(^66) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
Yet all of that left energy for further campaigning and adventure. De
mobilization does not come easy for men who know little but the
sword and the horse, the camaraderie of combat, the thrill of killing
and the joys of rapine. Even before the final expulsion of the Moor
from the Iberian peninsula, Portugal and Spain were moving on to
probe and attack beyond the water. The first targets were islands in the
Mediterranean and the shores of North Africa. King Jaime I of Aragon
took the Balearics in 1229-35 and boasted of it later as "the best thing
man has done in the last hundred years." The Portuguese in turn took
Ceuta in 1415; Casablanca in 1463; Tangiers in 1471.
War has a way of legitimating its cause and celebrating its conquests.
So with these new crusaders: poets sang their praises and they subli
mated their violence in chivalric codes and posturing. Maritime expe
ditions took on special virtue and merit: "There was more honor,"
said Jaime I, in conquering a single kingdom "in the midst of the sea,
where God has been pleased to put it," than three on dry land. By the
end of the century, his chronicler was bragging that no fish could go
swimming without the king's permission.^11
It takes money to fight. The pattern of these "noble" quests was that
of the traditional, feudal "business" enterprise. Some baron—what one
historian calls an "aristocratic hooligan"—set off at the head of a war
band with the ruler's blessing and sometimes his money, often in ships
furnished by merchants near and far, to grab what he could grab. What
he could take and hold was his, subject to distribution of spoil and re
wards to his men, dividends to his backers, and a commitment of sup
port and loyalty to his overlord.
The choice of targets was not random. These brigands began with
the closest places, the most accessible. An economist would say: low
cost of entry. These targets, moreover, were held by infidels, and this
alone sanctified the venture. The Muslims call the non-Muslim world
the Dar el-Harb, the House of the Sword, thereby designating it as fair
game for conquest. The Christians had no such term, but acted as
though they had.
Beyond these nearby victims lay an alluring array of distant tempta
tions: gold that came by camel from no one knew where across the
African desert; spices imported from the Indian Ocean through the
Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, then overland to ports in the Levant,
passing through numerous hands along the way and rising in price
with every transaction; fabulous silks come by caravan all the way from
China. All of these precious things were held ransom by Muslim
nora
(Nora)
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