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Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hung. Volume 60 (1), 9 31 (2007) DOI: 10.1556/AOrient.60.2007.1.

HUNGARY AND THE LEVANTINE TRADE IN THE 14TH 17TH CENTURIES


ZSIGMOND PL PACH (died in 2001)

Scholarly literature on the late mediaeval and early modern Levantine trade has it that in the 14th 15th centuries eastern spices and other maritime (Levantine) goods arrived in Hungary not from Venice, but mainly from the Dalmatian towns of the Adriatic Sea, through the so-called route of Zara (Zadar). The author of this article tries to point out that out of these two western trade routes the so-called Venezianerstrasse connecting Tarvisio and Vienna from where the eastern goods were transported to Hungary was far more important. Then he demonstrates the existence and significance of the spice route leading from the Black Sea via Wallachia to Transylvania and then further to the interior of Hungary. Thirdly, he establishes that at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries the quantity of pepper imported from the direction of the Black Sea was four-and-a-half to five times as much as the pepper arriving from the direction of the Adriatic Sea. In the second part of the article, the author outlines the crucial changes in 16th-century commerce. The trade of eastern spices from Wallachia via Transylvania to Hungary continued for a while, but then gradually diminished and finally ebbed away in the second half of the century. They were replaced by Turkish goods (different cotton and silk fabrics, yarns and leather ware) which originated from the Ottoman Empire and not from the Far East. Simultaneously, along with the revival of the Levantine spice trade of Venice, the Venezianerstrasse also regained its significance and the pepper import from Vienna to Western and Northern Hungary was also restored. At about the same time, a new and abundant trade route opened up towards Buda from Constantinople through Belgrade mainly with new (Muslim and Orthodox) mediators. The various spices and Turkish articles arrived mainly on this route, a part of which travelled further west (in Habsburg Hungary and Vienna as well). By the middle of the 17th century a radical turn had taken place in international spice trade: from that time onward, eastern spices were transported to Hungary and further to Vienna not from Constantinople, but the other way round, they arrived from Vienna through Hungary to Constantinople. Key words: economic history, Levantine trade, international trade routes, supply of the Hungarian markets with maritime goods or Turkish goods.

0001-6446 / $ 20.00 2007 Akadmiai Kiad, Budapest

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From 1879 to the 1930s international and Hungarian historiography, concerning late mediaeval and early modern Levantine trade, generally accepted two tenets of Wilhelm Heyds (1879) classical monograph on the Geschichte des Levantehandels im Mittelalter. One of the common tenets applied to the 14th15th centuries. It said that from the late 13th century on, when the hegemony of Venice in the Eastern Mediterranean and that of Genoa on the Black Sea was established, the spices of India, the Levantine goods, could get into Hungary only from the direction of the Adriatic Sea, either directly from Venice or from the Dalmatian towns or indirectly, on the Venice Semmering route, via Vienna. The adherents of this view insisted that it was impossible to find conclusive proofs in the sources that Levantine goods (eastern spices) should have been brought into the country directly from the south-east or east, from the area of the Black Sea. Hungarian and Transylvanian Saxon historians such as Dezs Csnki, Oszkr Meltzl, Sndor Domanovszky, Ambrus Pleidell and Antal Fekete-Nagy, who worked out this thesis, emphasised the importance of the Dalmatian towns, especially that of Zara (Zadar), as suppliers of goods, mentioned several times in the documents of Louis I of Anjou, King of Hungary (Csnki 1880, pp. 31, 36, 40; Meltzl 1892, p. 721). They also categorically denied the possibility of a direct Levantine trade from the east, through Transylvania in the 14th15th centuries. They claimed that their reference to Wilhelm Heyds work reinforced their ideas. But the reference was incorrect, as the excellent German researcher did not express his opinion in connection with the 14th15th but with the 10th 13th centuries. This opinion was contrary to the earlier ideas according to which early mediaeval Levantine trade took place on the Hungarian route or to the legend of the Levantine trade carried out on the Danube, as it was later on rated by Franz Bastian. Heyd simply did not deal with the question of the late mediaeval TransylvanianHungarian route (Heyd 1879, Vol. I, pp. 9495; Vol. II, pp. 717718; Bastian 192930, p. 289). The other commonly accepted tenet of the historiography of Levantine trade was about the changes in the 16th century. Its protagonists claimed that from the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century, when the Portuguese sailors opened the sea routes around Africa and the Ottoman Turks occupied Syria and Egypt, the traditional routes of Levantine trade were abolished and the transportation of eastern spices and Indian goods was directed to the route around the Cape of Good Hope: henceforth it was only this sea route through which the valuable articles of the Far East got to Western Europe; and only from the Atlantic coasts, from the international spice markets of Lisbon and Antwerp, replacing Venice, did they travel to the countries of East-Central Europe, among others to Hungary. So these goods arrived even more from the west. The proponents of this tenet also referred to Heyd, and now rightly so, as the German scholar described the appearance of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean (14981502) and the occupation of Syria and Egypt by the Ottomans (15161517) as the double final blow to mediaeval Levantine trade (die beiden Schlusskatastrophen des mittelalterlichen Levantehandels) (Heyd 1879, Vol. II, p. 505).

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As far as the first tenet about the 14th15th centuries is concerned, Dnes Huszti had already expressed his doubts about it in 1941, mainly in connection with its Dalmatian version. However, the careful examination of the question has taken place only in the past thirty years. Zsuzsa Teke dealt with the Venetian connection in her important study, and I myself wrote about the so-called route of Zara and the route leading from the Black Sea through Transylvania; Jnos Hvris publications also touched upon the latter (Huszti 1941, pp. 1314, 74; Pach 1976, pp. 11761194; Teke 1979, pp. 2125, 5556; Hvri 1984, pp. 115141). In the following essay I try to summarise the results of my research on this topic. As far as the second tenet on the 16th-century changes is concerned, international economic history writing has produced a significant turn mainly in the past sixty years. First, the renowned English historian, A. H. Lybyer, already in 1915, denied the widespread view that the 15th century Ottoman advance blocked the traditional routes of eastern commerce which resulted in the search for a direct sea route to India. Then the famous economic historian from Leningrad, Josef Kulischer, in his seminal work Allgemeine Wirtschaftsgeschichte, doubted already in 1929 that the old routes of oriental trade were suddenly cut by the Portuguese advance in the Far East around the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries (Lybyer 1915, pp. 577588; Kulischer 1929, Vol. II, p. 235). The excellent American researcher of Venice, Frederic C. Lane, pointed out convincingly in his studies of 1933 and 1940 that the appearance of the Portuguese in India did not entail the final decline of Levantine spice trade. After the crisis of the early 16th century the flow of spices revived on the traditional routes of the Near East in spite of the obstacles built by the Portuguese. It was not only Egypt but also Syria that had its share in the boom, the peak of which was in the 1560s and 1570s. From there Venice mediated a lot of pepper and other spices to the European markets again. The final blow to the Venetian and Portuguese spice trade was only dealt by the penetration of the Dutch and the English into the Indian Ocean, but it happened only about a hundred years later, in the early decades of the 17th century (Lane 1933, pp. 219239; 1940, pp. 581590). F. C. Lanes results have been complemented and further developed by Fernand Braudel, V. Magelhes-Godinho, S. Y. Labib, Ralph Davis, C. H. H. Wake, Niels Steensgaard and others. On the basis of all this it can be regarded as proven that, during the 16th century, the Mediterranean pepper (that is the goods transported on the Levantine route) and the Atlantic pepper (that is the articles transported round Africa to Lisbon and Antwerp) still competed on the European markets and it was only the 17th century that saw the final victory for the Atlantic route, when the Netherlands and England assumed leadership of the international markets in the spice sector too (Braudel 1966, Vol. I, pp. 493505; Steensgaard 1974, pp. 155174; Wake 1979, pp. 361371). So in Part II of this study I would like to show the results of my research on this question: whether and if so, to what an extent were the above-mentioned international developments reflected in the Levantine trade of Hungary, more closely in the spice supply of the Hungarian market.

