The world has found itself, from time to time, in different situations; by which the face of commerce has been altered. The trade of Europe is, at present, carried on principally from the north to the south; and the difference of climate is the cause that the several nations have great occasion for the mer- chandise of each other. For example, the liquors of the south, which are carried to the north, form a commerce little known to the ancients. Thus the burden of vessels, which was former- ly computed by measures of corn, is at present determined by tuns of liquor.
The ancient commerce, so far as it is known to us, was car- ried on from one port in the Mediterranean to another; and was almost wholly confined to the South. Now the people of the same cHmate, having nearly the same things of their own, have not the same need of trading amongst themselves as with those of a different climate. The commerce of Europe was, therefore, formerly less extended than at present.
This does not at all contradict what I have said of our com- merce to the Indies: for here the prodigious difference of cli- mate destroys all relation between their wants and ours.
5. — Other Differences Commerce is sometimes destroyed by conquerors, sometimes cramped by monarchs; it traverses the earth, flies from the places where it is oppressed, and stays where it has liberty to breathe: it reigns at present where nothing was formerly to be seen but deserts, seas, and rocks; and where it once reigned now there are only deserts.
To see Colchis in its present situation, which is no more than a vast forest, where the people are every day diminishing, and only defend their liberty to sell themselves by piecemeal to the Turks and Persians, one could never imagine that this country had ever, in the time of the Romans, been full of cities where commerce convened all the nations of the world. We find no monument of these facts in the country itself; there are no traces of them, except in Vlmyd and Strabo.e d Lib. VI. e Lib. XL 334 MONTESQUIEU The history of commerce is that of the communication of people. Their numerous defeats, and the flux and reflux of populations and devastations, here form the most extraordi- nary events.
6. — Of the Commerce of the Ancients The immense treasures of Semiramis,^ which could not be acquired in a day, give us reason to believe that the Assyrians themselves had pillaged other rich nations, as other nations afterwards pillaged them.
The effect of commerce is riches; the consequence of riches, luxury; and that of luxury the perfection of arts. We find that the arts were carried to great perfection in the time of Semira- mis; g which is a sufficient indication that a considerable com- merce was then established.
In the empires of Asia there was a great commerce of luxury. The history of luxury would make a fine part of that of com- merce. The luxury of the Persians was that of the Medes, as the luxury of the Medes was that of the Assyrians.
Great revolutions have happened in Asia. The northeast parts of Persia, viz., Hyrcania, Margiana, Bactria, etc., were formerly full of flourishing cities,^ which are now no more; and the north of this empire,* that is, the isthmus which sep- arates the Caspian and the Euxine Seas, was covered with cities and nations, which are now destroyed.
Eratosthenes and Aristobulus; learned from Patroclus k that the merchandise of India passed by the Oxus into the sea of Pontus. Marcus Varro I tells us that at the time when Pompey commanded against Mithridates, they were informed that peo- ple went in seven days from India to the country of the Bactri- ans, and to the River Icarus, which falls into the Oxus; that by this method they were able to bring the merchandise of India across the Caspian Sea, and to enter the mouth of Cyrus; whence it was only five days' passage to the Phasis, a river that discharges itself into the Euxine Sea. There is no doubt but it was by the nations inhabiting these several countries that the f Dipdorus, lib. II. k The authority of Patroclus is of S Ibid. great weight, as appears from a passage h Pliny, lib. VI. cap. xvi., and Strabo, in Strabo, lib. II.
lib- XI.., „_ i Pliny, lib. VI. cap. xvii. See also » Strabo, lib. XI. Strabo, lib. XI., upon the passage by ^ Ibidf which the merchandise was conveyed from the Phasis to the Cyrus.
THE SPIRIT OF LAWS 335 great empires of the Assyrians, Medes, and Persians had com- munication with the most distant parts of the east and west.
