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Pepper Prices Before Da Gama

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Frederic C. Lane
Frederic C. Lane
Affiliation:
Brandeis University
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Extract

The opinion that spice prices rose in Europe in the century before 1492 and that that had something to do with Europe's oceanic expansion is remarkably persistent, in spite of the blow delivered to it by A. H. Lybyer more than a half-century ago. A distinct drop, however, in the price of spices, and particularly of pepper, between the decades 1420-1430 and 1440-1450 is indicated by a recent study of Antwerp prices, which thus reinforces the suggestion of older scattered figures from Navarre, England, and Klosterneuburg (Vienna). Pepper fell about 50 percent in that interval and did not return to its former high level until after 1498. In view of Venice's preeminent position in the trade in those decades, Venice is the obvious place to look for the source of a decline of prices generally in the West. Wholesale prices of pepper at Venice, 1363-1510, drawn mainly from diaries, merchants' account books, and letters, are shown in the accompanying Table 1. This explains the fall in prices in northern and western Europe. After selling at between 83 and 157 ducats per cargo in 1411-1426, pepper prices at Venice fell to 50 in 1432 and drifted lower in the 1440's and 1470's, occasionally even going below 40. Rarely did the price rise above 55 ducats a cargo until the interruption of Venetian voyages by the war with the Ottoman Turks in 1499.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , December 1968 , pp. 590 - 597
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1968

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References

1 The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1952), pp. 340–1Google Scholar; Darrag, Ahmah, L'Egypte sous le règne de Barsbay, 825-841/1422-1438 (Damascus: Institut Français, 1961), p. 361Google Scholar; Lybyer, A. H., “The Ottoman Turks and the Routes of Oriental Trade,” English Historical Review, XXX (10 1915) 577–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On prices see his note 12.

2 Wee, Herman van der, The Growth of the Antwerp Market and the European Economy (2 vols.; The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963)Google Scholar. The decline appears when the prices in Brabant groats given in volume I, pp. 307-20, are converted into gold equivalents by using the table in volume I, pp. 129-35. Older studies: Hamilton, Earl J., Money, Prices, and Wages in Valencia, Aragon, and Navarre, Harvard Economic Studies, no. 51 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), pp. 245–59Google Scholar; Pribram, A. F., Materialien zur Geschichte der Preise und Lohne in Osterreich, Vol. I (Vienna: Uberreuters Verlag, 1938); p. 615Google Scholar; Rogers, J. E. Thorold, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England (7 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1866-1902), IV, 680–2Google Scholar.

3 Cronaca veneta di Antonio Morosini, Bibl. Naz. Marciana, Venice, MS Ital. Cl. VII, Cod. 2049 (Coll. 8332), f. 1348.

4 Tucci, Ugo, “Alle origini dello spirito capitalistico a Venezia: La previsione economica,” in Studi in onore di Amintore Fanfani (Milan: Dott. A. Giuffre, Editore, 1962), III, 548–50Google Scholar. On the connection of Venetian prices with news from the Levant at the end of the century see Sardella, Pierre, Nouvelles et speculations à Venise (Cahiers des Annales, I (Paris, n.d.), pp. 31–7Google Scholar and diaries of Priuli and Sanuto as cited in the Table.

5 Labib, Subhi Y., Handelsgeschichte Agyptens in Spätmittelalter (1171-1517), Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial-und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Beihefte 48 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1965), pp. 333, 438Google Scholar; Lopez, R. S. and Miskimin, H. A., “The Economic Depression of the Renaissance,” The Economic History Review, 2d. ser. Vol. XIV (04 1962), 413Google Scholar.

6 Lane, Frederic C., Venice and History (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1966), pp. 13, 25Google Scholar; and, on the size of the collo, as well as other units employed in describing the spice trade, idem, Navires et constructeurs à Venise pendant la Renaissance (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes—VI section, Oeuvres étrangères, V, Paris, 1965) pp. 237-8. Estimates of the size of spice cargoes by Heers, Jacques in Arch. Stor. ital, CXIII (1955), 183–187Google Scholar are vitiated by his underestimating of the collo as only 91 kilograms, whereas it was a bale that frequently weighed about 500 kilo-grams. Pondo is used as another name for a bale in Barbarigo's ledger A. kk 262, 263. In that case the bales were of about 1100 lire sottile veneziane—about 350 kilograms.