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I
Let us survey the first period and the first tenet. Two basic questions have to be answered here. First: is it true that in the 14th15th centuries eastern spices arrived in Hungary only from the direction of the Adriatic Sea, and, at least in the time of King Louis of Anjou, they were exported not from Venice but mainly from the Dalmatian towns, through the so-called route of Zara? Second: are those historians right who think that it cannot be proved on the basis of sources that spices were also transported to the country from the direction of the Black Sea? 1. As far as the first question, the Adriatic Dalmatian thesis is concerned, its proponents, from Dezs Csnki to Antal Fekete-Nagy, refer to such charters (1367, 1370, etc.) of Louis of Anjou in which the king gave privileges to the merchants of the Transylvanian Saxon towns, Brass (Kronstadt, Braov) and Nagyszeben (Hermannstadt, Sibiu) for the journey to Dalmatia, namely to Zara, with the stereotype reasoning that the Hungarian Kingdom should abound in maritime goods and articles (ideo, ut regnum Hungariae rebus et bonis maritimis locupletetur) (Fejr 1834b, pp. 234235; Zimmermann Werner Mller 1897, pp. 361362). These documents seemed to prove for them that Hungary received eastern goods not from the Black Sea region through Transylvania, but from the area of the Adriatic Sea through Dalmatia, as even the Transylvanian merchants travelled as far as Zara to buy maritime goods. Moreover, some of them claimed that the rich Dalmatian spice imports provided other countries like Bohemia and Poland, so the Adriatic Dalmatian connection assumed a world trade significance in Hungary during the time of King Louis (Pleidell 1925, pp. 5356, 60; Fekete-Nagy 1926, pp. 35, 47, 6164; Hman [Szekf] 1936, Vol. II, pp. 97100, 260261). The careful examination of evidence, however, does not justify these statements, not even for the fifty years after the Peace of Zara in 1358, when the Dalmatian towns did not belong to Venice but to the Hungarian Kingdom. The sources (mainly published by Fejr, Wenzel, Zimmermann Werner Mller, Ljubi, Tkali) reveal that Louis of Anjou tried to open a route that had not been used before when he encouraged the Transylvanian and Hungarian merchants, among them those of Pozsony (Pressburg, Bratislava), and also the rivals of Venice, the merchants of Genoa, to take up the Dalmatian connection so that they should get used to travelling on the route of Zara (quod iidem in ipsa via Jadrensi procedere assuescant), but they do not testify to the fact that these merchants really purchased the abundance of maritime goods from Zara (Fejr 1834a, Vol. IX/3, pp. 552553; Fejr 1834b, Vol. IX/4, pp. 227229; Fejr 1842, Vol. IX/7, pp. 198199, 297299; Liber 1857, pp. 854858; Zimmermann Werner Mller 1897, pp. 354355, 361362). On the other hand, Venices chief ambition in her Dalmatian policy was that Levantine goods could not be brought to Zara or its environs from other places than Venice (non possint deferri Jadram vel districtum aliunde, quam de Venetiis), as it was expressed in a charter of 1347, and to fulfil this she took severe measures, based on her naval power, even after accepting the terms of the Peace of Zara in 1358 (Ljubi 1872, Vol. III, pp. 13, 336; Ljubi 1874, Vol. IV, pp. 15, 26, 102105).
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King Louiss attempt to create a Hungarian Dalmatian trade independent of Venice was an ambitious but short-lived experiment which brought few tangible results and was already taken off the agenda before the Dalmatian coast was regained by the Venetians. The terms route of Zara and maritime goods sometimes turned up in the charters issued by King Sigismund, though in 1402 he already mentioned Zengg (Senj) instead of Zara as the terminal point by the sea, and from 1406 no trace of the above terms can be revealed in the documents (Fejr 1834d, Vol. X/2, pp. 308 309; Fejr 1841, Vol. X/4, pp. 108116, 121124; Zimmermann Werner Mller 1902, pp. 128129, 388, 399400). 2. In the supply of 14th15th-century Hungary with maritime goods, i.e. Levantine merchandise the import from the Adriatic Sea played an important role indeed, though it did not arrive from Zara but as far as the Dalmatian coast is concerned from Ragusa, the port that acknowledged the Hungarian king only formally and temporarily and that carried out an independent trade with the Levant. But most of it came from the other seaside, from Venice. The route proceeded from the city of St. Marc either to Zengg, and from here to Zagreb, or through Grz, Laibach (Ljubljana) and Pettau (Ptuj) directly to Hungary; from the point of view of the trade with the interior of the country the latter route was more significant. But the Hungarian market received the bulk of the Venetian spice import indirectly through the so-called Venezianerstrasse, the route connecting Tarvisio, Judenburg, Semmering and Vienna, on which the Austrian merchants showed great activity quite early and preserved their mobility for a long time (Simonsfeld 1887, Vol. II, pp. 4954, 9798; Mayer 1909, pp. 9, 3233; Teke 1979, pp. 8588). From Vienna, most of the goods were transported to Pozsony, the chief commercial and customs centre of the western part of Hungary, then from here to the fast developing Buda. It is characteristic that King Louis, simultaneously with his charters encouraging the Dalmatian trade, also issued instructions (1366, 138081) that forbade the Hungarian toll-collectors on the Danube to exact from the merchants of Vienna different presents, namely pepper from their goods and commodities (de eorum rebus et mercibus diversa munera, piper scilicet), apart from the usual toll (Fejr 1834c, Vol. IX/5, pp. 384386, 487 489). Some decades later the Ofner Stadtrecht (14031439) and other sources presented Buda (Ofen) as a lively market for spices. In 1438, merchants from Breslau (Wrocaw) sold cloth from Grliz in Buda and bought pepper, probably from traders of Ragusa. Two years earlier, the customs tariff of Buda, compiled by Joannes Siebenlinder in 1436, referred to spice import right from Venice, when it imposed the thirtieth customs duty de uno karig piperis: the karig-cargo was the usual measure of pepper in Venice (Von Breslau 1781, pp. 354356; Fejr 1843, Vol. X/8, pp. 662 669; Mollay 1959, pp. 100, 193). The thirtieth book (customs book) of Pozsony from 145758 testifies that the merchants of Buda bought pepper in Pozsony, which was obviously transported from Venice and imported directly from Vienna. The thirtieth book of Pozsony also gives information about the quantity of the imported spices. In the 14571458 fiscal year (from the end of April 1457 to the end of April 1458), when the foreign trade of Hungary was booming, the main item of the spice import, the pepper import amounted to 166 2/3 centners and it was worth