An entire stop is now put to this communication. All these countries have been laid waste by the Tartars,wt and are still infested by this destructive nation. The Oxus no longer runs into the Caspian Sea; the Tartars, for some private reasons, have changed its course, and it now loses itself in the barren sands.w The Jaxartes, which was formerly a barrier between the polite and barbarous nations, has had its course turned in the same manner by the Tartars, and it no longer empties itself into the sea.o Seleucus Nicator formed the project of joining the Euxine to the Caspian Sea./* This project, which would have greatly facilitated the commerce of those days, vanished at his death.9 We are not certain it could have been executed in the isthmus which separates the two seas. This country is at present very little known, it is depopulated, and full of forests; however, water is not wanting, for an infinite number of rivers roll into it from Mount Caucasus; but as this mountain forms the north of the isthmus, and extends like two arms r towards the south, it would have been a grand obstacle to such an enterprise, es- pecially in those times, when they had not the art of making sluices.
It may be imagined that Seleucus would have joined the two seas in the very place where Peter I has since joined them; that is, in that neck of land where the Tanais approaches the Volga; but the north of the Caspian Sea was not then discovered.
While the empires of Asia enjoyed the commerce of luxury, the Tyrians had the commerce of economy, which they ex- tended throughout the world. Bochard has employed the first book of his " Canaan " in enumerating all the colonies which they sent into all the countries bordering upon the sea; they passed the pillars of Hercules, and made establishments on the coasts of the ocean.^ m There must have been very great the " Collection of Voyages to the changes in that country since the time North," vol. iv.
of Ptolemy, who gives us an account of o I am disposed to think that thence so many rivers that empty themselves the Lake Aral was formed, into the east side of the Caspian Sea. p Claudius Caesar, in Plin. lib. VI.
In the Czar's chart we find only the cap. xi.
river of Astrabat; in that of M. Bathalsi q He was slain by Ptolemy Ceraunus.
there is none at all. r See Strabo, lib. XI.
n See Jenkinson's account of this, in s They founded Tartessus, and made a settlement at Cadiz.
336 MONTESQUIEU In those times their pilots were obHged to follow the coasts, which were, if I may so express myself, their compass. Voy- ages were long and painful. The laborious voyage of Ulysses has been the fruitful subject of the finest poem in the world, next to that which alone has the preference.
The little knowledge which the greatest part of the world had of those who were far distant from them favored the na- tions engaged in the economical commerce. They managed trade with as much obscurity as they pleased; they had all the advantages which the most intelligent nations could take over the most ignorant.
The Egyptians — a people who by their religion and their manners were averse to all communication with strangers — had scarcely at that time any foreign trade. They enjoyed a fruitful soil and great plenty. Their country was the Japan of those times; it possessed everything within itself.
So little jealous were these people of commerce, that they left that of the Red Sea to all the petty nations that had any harbors in it. Here they suffered the Idumeans, the Syrians, and the Jews to have fleets. Solomon employed in this naviga- tion the Tyrians, who knew those seas.^ Josephus w says that this nation, being entirely employed in agriculture, knew little of navigation: the Jews, therefore, traded only occasionally in the Red Sea. They took from the Idumeans Eloth and Eziongeber, from whom they received this commerce; they lost these two cities, and with them lost this commerce.
It was not so with the Phoenicians: theirs was not a com- merce of luxury; nor was their trade owing to conquest; their frugality, their abilities, their industry, their perils, and the hard- ships they suffered, rendered them necessary to all the nations of the world.
Before Alexander, the people bordering on the Red Sea traded only in this sea, and in that of Africa. The astonishment which filled the globe at the discovery of the Indian Sea, under that conqueror, is a sufficient proof of this. I have observed "v that bullion was always carried to the Indies, and never any brought thence; now the Jewish fleets, which brought gold 1 1 Kings ix.; 2 Chron. viii. v Chap, i of this book.
M Against Appian.
THE SPIRIT OF LAWS 337 and silver by the way of the Red Sea, returned from Africa, and not from the Indies.^ Besides, this navigation was made on the eastern coast of Africa; for the state of navigation at that time is a convincing proof that they did not sail to a very distant shore.
