritime navigation is carried on by steamships. Their far greater bulk and greater speed have led to the gradual dis placement of the old sailing ships, and have greatly multiplied the potentialities of foreign commerce. The railway has been a factor of the greatest consequence in the development of sea-borne traffic. Before its advent it was only the produce of coast regions, or of those parts adjacent to inland waterways, which could par ticipate in the foreign trade. But the railroad has utterly changed this condition. Of great importance, too, has been the influence of the telegraph in transmitting orders and other com munications between distant points without loss of time. These developments have made it pos sible to transport long distances not only goods whose weight formerly debarred them from a place in foreign commerce, but also more perish able goods which, under the slower transporta tion of earlier (lays, could not be handled.
Some notion of the rapid development of com merce can he gained from the statement that the aggregate exports and imports of the United States, which in 1791 were $43,000.000, reached in 1850 $318,000,000, and in the fiscal year end ing .June 30, 1900, $2,244,000,000. For a com parison with earlier dates, we may select a few figures for Great Britain and Ireland, which show the development of commerce in the past three hundred years: