266 luciano pezzolo
decline for the following pages, let us for the moment simply stress that
the structure of European imports from Aleppo changed significantly
between the late 16th and the beginning of the 17th century. While spices
had previously accounted for the majority of trade towards the west, the
next century witnessed the disappearance of such products and the grow-
ing importance of raw silk, mainly coming from Persia. In the space of a
few decades, between 1560 and 1621, English imports rose from a little less
than 12,000 to more than 117,000 pounds;25 but what is more important
is that such a movement occurred without the participation of Venetian
intermediaries, contrary to prior custom.
In addition to the western manufactures the Venetians exported to the
Levant, precious metals also occupied an important place in this trade.
Gold and, above all, silver were constantly in demand from Persia, India,
and especially China. The scarcity of silver ensured that its values in the
East were quite favorable with respect to gold: whereas the gold-silver
ratio tended to gravitate around 1:11 in 15th- and 16th-century Europe, in
China it was roughly 1:7.26 That meant that precious metals served not
only to balance the commercial deficit between West and East but also
represented an enormous source of financial gain for European export-
ers. Roughly up to the 1530s, that is, before the arrival of large quantities
of American silver, Europeans supplied themselves with gold from Africa
and silver from the mines of central Europe. A notable part of the produc-
tion of the mines in southern Germany and Bohemia was destined for
Antwerp and Venice, where German merchants purchased raw Syrian silk
for their corduroy manufactures, in addition to traditional eastern prod-
ucts. Technological innovations that had been developed in the second
half of the 15th century allowed for a consistent increase in European sil-
ver production, thus sustaining the increment of imports from the east-
ern Mediterranean through Venice. It was certainly not by chance that in
the 1490s precious metals transported by Venetian ships represented an
average of 60 per cent of the value of their loads.27
Crisis in the European-Asian Trade in the Early Seventeenth Century (Copenhagen, 1972),
pp. 175–85.
25 Gerald MacLean and Nabil Matar, Britain and the Islamic World, 1558–1713 (Oxford,
2011), p. 68.
26 Luciano Pezzolo, “Stato, prezzi e moneta,” in Alessandro Barbero, ed., Storia d’Europa
e del Mediterraneo, vol. 10: Ambiente, popolazione, società (Rome, 2009), pp. 290–91.
27 John H. Munro, “The Monetary Origins of the ‘Price Revolution’: South German Sil-
ver Mining, Merchant Banking, and Venetian Commerce, 1470–1540,” in Dennis O. Flynn,
Arturo Giráldez, and Richard Von Glahn, eds., Global Connections and Monetary History,