I am not ignorant that the fleets of Solomon and Jehosha- phat returned only every three years; but I do not see that the time taken up in the voyage is any proof of the greatness of the distance.
Pliny and Strabo inform us that the junks of India and the Red Sea were twenty days in performing a voyage which a Greek or Roman vessel v^^ould accompHsh in seven.-*^ In this proportion, a voyage of one year, made by the fleets of Greece or Rome, would take very nearly three when performed by those of Solomon.
Two ships of unequal swiftness do not perform their voyage in a time proportionate to their swiftness. Slowness is fre- quently the cause of much greater slowness. When it becomes necessary to follow the coast, and to be incessantly in a differ- ent position, when they must wait for a fair wind to get out of a gulf, and for another to proceed, a good sailor takes the ad- vantage of every favorable moment, while the other still con- tinues in a difficult situation, and waits many days for another change.
The slowness of the Indian vessels, which in an equal time could make but the third of the way of those of the Greeks and Romans, may be explained by what we every day see in our modern navigation. The Indian vessels, which were built with a kind of sea-rushes, drew less water than those of Greece and Rome, which were of wood and joined with iron.
We may compare these Indian vessels to those at present made use of in ports of little depth of water. Such are those of Venice, and even of all Italy in general,^ of the Baltic, and of the province of Holland.-sf Their ships, which ought to be able to go in and out of port, are built round and broad at the bot- tom; while those of other nations, who have good harbors.
w The proportion between gold and x See Pliny, lib. VI. cap. xxii., and silver, as settled in Europe, may some- Strabo, lib. XV.
has excellent po z I say the pr the ports of Zealand are deep enough.
times render it profitable to take gold yThey are mostly shallow; but Sicily instead of silver into the East Indies; has excellent ports.
but the advantage is very trifling. z I say the province of Holland; for 338 MONTESQUIEU are formed to sink deep into the water. This mechanism ren- ders these last-mentioned vessels able to sail much nearer the wind; while the first can hardly sail, except the wind be nearly in the poop. A ship that sinks deep into the water sails towards the same side with almost every wind; this proceeds from the resistance which the vessel, while driven by the wind, meets with from the water, from which it receives a strong support; and from the length of the vessel which presents its side to the wind, while, from the form of the helm, the prow is turned to the point proposed; so that she can sail very near the wind, or, in other words, very near the point whence the wind blows. But when the hull is round and broad at the bottom, and conse- quently draws little water, it no longer finds this steady sup- port; the wind drives the vessel, which is incapable of resist- ance, and can run them but with a small variation from the point opposite to the wind. Whence it follows, that broad-bot- tomed vessels are longer in performing voyages.
I. They lose much time in waiting for the wind, especially if they are obliged frequently to change their course. 2. They sail much slower, because not having a proper support from a depth of water, they cannot carry so much sail. If this be the case at a time when the arts are everywhere known, at a time when art corrects the defects of nature, and even of art itself; if at this time, I say, we find this difference, how great must that have been in the navigation of the ancients?
I cannot yet leave this subject. The Indian vessels were small, and those of the Greeks and Romans, if we except those machines built for ostentation, much less than ours. Now, the smaller the vessel the greater danger it encounters from foul weather. A tempest that would swallow up a small vessel would only make a large one roll. The more one body sur- passes another in size, the more its surface is relatively small. Whence it follows, that in a small ship there is a less propor- tion, that is, a greater difference in respect to the surface of the vessel, compared with the weight or lading she can carry, than in a large one. We know that it is a pretty general practice to make the weight of the lading equal to that of half the water the vessel could contain. Suppose a vessel will contain eight hundred tons, her lading then must be four hundred; and that of a vessel which would hold but four hundred tons of water THE SPIRIT OF LAWS 339 would be two hundred tons. Thus the largeness of the first ship will be to the weight she carries as 8 to 4, and that of the second as 4 to 2. Let us suppose, then, that the surface of the greater is to the surface of the smaller as 8 to 6; the surface of the latter will be to her weight as 6 to 2,a while the surface of the former will be to her weight only as 8 to 4. Therefore, as the winds and waves act only upon the surface, the large vessel will, by her weight, resist their impetuosity much more than the small.
