DIRECTIONS: Venice was rich for three hundred years with no farms, mines or empire. What did it have, and what happened?
Pepper, silk and spices came from Asia. Which way did they arrive?
What Venice was selling was not goods. It was a position.
Asian goods came overland to the eastern Mediterranean, and from there a ship took them to Europe. Venice sat at the end of that sea leg with the ships, the money and the contacts — so almost everything passed through it, and everything that passes through you can be charged for.
The two ways to get pepper from India to Europe
How far
Venice to Alexandria, the old sea leg — with an overland journey behind it
2,195 km
Venice to Calicut in a straight line, if you could sail it
7,057 km
Lisbon, round the bottom of Africa, to Calicut — the new way, from 1498
16,493 km
Look at the last two numbers. The new route is 2.3 times the straight-line distance. It is enormously longer, it takes months, and it goes almost to Antarctica on the way.
And it won. Within about fifty years Venice was no longer where the pepper came from. Work out how a route that long beat one that short.
The old way: sea, then caravan, then sea again, with goods unloaded and a toll paid at every change.
The new route is 2.3 times as long and still won. Give two reasons why, using the fact that it was one ship the whole way.
The Route Moved — How Longer Beat Shorter
Why it stopped mattering · Page 2 of 2
Say what Venice was actually selling, in one sentence — and then say why nobody needed to buy it any more.
Did the Venetians do anything wrong? Answer it properly rather than politely.
Four hundred years later the Suez Canal opened and ships came back through the Mediterranean. What would you expect that to have done for Venice — and why should you not be too confident?