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5000 golden florins. As this centner weighed 58.8 kg, the amount of pepper arriving in Hungary along the main route of the Adriatic spice import totalled 98 metric quintals (Kovts 1902, pp. 144153, 170171, 211213). 3. Let us turn our attention now from the Adriatic to the Black Sea, that is the second question of the first tenet. Are those historians right who think that it is impossible to prove on the basis of sources that Levantine goods, maritime articles were transported to Hungary from the south-east in this period? According to my research, the answer to this question is a definite no. The existence and significance of the spice route leading from the Black Sea to Transylvania can be proved without doubt. (The documentary evidence can be found mainly in the charter collections of Fejr, Teleki, Hurmuzaki, Bogdan, Gndisch and Mlyusz.) King Louis in 1358 and Vladislav, the Voivode of Wallachia in 1368 gave privileges to the burghers of Brass for the Transalpine that is Transcarpathian trade (Fejr 1833, Vol. IX/2, pp. 688689; Fejr 1834b, Vol. IX/4, pp. 4, 148150; Zimmermann Werner Mller 1897, pp. 152153, 306307). The charters of the Transylvanian Voivode, Stibor, who was a chief dignitary of King Sigismund, from 1412 and those of Mircea cel Btrn, the prince of Wallachia from 1413 clarify that the Transylvanian Saxon merchants mainly exported cloth deriving from Flanders, Italy, Cologne, Silesia, just as ironware and knives. They imported Wallachian agricultural products fish, cattle, leather, wax, honey and pepper, saffron, ginger, clove, goat wool, camels hair, cotton and other goods which came from the sea, and were brought to the coastal areas by Muslim merchants (per Sarracenos asportantur). According to the document of 1368, the Saxons had to pay tributum in Cmpulung after their sales and purchases in Wallachia. On the other hand, if they travelled to a foreign country through Wallachia, they also paid tricesima, namely if they travelled through Brila, they paid one thirtieth, if they chose another way (the Bulgarian territories south of the Danube) they paid two thirtieths: on their way there in Cmpulung and on their way back at the Danube. According to the regulations of 14121413 they had to pay toll in Wallachia at Rucr (next to Cmpulung), at Dmbovia, Trgovite, Trguor and Brila. If they passed Wallachia, they owed a thirtieth when they crossed the Danube and on their way back from the coast or the areas beyond the Danube venientes de marinis partibus seu trans Danubium (Bogdan 1902, pp. 35; Zimmermann Werner Mller 1902, pp. 544547; Gndisch 1937, pp. 425426). Later Wallachian charters (by Radul Praznaglava: 142122; Dan II: 1424, 1431; Vlad Dracul: 1437, 1444; etc.) also stipulated that a thirtieth must be paid after pepper, saffron, cotton, camels hair, goat wool and other goods that arrive from the sea by those Transylvanian merchants who travelled on the Brass route to Brila and beyond right up to the sea, the great sea (Bogdan 1902, pp. 910, 1223, 4950; Gndisch 1937, pp. 149151, 168173, 222228, 373374, 426429, 609610, 626 628). (In contemporary Latin the Black Sea was sometimes called Pontus Euxinus, more often mare magnum or mare maius, the Azovian sea was called mare minus.) Leaving Brila, the Saxon merchants reached the Black Sea at Chilia (the earlier Licostomo) in the Danube delta first. Here there were merchants of Genoa from
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as early as the 1360s, who upheld lively connections with their other Pontic settlements, among them with Moncastro (Maurocastro, Cetatea Alb, Akkerman, Belgorod) established about that time at the estuary of the Dniester and mainly with their most important colony at the Black Sea, Caffa (Theodosia), which had been established a century earlier on the Crimean Peninsula and became the emporium of Levantine trade, even outweighing Tana, the Venetian colony at the Don estuary (Heyd 1879, Vol. II, pp. 159168, 347, 398; Iorga 1899, pp. 34, 39, 4749, 5253; Lopez 1977, pp. 1333). The spices and other goods arriving from the sea and bought by the Transylvanian merchants in Wallachia and Moldavia must have been received mainly through this supply-route. This route leading from the region of China to Caffa and Chilia, and further to this parts, that is to Hungary (a regione Cathan [= Cathay, Kitay] in Caffam et ad portum Kyliae et demum ab illinc versus partes istas) was taken into consideration by Emperor Sigismund, King of Hungary, when he, similarly to King Louis, tried to break the hegemony of Venice in Levantine trade in alliance with Genoa not only in the Adriatic but also from the direction of the Black Sea, and during his warfare with Venice he made efforts to create a direct commercial connection between Caffa and Chilia on the one hand and the south-German towns on the other, through Transylvania and Hungary (1412, 1418) (Schulte 1900, pp. 513520; Heimpel 1930, pp. 145156; Papacostea 1976, pp. 421436). The Wallachian Voivode, Vladislav II also intended to import weapons from Brass on this route to our court in Trgovite, from there to Brila and then to Chilia (ad curiam nostram in Tergovistia, ab hinc ad Braillam, ab hinc vero usque Kylie) in 14531454 to resist the growing Ottoman threat (Gndisch 1975, pp. 391 446). It should be noted that Chilia had already been temporarily ruled by the Ottomans in 1420, but soon it got back to Moldavia, then in 1448 it was occupied by the Hungarian Governor Jnos Hunyadi, afterwards the Wallachian Voivode laid claim to it, then it was possessed by the Voivode of Moldavia, namely tefan el Mare, until 1484, its final occupation by the Ottomans. Apart from the Brila Chilia Caffa route we must pay attention to the stipulation of the charters that if the merchants of Brass do not go through Brila but take another route and they cross the Danube at Drstor (Silistra) or Giurgiu or Nikopol they are obliged to pay two thirtieths (Fejr 1834b, Vol. IX/4, pp. 148150; Bogdan 1902, pp. 2023; Gndisch 1937, pp. 426429). It testifies to the fact that they extended their activity to the Balkan areas south of the Danube, that is the area of the so-called second Bulgarian state, which had surrendered to the Ottomans already at the end of the 14th century. But the maritime goods of the Saxon merchants could partly come from this territory as well, for example from Calliacra (on the coast of the Black Sea, north of Varna) mentioned in such a context in a charter by King Sigismund in 1402. That town played an important role as early as in the second Bulgarian state and had contacts with other Pontic settlements of Genoa (Mlyusz 1956, pp. 223224; Nikolova 1979, pp. 4446). Moreover, it cannot be excluded that some Saxon merchants might have travelled as far as Pera, the Genoese quarter of Constantinople (referred to in documents of 1412 and 1418) and that they had direct or indirect commercial links with the market of Constantinople, which gained its spice
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supply not only from the Black Sea but also from Syria and Asia Minor through Bursa, mainly in the late 15th century (nalck 1960, pp. 131147). Finally, looking to the north again, let us have a glance at the route leading from Caffa to Cetatea Alb (Akkerman), and from here not to Chilia but through Moldavia to Transylvania, entering it at Radna and Beszterce (Bistritz, Bistria). Upon the proposal of the Saxon burghers of Beszterce, another charter by Voivode Stibor of Stiboricz in 1412 regulated the customs duties of those crossing the thirtieth station of Radna (tributum vel tricesima ab in Rodna intrantibus vel exeuntibus in Muldaviam) when it specified the western cloth (from Flanders, Cologne and Silesia) as the main article of export and, besides the products of Moldavian animal husbandry, the eastern spices, pepper and ginger, as the main article of import (Teutch 1859, pp. 286287; Zimmermann Werner Mller 1897, pp. 526529). A document from 1475, a few months before the occupation of Caffa by the Ottomans, reports on another import article transported on the same route but further away: the government of Genoa demanded compensation from the town of Beszterce because a merchant of Caffa who took fourteen slave girls for the use of his fellow burghers (qui servas quatuordecim ad usum nostrorum civium conducebat) was robbed in the mountains around Beszterce on his way to Genoa (Nistor 1911, p. 192). 