7. — Of the Commerce of the Greeks The first Greeks were all pirates. Minos, who enjoyed the empire of the sea, was only more successful, perhaps, than others in piracy; for his maritime dominion extended no farther than round his own isle. But when the Greeks became a great people, the Athenians obtained the real dominion of the sea; because this trading and victorious nation gave laws to the most potent monarch of that time,& and humbled the mari- time powers of Syria, of the isle of Cyprus, and Phoenicia.
But this Athenian lordship of the sea deserves to be more par- ticularly mentioned. " Athens," says Xenophon,c " rules the sea; but as the country of Attica is joined to the continent, it is ravaged by enemies while the Athenians are engaged in dis- tant expeditions. Their leaders suffer their lands to be de- stroyed, and secure their wealth by sending it to some island. The populace, who are not possessed of lands, have no uneasi- ness. But if the Athenians inhabited an island, and, beside this, enjoyed the empire of the sea, they would, so long as they were possessed of these advantages, be able to annoy others, and at the same time to be out of all danger of being annoyed." One would imagine that Xenophon was speaking of England.
The Athenians, a people whose heads were filled with ambi- tious projects; the Athenians, who augmented their jealousy instead of increasing their influence; who were more attentive to extend their maritime empire than to enjoy it; whose polit- ical government was such that the common people distributed the public revenues among themselves, while the rich were in a state of oppression; the Athenians, I say, did not carry on so a That is, to compare magnitudes of h The King of Persia, the same kind, the action or pressure c On the Athenian Republic.** of the fluid upon the ship vrill be to the resistance of the same ship as, etc.
340 MONTESQUIEU extensive a commerce as might be expected from the produce of their mines, from the multitude of their slaves, from the num- ber of their seamen, from their influence over the cities of Greece, and, above all, from the excellent institutions of Solon. Their trade was almost wholly confined to Greece and to the Euxine Sea, whence they drew their subsistence.
Corinth was admirably situated; it separated two seas, and opened and shut the Peloponnesus; it was the key of Greece, and a city of the greatest importance, at a time when the people of Greece were a world, and the cities of Greece nations. Its trade was more extensive than that of Athens, having a port to receive the merchandise of Asia, and another that of Italy; for the great difficulties which attended the doubling Cape Malea, where the meeting of opposite winds causes shipwrecks,^ induced every one to go to Corinth, and they could even convey their vessels over land from one sea to the other. Never was there a city in which the works of art were carried to so high a degree of perfection. But here religion finished the corrup- tion which their opulence began. They erected a temple to Venus, in which more than a thousand courtesans were con- secrated to that deity; from this seminary came the greatest part of those celebrated beauties whose history Athenseus has presumed to commit to writing.
It seems that in Homer's time the opulence of Greece cen- tred in Rhodes, Corinth, and Orchomenus; " Jupiter," he says, " loved the Rhodians, and made them a very wealthy nation."^ On Corinth he bestows the epithet of rich./" In like manner, when he speaks of cities that have plenty of gold, he mentions Orchomenus, to which he joins Thebes in Egypt. Rhodes and Corinth preserved their power; but Orchomenus lost hers. The situation of Orchomenus in the neighborhood of the Hel- lespont, the Propontis, and the Euxine Sea makes us naturally imagine that she was indebted for her opulence to a trade along that maritime coast, which had given rise to the fable of the golden fleece; and, indeed, the name of Minyeios has been given to Orchomenus as well as to the Argonauts.^ But these seas becoming afterwards more frequented, the Greeks planted along the coasts a greater number of colonies, which traded d See Strabo, lib. VIII. / Ibid.
f " Iliad," lib. II, e Strabo, lib. IX. p. 914.
THE SPIRIT OF LAWS 341 with the barbarous nations and at the same time preserved an intercourse with their mother country. In consequence of this, Orchomenus began to decHne till at length it was lost in the crowd of the other cities of Greece.
