COMMERCIAL RELATIONS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 49
continent and became “the European stapes of Mediterranean track.” The north was practically in a semi-barbarous condition. The commercial activity in the Baltic was meagre. The Viking was a “half merchant and half pirate”. “So far as we can gather... this commercial activity (in the north) was different from that of the Phoenicians and their Greek initators in two important particulars. It was much less completely organized. The Phoenicians had settled factories at special points, and there were permanent off-shoots of the mother-city in distant lands, and had recognised rights and obligations. But the horse commerce does not appear to have arisen between towns and colonies. The Viking was rather the adventurer who went out to improve his fortunes as best he might, and who it be found a favourable opportunity, established himself on an estate. The Horsemen may have had more aptitude for town life than some of the other Teutons, but they were ready to become cultivators and colonists, and did not confine their energies and trade.”
1 Nay before their conversion to Christianity, the Horsemen were a great menace to peaceful commerce. Considerably after the conversion of the Horsemen to Christainity signs peaceful commerce began to show among the Flemish towns. This had much to do with the wool productions in England. English was exchanged for Flemish fabrics. The Flemish dealers had organized themselves into what is known as “Flemish House of London” and controlled the trade through the “staple” towns. Beyond Flanders the German trade was controlled by the German House. It was a close confederation of a large number of towns of northern Germany. This German Hanseatic League was the most extended commercial organization of middle ages. It gathered the products of the Baltic lands, such as lumber, tar, salt, iron, silver, salted and smoked fish, furs, ambers and certain coarse manufactures which it exchanged for goods brought by the commercial cities of Italy from far off lands. Thus through the agency of these Italian Republics, “the products of Arabia and Persia, India and the East Indian Islands, and even of China, all through the middle ages, as in antiquity, made their way by long and difficult routes to Western Europe. Silk and Cotton, both raw and manufactured
1 William Cunningham—“ Western Civilization ” (Modern Times) p. 110.