4. The continuity of spice transportation from Wallachia to Transylvania can be evidenced in the late 15th century as well, even after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and that of Chilia and Cetatea Alb in 1484, which supports the opinion that the Ottoman advance did not block the traditional routes of Levantine trade. These circumstances provided the background of the commercial policy of the Hungarian Jnos Hunyadi and Mtys Hunyadi towards the east, as well as that of the contemporary Voivodes of Wallachia, who often replaced one another in power under bloody conditions. Jnos Hunyadis claim to Chilia, occupied in 1448, and to Ragusa on the Adriatic coast (in the Latin translation of the original Slav text Dobronit = Dubrovnik) was recognised by Sultan Mehmed II in his armistice concluded with the dominus gubernator in 1452 for three years, which at the same time ensured the Ottoman subjects undisturbed trading in Hungary and the same for the Hungarian subjects in the Ottoman Empire (homines mercatores dominii mei in regno Hungariae aut similiter mercatores Hungariae in terra dominii mei) (Iorga 1914, pp. 2931). The following year, 1453, was an outstanding date in world history but it was not in the history of Levantine trade. The commercial privileges of the inhabitants of the Genoese quarter of the occupied Byzantium were confirmed soon by the victorious Sultan in the same year with a few modifications (only their political prerogatives were curtailed) (Iorga 1914, pp. 1122; Lybyer 1915, pp. 581582; Ashtor 1983, pp. 445450). From this time on it was not in the turnover of the Levantine routes or in the continuity of the spice transportation that the changes could be felt but in the mediation of eastern goods and in the persons of the mediators in both sections of the mediation. On the one hand, it is conspicuous that with the Ottoman occupation of the Genoese colonies the mediation of Levantine goods in the first section of their way was gradually taken over by Turkish merchants, more exactly by Ottoman subjects:
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Muslim, Greek, Bulgarian, Armenian, Jewish merchants, different Balkano-Levantine elements as it can be perceived already in the charters of the Wallachian Voivode, Basarab Laiot, from around 1475 (Tocilescu 1931, pp. 9095). Apparently this is the time when the process started, during which the term maritime goods (res maritimae) used for eastern spices and other Levantine articles changed for the term Turkish goods (res turcales) as it was used in the contemporary Latin of Hungary. We have to take into consideration the import of these goods from the Balkans not only through the southern Transylvanian customs places but through the southern Hungarian thirtieth stations too (listed in the Act 34 of 1498), mainly through Belgrade, whose share has been estimated quite high (but without exact data) in the early 16th century by Erik Fgedi (Corpus Iuris Hungarici 1899, Vol. I, pp. 612613; Fgedi 1969, pp. 34). On the other hand, it can be noticed that in the second section of the spice trade towards Transylvania the mediation of the imports was more and more taken over by Romanian merchants of Wallachia from the Saxon merchants of Transylvania. While earlier it was almost exclusively burghers of Brass whose trips to Wallachia were reported, the mid- and late 15th century documents, either issued by Jnos and Mtys Hunyadi of Hungary or by Vlad Dracul of Wallachia in the 1440s and Vlad Clugrul in the 14801490s, more and more often mentioned Wallachians travelling to Transylvania. The latter became the rivals of the Transylvanian Saxon merchants and their endeavours were supported by their princes. Vlad epe hindered the activity of the merchants of Brass and its environs (called Barcasg/Burzenland) with economic regulations (skala border fairs: around 1458) and by bloody violence. Radul cel Frumos wanted to give permission for this on condition the Wallachians could also freely go to the country of the lord king [King Matthias], up to as far as Vrad (Nagyvrad, Wardein, Oradea) (1470; similarly Basarab Laiot: 1474; or Neagoe Basarab: 1517) (Bogdan 1902, pp. 43, 5256, 5969, 7182, 102103, 117, 120125, 130131; Hurmuzaki 1911, pp. 4857, 6061, 6869, 7576, 84 87, 9192, 104, 108115, 130137, 140145, 152154; Gndisch 1975, pp. 34, 810, 74, 9091, 164, 352, 405406, 441442, 519520, 536541, 581). While the burghers of Brass wanted to uphold their active trading role beyond the Carpathians, the Wallachians intended to take it over; in addition they also wanted to penetrate into the Transylvanian market with their merchandise. To thwart these endeavours, the burghers of Brass procured staple rights from Matthias in 1468 explicitly against the Transalpine (Wallachian) and Moldavian merchants, and obtained such a patent in 1482 that forbade foreigners retail trading (retail trade was always the bone of contention in the mediaeval markets) (Teleki 1855, pp. 353354; 1857, pp. 224225). The situation at the turn of the century is reflected by the customs register (twentieth book) of Brass of 1503. It shows that in the exports to Wallachia the Transylvanians and the merchants of the Romanian principalities had roughly equal share; in the import of Wallachian agricultural products to Transylvania the Saxon merchants still had their prevalence, but they were forced to renounce the bulk of spice import, the most lucrative branch of import trade. Only a group of wholesale
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merchants of Brass, mainly the societas magna, worked actively in this field: their main business was the export of cloth and knives and the import of spices, overwhelmingly pepper. The latter, however, amounted only to 14.1% of all the spice imports of Brass; 82.1% was transacted by Wallachians and the rest by Moldavians. On the other hand, the Wallachians could not manage to fulfil their aims at penetrating into the Transylvanian market, because they were still prevented from mediating their goods beyond Brass.1 The sources from the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century provide sufficient information to observe the further route of spice consignments, too. The documents of a famous customs trial lasting from the 1470s to the early 1490s and the records of the customs houses of Bihar County in 1520 to stop long-lived corrupt practices testify to the fact that the valuable article was transported from the southern Transylvanian towns by Saxon merchants to the busy fairs of Nagyvrad via Kolozsvr (Klausenburg, Cluj) and Arad. The pepper consignments changed hands in Nagyvrad and occasionally in Debrecen, then travelled sometimes westwards to Buda, more often northwards to Kassa (Kaschau, Koice) as it is shown by the 15021503 documents of the Kassa Handelsgesellschaft. Similarly to the activity of the societas magna of Brass, this commercial firm purchased cloth in Cracow (also in return for some wine), sold most of it in Nagyvrad and Debrecen mainly to merchants from Brass and other Transylvanian towns, from whom they bought pepper. The merchants of Brass turning up in Vrad and Debrecen who sometimes paid in pepper for the cloth purchased in Kassa can be identified now and then with the pepper importers listed in the 1503 twentieth book of Brass (Teleki 1857, pp. 1521, 2728, 5355, 5869; Kerekes 1902a, pp. 106115; Ivnyi 1905, pp. 81104). Accordingly, the further route of the spice consignments imported from Wallachia to the southern Transylvanian towns led to Nagyvrad, the significant market place of the area beyond the River Tisza and from there mainly to the famous market of Upper Hungary, to Kassa. The trade on these routes was not shared by the Wallachian merchants: most of the valuable spice transports was mediated by the Transylvanian merchants up to Nagyvrad, beyond that by merchants of Kassa. The route leading from the Black Sea through Wallachia to Transylvania and Hungary can be compared to the Levantine trade route from the Black Sea through Moldavia to Poland (to Lww, Cracow and further). Similarly to Poland, Hungary was also connected with the Levant by overland routes in the late Middle Ages. She managed to obtain spice imports not only from the western but also from the eastern direction (Kutrzeba 1902, pp. 106115; Panaitescu 1933, pp. 172193; Malowist 1970, pp. 157175). 5. What was the proportion of the quantities transported from the two directions? As far as Hungary is concerned, this question can roughly be answered.