Before Homer's time the Greeks had scarcely any trade but among themselves, and with a few barbarous nations; in pro- portion, however, as they formed new colonies, they extended their dominion. Greece was a large peninsula, the capes of which seemed to have kept off the seas, while its gulfs opened on all sides to receive them. If we cast an eye on Greece, we shall find, in a pretty compact country, a considerable extent of sea-coast. Her innumerable colonies formed an immense circle round her; and there she beheld, in some measure, the whole civilized world. Did she penetrate into Sicily an.d Italy, she formed new nations. Did she navigate towards the sea of Pon- tus, the coast of Asia Minor, or that of Africa, she acted in the same manner. Her cities increased in prosperity in proportion as they happened to have new people in their neighborhood. And what was extremely beautiful, she was surrounded on every side with a prodigious number of islands, drawn, as it were, in a line of circumvallation.
What a source of prosperity must Greece have found in those games with which she entertained, in some measure, the whole globe; in those temples, to which all the kings of the earth sent their offerings; in those festivals, at which such a concourse of people used to assemble from all parts; in those oracles, to which the attention of all mankind was directed; and, in short, in that exquisite taste for the polite arts, which she carried to such a height that to expect ever to surpass her would be only betraying our ignorance!
8. — Of Alexander: his Conquests Four great events happened in the reign of Alexander which entirely changed the face of commerce: the taking of Tyre, the conquest of Egypt, that likewise of the Indies, and the dis- covery of the sea which lies south of that country.
The Empire of Persia extended to the Indus.^ Darius, long before Alexander, had sent some vessels, which sailed down this river, and passed even into the Red Sea.* How then were the h Strabo, lib. XV. i Herodotus, in " Melpomene," 342 MONTESQUIEU Greeks the first who traded with the Indies by the south? Had not the Persians done this before? Did they make no ad- vantage of seas which were so near them, of the very seas that washed their coasts? Alexander, it is true, conquered the Indies; but was it necessary for him to conquer a country in order to trade with it? This is what I shall now examine.
Ariana,; which extended from the Persian Gulf as far as the Indus, and from the South Sea to the mountains of Paropam- isus, depended, indeed, in some measure, on the Empire of Persia; but in the southern part it was barren, scorched, rude, and uncultivated.^ Tradition relates^ that the armies of Semiramis and Cyrus perished in these deserts; and Alexander, who caused his fleet to follow him, could not avoid losing in this place a great part of his army. The Persians left the whole coast to the Ichthyophagi,w the Oritse, and other barbarous na- tions. Besides, the Persians were no great sailors,^ and their very religion debarred them from entertaining any such notion as that of a maritime commerce. The voyage undertaken by Darius's direction upon the Indus and the Indian Sea proceeded rather from the capriciousness of a prince vainly ambitious of showing his power than from any settled regular project. It was attended with no consequence either to the advantage of commerce or of navigation. They emerged from their igno- rance only to plunge into it agam.
Besides, it was a received opinion^ before the expedition of Alexander that the southern parts of India were uninhabitable./' This proceeded from a tradition that Semiramis q had brought back thence only twenty men, and Cyrus but seven.
Alexander entered by the north. His design was to march towards the east; but having found a part of the south full of great nations, cities, and rivers, he attempted to conquer it, and succeeded.
He then formed a design of uniting the Indies to the Western nations by a maritime commerce, as he had already united them by the colonies he had established by land.
;■ Strabo, lib. XV. this day they have no maritime comk Pliny says. " Ariana regio ambusta merce. Those who take to the sea are fervoribus, aesertisque circumdata." treated by them as atheists.
(" Nat. Hist." VI. cap. xxiii.)— Ed. o Strabo, lib. XV.
/ Strabo, lib. XV. p Herodotus (in " Melpomene ") saj^s w Pliny, lib. VI. cap. xxiii.; Strabo, that Darius conquered the Indies; this lib. XV. must be understood only to mean Arin Thcjyr sailed not upon the rivers, lest ana; and even this was only an ideal they should defile the elements (Hyde's conquest.