7 That amount was assumed as customary in 1498. , Sanuto, Diarii, 165, 171Google Scholar. When it was agreed on is uncertain, but it is referred to as early as 1480. Heyd, Wilhelm, Storia del Commercio del levante (Turin: Unione Tipografiche-Editrice Torinese 1913), p. 1057Google Scholar. There is no mention of any such obligation in the very favorable treaty negotiated by Andrea Donato in 1442; indeed its clauses X of part I and I of part II seemed designed expressly to forbid forced sales, but there is no specific mention of pepper. Text in Wansbrought, John, “Venice and Florence in Mamluk Commercial Privileges,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, XXVIII (1965), 3, 487–97Google Scholar.

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9 The sales unit in Venice, the cargo, weighed 400 lire sottile veneziane; the sales unit in Egypt, the sporta, is variously reported as 700 to 750 lire sottile veneziane. I have treated it as 720 lire sottile so that a price of 81 ducats per sporta is equivalent to 45 ducats per cargo. Tucci in Studi in onore Fanfani, III, 550n; Lane, Navires, p. 237.

10 In 1497 most of the pepper brought from Alexandria had been bought at 74-75 ducats per sporta, equivalent to 41-42 ducats per cargo. , Priuli, Diarii, I, 73Google Scholar. The following January it was selling in Venice at 56 ducats per cargo. Ibid, I, 75. If the 210 sporta bought from the Soldan. were bought at 80 ducats, which the next year was said to be the usual procedure, namely, at the equivalent of 45 ducats per cargo, that was no great burden to spread over the whole mercantile colony. It is not surprising that the following year, 1498, the Soldan wished to get 90 ducats for his pepper, but he settled for less. According to the report of the Capitano of the galleys, the Soldan got only 80 but many deals were made at 86, 81, and 84. , Sanuto, Diarii, II, 165, 171Google Scholar; , Priuli, Diarii, I, 109Google Scholar. This pepper, bought at the equivalent of between 40 and 50 ducats per cargo was brought by the last fleet to arrive for some time because the great galleys were sent into the war fleet in 1499. Consequently it could have been sold in Venice the following July at 70 ducats per cargo and in February-August 1500 at 90 ducats per cargo. Priuli, I, 143, 159, 197, 213, 238, 256-7, 263: II, 24; , SanutoDiarii, III, 1101Google Scholar. In February 1501 pepper reached what was considered the record breaking height of 130 but then fell to 102 and to 62. , Sanuto, Diarii, III, 1445, 1480, 1576Google Scholar, , Priuli, Diarii, II, 73-4 111, 117Google Scholar. Meanwhile the price of pepper fell in Cairo from 75 to 60, equivalent of 42 to 35 ducats per cargo and Genoese, Catalans, and Ragusans were buying. , Sanuto, Diarii, III, 476Google Scholar. Fighting between Mamluks over the succession then raised the Egyptian prices so that when Venetian galleys did arrive in Alexandria early in 1501 they paid 90 to 102 ducats per sporta (50 to 58 per cargo). (, Priuli, Diarii, II, 132, 153)Google Scholar.

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15 Lane, Frederic C., “National Wealth and Protection Costs,” in Clarkson, J. and Cochran, T. C., eds., War as a Social Institution: The Historians Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), pp. 32–43Google Scholar; and in Venice and History, pp. 376-78. On high prices of other spices, see Magalhães-Godinho, Vitorino, “Le repli vénitien et égyptien et la route du cap, Ěventail de l'histoire vivante: Hommage à Lucien Febvre (Paris: Colin, 1953), II, 283–300Google Scholar. On pepper prices in the sixteenth century as a whole, see Lach, Donald F., Asia in the Making of Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), Vol. I, Book, I, pp. 143–7Google Scholar.