1 The customs register of Brass from 1503: Quellen Kronstadt (1886, pp. 1 81). Its statistical analysis by the present author (Pach 1980, pp. 1 36).

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As shown above, the thirtieth book of Pozsony of 14571458 provided data about the quantity of Adriatic spice arriving through the chief customs place of the western import (98 metric quintals of pepper). The twentieth book of Nagyszeben (Hermannstadt, Sibiu) of 1500 and that of Brass of 1503 make it possible for us to state the quantity of the spice arriving through the main customs stations of the eastern import. The statistical analysis carried out on the basis of the South Transylvanian customs books has shown that 105 kanthners of pepper were imported to Nagyszeben in 1500 in the value of 4120.5 florins. This quantity, however, seems insignificant compared to the import to Brass, which amounted to 719 kanthners in 1503 worth 32,084 florins. Taking into account that the sum and proportion of customs revenues of Nagyszeben and Brass changed only a little in the years under discussion, it seems permissible to add up the two data. Thus the pepper import fom Wallachia through these two customs stations amounted to 825 kanthners a year in the early 16th century and represented 36,200 florins customs value. As the weight of the kanthner used here was probably 56.256.7 kg, the total pepper import of Brass and Nagyszeben in the early 16th century can be estimated at about 463468 metric quintals annually.2 Accordingly, the quantity of pepper imported from the direction of the Black Sea (i.e. the pepper transported on the main route of eastern import to Transylvania at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries) was four-and-a-half to five times as much as the pepper arriving from the direction of the Adriatic Sea (i.e. the pepper transported to Hungary on the main route of western import in the middle of the 15th century). In this sense, the spice import arriving from the region of the Black Sea was really large: it contributed significantly to the supply of the Transylvanian and Hungarian markets. What was, however, the proportion of this spice import to the turnover of the main contemporary route of Levantine trade, to the spice import carried out by Venice by the sea? According to the data and estimates by F. C. Lane, F. Braudel, E. Ashtor and C. H. H. Wake, the Venetian galleys imported an average of 1,150,000 English pounds, that is about 5125.25 metric quintals of pepper a year from their main Levantine port, Alexandria, at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries before the Portuguese opened the direct maritime route to India. So the South Transylvanian import was about 8.99% of the import of Venice from Alexandria. If we also take into consideration the other important source of spice supply, Beirut (and Aleppo), the yearly average pepper import by Venice amounted to 1,400,0001,750,000 English pounds, that is 63497936 metric quintals. Compared to this, the quantity of the overland trade under discussion is only 5.847.38% of the Venetian one (Lane 1933, pp. 219239; 1940, pp. 581590; Braudel 1966, Vol. I, pp. 493505; Ashtor 1975, pp. 607612; Wake 1979, pp. 361371). At that time the city of Saint Marc was still and already a virtually monopolist supplier of the Western and Western-Central European markets in oriental spices and other Levantine goods. Compared to her
2 The customs book of Nagyszeben of 1500: Quellen Hermannstadt (1880, pp. 270 307). On the customs book of Brass of 1503 and its statistical analysis, see n. 1.

