COMMERCIAL RELATIONS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 51
European commerce. The chief channel by which the products of Asia reached the central and northern nations of Christendom was the Hanseatic League.” [1] The Hanseatic had profited mainly owing to its control of Oriental wares coming through Italian Republics. From very early times “Germany and the north Italian upland were dependent on the Republic (Venice) for the products of the east, and when 1017 of (* ) ships laden with spices suffered shipwreck, the event is noticed by a (* ) chronicler as a serious misfortune.” [2] “The Indian trade formed an important contributory to this Hanseatic commerce. When the eastern traffic began to dry up, its European emporiums declined.” [3] In this blocade of old trade routes lies the (* ) expansion of western Europe. The whole situation is well summed up by Prof. A. F. Poland when (* ) as to why America was discovered towards the end of the fifteenth century, he says, (* ) would be the paradoxical assertion that Columbus discovered America in 1492 or thereabouts because the Turks are an obstructive people. The connection is not quite obvious, but obvious connections are always superficial, and this is more profound. The Germans have a proverb Dermensch est was arisst— man is what he eats. It might be (* ) for a motto by those people. (This seems to be incomplete—ed.)
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W. W. Hunter, A History of British India. Vol. I, p. 52.
Breasely, Vol. II, p. 405.
W. W. Hunter, op. Cit. Vol. I, p. 53.