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trade the pepper import by Brass and Nagyszeben was small. Its quantity exactly shows the place and role of the Transylvanian route in the system of international routes of Levantine trade in the late Middle Ages.

II
Let us turn our attention to the second period and the second tenet. We must find answers to the following questions. Were the great international political and economic developments of the early 16th century (the circumnavigation of Africa, the appearance of the Portuguese in the spice growing realm of India, and the occupation by the Ottomans of Egypt and Syria, the spice suppliers of Venice) reflected in Hungarys trade with the Levant, and if yes, how? Were the goods of the traditional Levantine routes excluded from the spice supply of Hungary already in the course of the 16th century? Was Mediterranean pepper (more precisely: Adriatic and Black Sea pepper) displaced, as early as that, by the exclusive dominance of Atlantic pepper? Two important urban markets, Kassa and Buda, are the most appropriate targets for observation of the Hungarian changes in the 16th century. As seen above, Kassa was the final destination of spice consignments coming from the coasts of the Black Sea in the 15th century. Buda, in turn, received its spice supply mainly from the direction of the Adriatic Sea, from Venice through the Semmering route, with the mediation of Vienna and Pozsony. 1. A number of sources reveal that the trade of eastern spices from Wallachia via Transylvania to Nagyvrad and Kassa continued in the 16th century as well. For example, the above-mentioned records of the customs places of Bihar County from 1520 shed light not only on the valuable articles carried by the Transylvanian Saxon merchants but also on several stations of their route towards Nagyvrad. In a number of customs places in Bihar County among others in Rv, Telegd and Vrad Velence itself, which were situated by the side of the River Sebes-Krs, along the great highway (magna via) leading from Transylvania to Hungary the tied-up carts (currus ligatis) that carried the most expensive goods were made to pay customs duties partly in kind, namely in pepper (Ivnyi 1905, pp. 112127). Similar evidence is shown by the books of the Brass and Nagyszeben customs houses from the early 16th century. In the twentieth book of 1540 the main items of the registered goods were still eastern spices: pepper and saffron (Quellen Hermannstadt 1880, pp. 308 309; Qellen Kronstadt 1889, pp. 171175, 215234). Nevertheless, the spice supply on this route gradually diminished and finally ebbed away during the 16th century. Already the pepper import of 1540 was well below that of 1500: at that time 105 kanthners, that is about 60 metric quintals of pepper was imported through Nagyszeben in the value of 4120.5 florins; in 1540 it was only about 35 metric quintals at a value of 2000 florins. The decrease changed into a plunge in the late 16th century: the pepper import by Nagyszeben diminished to 18 metric quintals by 1578 and to a bare 12 quintals by 1597. The import from
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Wallachia to Transylvania came to be more and more dominated by those Turkish goods (res turcales) which apart from the silk that may have arrived from Persia derived really from the territory of the Ottoman Empire and not from the Far East: different cotton and silk fabrics, yarns, leather-ware, in great variety. Simultaneously, the earlier articles of export, the western cloth and ironware (Styrian knives, etc.), carried from Transylvania to Wallachia almost entirely disappeared. It could partly be explained by the fact that the woollen cloth industry of Venice developed almost from scratch during the 16th century, and its products, together with the western sorts of cloth mediated from Antwerp, also gained ground in the Balkans and the Ottoman ruled Levant. The other reason might have been that the iron and knife industry had centres in the Ottoman Empire as well, in whose market Wallachia was more and more integrated (Goldenberg 1964, pp. 398399; Manolescu 1965, pp. 168176; Sella 1968, pp. 106115). At about the same time, the penetration of the Transalpine, that is Transcarpathian merchants into the Transylvanian market started, but not that of the Romanians of Wallachia. What they could not manage to do despite the repeated attempts by Radul cel Frumos and his successors, among them Neagoe Basarab (1517), was put into practice by more agile and prosperous BalkanoLevantine merchants, who had already figured in the first section of the route along which the eastern articles were transported to Transylvania in the late 15th century. These merchants began to be called by the common name Greek during the 16th century. Moreover, not only their commercial penetration into the Transylvanian market started at the cost of the Saxon burgher patricians, who became more and more lazy by withdrawing from the long-distance trade and restricting their activity to the local markets, but their immigration into and settling in the Principality of Transylvania also became frequent from the mid-16th century on, after sparse precedents, in the face of the restricting regulations of the Transylvanian diets (Dan Goldenberg 1967, pp. 8793; Goldenberg 1969, pp. 605619; Trcsnyi 1971, pp. 94104; Sashalmi 1989, pp. 214217). 2. All these changes were already reflected in the pepper supply of Kassa in the middle of the 16th century. While in the 15th and in the early 16th centuries the pepper brought from Transylvania, that is from the southern direction, played the leading role on the towns market, according to the thirtieth book of Kassa of 1555 pepper was already imported to Kassa from the north, from Poland. The merchants of Kassa of the 1570s, like Gergely Kalmr, also imported other spices (ginger, saffron) as well as cloth of English origin and that of Breslau from Cracow in return for wine export (Kemny 1894, pp. 307309; Kerekes 1903, pp. 7782; Malecki 1971, pp. 146149; Pkh 1980, pp. 6776; Granaszti 1989, pp. 6169). What can be stated for sure is that further changes took place in the following times. The merchants of Kassa of the early 17th century, for instance Istvn Almssy and Gyrgy Szegedi, already purchased their supply of pepper and other spices from the west, specifically from Vienna, as it is testified by their business records from the years 16001602 and 16271629, respectively. This meant a total transformation in the spice supply of Kassa compared to the 15th century. The situation that came into being by the first decades of the 17th century the reliance on the market of Vienna
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seems to have stabilized for a long time then. It is also revealed by the business records between 1649 and 1663 of Jnos Schirmer, a merchant of Kassa. These records also throw light on the downward trend of business turnover and on the decrease of the commercial activity. While among the merchants of Kassa there were not long ago some who travelled to Cracow, Danzig, Breslau, then Vienna, Schirmer worked merely on the markets of Kassa and the neighbouring places, and met only the foreign merchants who visited him and the fairs attended by him. So by the mid-17th century it is not only the type of the Hungarian great landowner, withdrawing from commercial activity and waiting for the customer in their homes, who appeared on the stage, but a similar type of burgher merchants, too, who withdrew from the longdistance transactions and restricted their activity to the town markets in the Hungarian Kingdom as well as in the Saxon districts of the Transylvanian Principality (Kerekes 1902b, pp. 192, 207209, 212, 322; 1940, pp. 10, 13, 165, 185; Pach 1982, pp. 377393; Szakly 1982, pp. 8191). As far as the pepper supply is directly concerned, similar conclusion can be drawn from the 15991637 customs books of Kolozsvr, which used to be a station on the earlier pepper route, outlined above. In the varied import of the Turkish goods eastern spices can be traced no longer. To prepare the savouries of the contemporary Transylvanian cookery books, the eastern spices had to be purchased already from the west (Toldy 1881, pp. 367371; Pap 1979, p. 241; 1981, pp. 180 181). 3. How did, then, the spice trade of Buda change during the 16th century? As mentioned above, Buda used to receive its spice supply from the Adriatic Sea, from Venice, rather on the indirect Semmering route, via Vienna and Pozsony, than on the direct Pettau route. This line of supply seemed to work by fits and starts in the early 16th century due to the Portuguese blow to the Levantine trade of Venice, which caused great excitement on the international pepper market and as a result, difficulties in the pepper supply on the Semmering route. This is also testified by the regulation of spice prices in Buda (Observatio in speciebus aromaticis et ceteris aliis rebus vendendis) written up in 1522, which remarked in connection with the high prices that the pepper supply of the town must be better ensured in the future (cum tempore melius provideatur) (Kemny 1889, p. 376). By the mid-16th century, however, together with the revival of the Levantine spice trade of Venice, the Semmering route, the favoured Venezianerstrasse of the merchants of Vienna, also regained its significance from the point of view of spice supply. This is testified by the data of the historian Fr. Engel-Janosi, demonstrating the activity of the merchants of Vienna from the mid-15th to the mid-16th century, as well as by the commercial handbook published by Michael Scherhauff in 1563 in Vienna for the use of merchants trading on the ViennaVenice route. This Handels Buch provided information mainly on those units of measures and coins which were current in the city of Saint Marc. Among the first items it mentioned den Kargo, darbey der Piper in Venedig verkauft [wird] the cargo in which pepper in Venice was sold (Scherhauff 1563, pp. 1, 8, 13; Engel-Janosi 1926, pp. 41, 46, 49, 54, 56). As
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seen above, also in the customs tariff of Buda by Siebenlinder it was the karig (cargo) that measured the pepper arriving from Venice. With the revival of the pepper trade on the Semmering route, the pepper import from Vienna to Hungary, primarily to Pozsony, was also restored. It reached roughly the same extent as in the 15th century. While according to the thirtieth book of Pozsony analysed by Ferenc Kovts, the pepper import in the 14571458 fiscal year amounted to 166 2/3 centners worth 5000 florins, the thirtieth books of Western Hungary of 1542 (which treated not only Pozsony but also other customs stations), analysed by Gyz Ember, registered almost exactly the same amount, 163.13 centners of pepper worth 4894 florins. The quantity of the pepper import recorded in the 1559 books of the Pozsony customs office, referring only to the import by the merchants of the place, was almost the same as the amount recorded in the thirtieth books of Pozsony in 14961498, which also contained only the pepper import by the local merchants (Takts 1900, p. 220; Kovts 1903, p. 35; Ember 1988, pp. 93, 148, 160).3 Naturally it was not only through Pozsony that spice was imported to Hungary from Vienna at that time. It is worth mentioning the case of the customs renter Jnos Pernstein, who received free pass in 1546 to transport a shipload of spice and sweet drinks from Vienna to Galgc (Nyitra County) exempt from the thirtieth duty. Let us add the case of Balzs, a literate merchant from Gyngys (Heves County), who bought pepper from a merchant of Nagyszombat (Tirnau/Tirnava in Pozsony County), presumably also from import from Vienna (Takts 1900, p. 220; Szakly 1972, p. 356). 4. However, a change occurred compared to the previous situation in that that pepper from Vienna to Pozsony (and to Galgc, Nagyszombat, etc.) did not continue its journey to Buda. The reason for this was not the Ottoman occupation of Buda in 1541. The Ottoman rule in Hungary, as well as the conquest of Constantinople in the 15th century and of the Genoese colonies of Caffa, Cetaea Alb, Chilia, did not cut the commercial connections. Moreover, as we know, the trade with the Ottoman territories was officially permitted by the Habsburg court in 1547 and 1559, respectively (Takts 1900, pp. 171172, 211; Gecsnyi 1995, pp. 767775). The reason for that was that the Ottoman Buda did not need spice from the west any more. Not because of the difference of the alcohol-free Ottoman diet from the Hungarian one abounding in alcohol and spice, but because the incorporation of Buda into the Ottoman Empire opened up a new and plentiful route of spice transportation from the south, mainly with new mediators and far extending the occasional initiatives of the early 16th century. This statement is certainly tenable on the basis of such important sources that survived from the second half of the 16th century. We have at our disposal the account books of the Ottoman fiscal administration of Buda and Pest from 15501551, 15711574 and 15791580. As the records predominantly concern customs matters

The customs book of Pozsony from the fiscal years 1496 1497 and 1497 1498: Magyar Orszgos Levltr [Hungarian National Archives], Filmtr X 4755 C 488. sz. doboz, 13. cm. Statistical analysis done by the present author.
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(who brought what, on which day and how much was paid for customs duties), the distinguished Hungarian scholar, the late Lajos Fekete, who published them, aptly called them Turkish customs registers of Buda and Pest. I have started the statistical analysis of these journals and now I try to summarise some of my results in the following. The first customs book about the period between November 19, 1550 and May 6, 1551 did not record any spice import, though the reason for this might be that the text is not very detailed and does not list the different kinds of goods (Fekete KldyNagy 1962, pp. 1339). In the second customs book, however, which comprises the customs incomes of the period between February 26, 1571 and February 15, 1572, almost a whole fiscal year, we are already encountered by spice, first of all pepper import at every turn. If we only take into account those items that give the exact amount of the pepper, the sum is 396 denks. As the denk (half a horse-load) was roughly 75 kg, it means about 297 metric quintals. If we also take the 13 items of import where the amount is not numerically given and we conclude to the quantity on the basis of the customs paid, we can add at least 32 denks, that is 24 quintals to the above. Accordingly over 320 metric quintals of pepper was imported to Buda from the Ottoman Empire in a year in 15711572 (Fekete Kldy-Nagy 1962, pp. 40126). A further increase of the import is testified by the third customs book, which comprises only four months, the period between February 16, 1572 and June 20, 1572, and the fourth one containing the data of a whole fiscal year from February 4, 1573 to January 20, 1574. In 1572, during four months only, the pepper import amounted to 202 denks, that is 151 metric quintals, from the beginning of 1573 to the beginning of 1574, the items given in numbers reached altogether 720 denks, that is about 540 metric quintals. If we add to this the quantity of the items not given numerically and estimate on the basis of the customs duties paid for them (about 10 quintals), it turns out that in 15731574, in a year, about 550 metric quintals of pepper were imported to Buda from the territory of the Ottoman Empire (Fekete KldyNagy 1962, pp. 127159, 160234). This quantity far exceeds the amount of pepper imported to Transylvania via Wallachia (463468 metric quintals) at the very beginning of the 16th century and it is more than five and a half times as much as the pepper imported via Pozsony in the mid-15th century (166 centners = 98 metric quintals), and as the pepper import transacted through the Western Hungarian thirtieth places from the Adriatic Sea in 1542 (166.13 centners = 95.82 metric quintals). So Sndor Takts, who did not investigate the Turkish documents but knew the relevant documents of the Hofkammerarchiv of Vienna very well and interpreted Wilhelm Heyd correctly, perfectly saw already in 1900 that: Most historians imagine about the Danube that it connected the east and the west already in the Middle Ages and there was lively transit trade on it as the cheapest natural route. Today this view, mainly since the research of Heyd, can be considered as refuted because Heyd, in his great work on mediaeval Levantine trade, pointed out that neither the German nor the Austrian merchants were in contact with the east, their ships never travelled downward on the Danube beyond Hungary. Takts also added that we can talk about

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eastern trade on the Danube only since the Ottomans occupied Hungary (Takts 1900, p. 170).4 Indeed, in the age of the Ottoman rule in Hungary pepper and other spices (ginger, clove) were transported to Buda for the most part via Belgrade, the big military, administrative and commercial centre, using the shipping route on the Danube, and besides along the Danube, on carts and horseback. Most of the mediators of spices were Muslim merchants called rencber. An important role was also played by Hungarian merchants mainly called zimmi, and by Jewish ones called Yahudi. In the 15711572 fiscal year the rencbers and other Ottoman merchants transacted 66.4%, the Yahudis 19.7%, the zimmis and other Hungarian merchants 13.9% of the pepper import. In the 15731574 fiscal year the rencbers and other Muslims had 45.8%, the Yahudis 38.8% and the Hungarians 11.5% share of the pepper import, while the remaining 3.9% was transported by other suppliers. On the markets of Buda and Pest the costly commodities partly changed hands, partly they were further transported to the Kingdom of Hungary. The latter case is shown by a letter written to a big landowner Count Mikls Plffy in 1589 by Ferhad, the Pasha of Buda in which he urged the payment of the debt owed to Jacob, a Jew from Buda, by the counts steward of Komrom for pepper and ginger (Jedlicska 1881, pp. 693694). All this goes to show that in the mid-16th century a new and abundant route of spice trade opened up towards Buda, namely from Constantinople, the interior of the Ottoman Empire, through Belgrade mainly with new mediators. This statement also refutes the second tenet of Wilhelm Heyd about the double final blow and corroborates the results of Frederic C. Lane and his followers, who maintain that, after the crisis of the early 16th century, the flow of spices renewed on the traditional routes of the Levantine trade, reaching a peak in the 1560s and 1570s. Moreover, this statement goes, to some degree, beyond the conclusions of Lane. For it becomes evident that not only Venice benefited from the revival of the Levantine spice trade around the middle of the 16th century but considerable quantities of eastern spices reached the European market from Egypt and Syria through the Ottoman Empire, via Constantinople and the Balkans, as well. 5. The final question is: how long did the 16th-century revival of Levantine trade last? More specifically: until what date can it be proved that pepper and other spices were imported to Hungary from the Ottoman Empire? The fifth Ottoman customs register of Buda, which has come down to us, ranging from November 21, 1579 to November 8, 1580, shows a significant decline in this respect. In a year only 139 denks and 725 vukiyyes of pepper were registered at the Buda customs. This means only a total of 113 metric quintals (Fekete KldyNagy 1962, pp. 235276). Of course, it cannot be definitely decided whether this great fall from 15731574 to 15791580 was a singular occurrence of the latter year or it marked a general trend. It is certain, however, that about a decade later, Lszl Szalnci, the ambassador to the Porte of the Transylvanian Prince, described Constan4

Similar opinion was expressed by Kovts (1901, pp. 433 434).


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tinople as still a lively market of spices in his notes of 15911592, but he added that the spice supply in Constantinople was uneven: When the ships cannot sail in peace, the price of the spices is higher (Barabs 1881, pp. 173180; cf. Ipolyi 1878, pp. 153 164). What is more, the spice import from the Ottoman Empire to Hungary and further to Vienna (!) was described even in 1615 as an old practice which must be renewed now when the long war of the turn of the century was over and the first trade agreement with the Porte has been signed. On the commercial conference held in the house of Lazarus Henckel, the famous entrepreneur, in Vienna in October, 1615, this practice was characterised in a way that the merchants of Pozsony, Komrom, Gyr, Vc, Buda, Pest, Tr and Simnd travelled to Vienna, purchased the goods necessary for the Turks and transported them by ship to Ottoman territories. There they bought Turkish articles silk from Constantinople, cotton, carpets, and spices and took them to Vienna. It is true they added that the Viennese consumers could acquire these commodities from Venetian and German merchants as well (Takts 1900, pp. 174175). Nevertheless, the situation radically changed during the next half a century. When fifty years later, in 1665, after the Peace Treaty of Vasvr, the second trade agreement was contracted by the Emperor and the Sultan, the background was quite different. Typical here is the activity of the Wiener Orientalische Handelskompagnie, which was established on the basis of the new agreement and started its export from Vienna to Constantinople in 1667. (From Vienna to Belgrade on the shipping route of the Danube, from Belgrade to Constantinople on carts.) In the first export shipment of the Company, which left Vienna in July, 1667 and arrived in Constantinople in the late autumn, among other things we find 35 quintals of pepper, 9 quintals of indigo, 50 pounds of saffron, and 84 pounds of nutmeg-flowers. In the next spring, another 18 quintals of pepper, 4 quintals of indigo and 3 quintals of ginger, in February, 1672 20 quintals of pepper, 10 quintals of ginger, and 5 quintals of clove were transported from Vienna to Constantinople. On the other hand, in the consignments imported from Constantinople to Vienna the Orientalische Kompagnie transacted imports first time in 1668 there were the usual Turkish articles, but without spices (Takts 1900, pp. 175176, 194196, 202203, 216). These facts speak for themselves. It is obvious that by the middle of the 17th century a radical turn had taken place in the international spice trade. From then on, it was not from Constantinople that eastern spices were transported to Hungary and further to Vienna but from Vienna through Hungary to Constantinople, which was a conspicuous symptom of the fact that by the mid-17th century the traditional routes of Levantine spice trade really declined for good. The Dutch and English maritime commerce assumed a monopolistic role. By means of their East India Companies, Amsterdam and London supplied the whole European market, and the Levant itself, with the Atlantic pepper (Glamann 1971, p. 455; Davis 1978, pp. 1214). This supply was predominantly direct, as the Dutch and English merchantmen penetrated into the Mediterranean through Gibraltar already from the end of the 16th century, almost simultaneously with their spectacular intrusion into the Indian Ocean in a less spectacular and aggressive way, but with similar technical-commercial
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superiority and soon visited the Italian and Levantine ports, too. First their main article of export was Baltic corn mainly at the time of the Italian corn crisis of the 1590s later, however, English and Dutch woollen cloth and East-Indian spices (Braudel 1966, pp. 543545, 568573). Gy. Kldy-Nagy found the turnover of Aleppo, one of the important market cities of the Eastern Mediterranean, lively enough on the basis of the Ottoman customs registers of Alexandrette from 16241628. Among the important data of these registers we find that on the ships of the English, Dutch, French, and Venetian merchants the pepper and other spices were no longer import goods from the Levant but export goods from Europe (Kldy-Nagy 1967, pp. 138147). Similarly, according to the customs register of 16461647 of the distinguished Amsterdam Directory controlling the Mediterranean activity of the Dutch merchants, analysed by Hermann Wtjen, pepper towered high above the varied commodities of export, with a share of 25% (Wtjen 1909, p. 337; cf. Kretschmayr 1934, p. 367). Taking up the concept of the Austrian cameralist (mercantilist) Johann Joachim Becher, who initiated the foundation of the Orientalische Handelskompagnie, the financial circles of the court in Vienna also tried to extract their share from this lucrative business in the 1660s and 1670s, though, compared to the western trading nations, with the mobilisation of much less capital and much smaller quantity of goods (Hassinger 1942, pp. 153). This indicated, however, that the wings of the Habsburg double eagle, which was experienced in dynastic power politics but a newcomer in economic policy, were also fluttered by the new currents in international trade.
References
Ashtor, E. (1975): The Volume of Levantine Trade in the Later Middle Ages (1370 1498). The Journal of European Economic History Vol. 4, pp. 573 612. Ashtor, E. (1983): Levant Trade in the Later Middle Ages. Princeton. Barabs, S. (1881): Portai fljegyzsek a XVI. szzadbl. Trtnelmi Tr [Vol. 4], pp. 173 180. Bastian, F. (1929 30): Die Legende vom Donauhandel im Frhmittelalter. Vierteljahrschrift fr Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte Vol. 22, pp. 289 332. Bogdan, I. (1902): Documente i regeste privitoare la relaiile rii Romneti cu Braovul i Ungaria in secolul XV i XVI. Bucureti. Braudel, F. (1966): La Mditerranne et le monde mditerranen lpoque de Philippe II. Sconde edition. Vol. I. Paris. Corpus Iuris Hungarici (1899): Corpus Iuris Hungarici. Vol. I. Budapest. Csnki, D. (1880): Haznk kereskedelmi viszonyai I. Lajos korban. Budapest. Dan, M. Goldenberg, S. (1967): Le commerce balkano-levantin de la Transylvanie au cours de la seconde moiti du XVIe sicle et au dbut du XVIIe sicle. Revue des tudes sud-est europennes Vol. 5, pp. 87 117. Davis, R. (1978): Comparative Advantage of the Levant and Cape Routes to India in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Prato. Ember, Gy. (1988): Magyarorszg nyugati klkereskedelme a XVI. szzad kzepn. Budapest.

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