" Religion of the. Persians ")• Even to q Strabo, lib. XV.
THE SPIRIT OF LAWS 343 He ordered a fleet to be built on the Hydaspes, then fell down that river, entered the Indus, and sailed even to its mouth. He left his army and his fleet at Patala, went himself with a few vessels to view the sea, and marked the places where he would have ports to be opened and arsenals erected. Upon his return from Patala he separated the fleet, and took the route by land, for the mutual support of fleet and army. The fleet followed the coast from the Indus along the banks of the country of the Oritae, of the Ichthyophagi, of Carmania, and Persia. He caused wells to be dug, built cities, and would not suffer the Ichthyophagi to live on fish,** being desirous of having the bor- ders of the sea inhabited by civilized nations. Nearchus and Onesecritus wrote a journal of this voyage, which was per- formed in ten months. They arrived at Susa, where they found Alexander, who gave an entertainment to his whole army.
This prince had founded Alexandria, with a view of securing his conquest of Egypt; this was a key to open it, in the very place where the kings his predecessors had a key to shut it; s and he had not the least thought of a commerce of which the discovery of the Indian Sea could alone give him the idea.
It even seems that after his discovery he had no new design in regard to Alexandria. He had, indeed, a general scheme of opening a trade between the East Indies and the western parts of his empire; but as for the project of conducting this com- merce through Egypt, his knowledge was too imperfect to be able to form any such design. It is true he had seen the In- dus, he had seen the Nile, but he knew nothing of the Arabian seas between the two rivers. Scarcely had he returned from India when he fitted out new fleets, and navigated on the Euleus,^ the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the ocean; he removed the cataracts, with which the Persians had encumbered those rivers; and he discovered that the Persian Gulf was a branch of the main sea. But as he went to view this sea w in the same r This cannot be understood of all the think that Alexander's prohibition re- Ichthyophagi, who inhabited a coast of lated to these people, or to some other ten thousand furlongs in extent. How tribe still more bordering on Persia, was it possible for Alexander to have s Alexandria was founded on a flat maintained them? How could he com- shore, called Rhacotis, where, in ancient mand their submission? This can be times, the kings had kept a garrison to only understood of some particular prevent all strangers, and more par- tribes. Nearchus, in his book " Rerum ticularly the Greeks, from entering the Indicarum," says that at the extremity country. — Pliny, lib. VI. cap. x.; Strabo, of this coast, on the side of Persia, he lib. XVIII.
had found some people who were less / Arrian, " de expedit. Alexandri," Ichthyophagi than the others. I should lib. VII.
«Ibid.
344 MONTESQUIEU manner as he had done in respect to that of India; as he caused a port to be opened for a thousand ships, and arsenals to be erected at Babylon; as he sent five hundred talents into Phoenicia and Syria, to draw mariners into this service whom he intended to distribute in the colonies along the coast; in fine, as he caused immense works to be erected on the Euphrates, and the other rivers of Assyria, there could be no doubt but he designed to carry on the commerce of India by the way of Babylon and the Persian Gulf.
There are some who pretend that Alexander wanted to sub- due Arabia,^' and had formed a design to make it the seat of his empire: but how could he have pitched upon a place with which he was entirely unacquainted? w Besides, of all countries, this would have been the most inconvenient to him; for it would have separated him from the rest of his empire. The Caliphs, who made distant conquests, soon withdrew from Arabia to reside elsewhere.
9. — Of the Commerce of the Grecian Kings after the Death of Alexander At the time when Alexander made the conquest of Egypt, they had but a very imperfect idea of the Red Sea, and none at all of the ocean, which, joining this sea, on one side washes the coast of Africa, and on the other that of Arabia; nay, they thought it impossible to sail round the peninsula of Arabia. They who attempted it on each side had relinquished their de- sign. " How is it possible," said they,-!^ " to navigate to the southern coast of Arabia, when Cambyses's army, which trav- ersed it on the north side, almost entirely perished; and the forces which Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, sent to the assistance of Seleucus Nicator at Babylon, underwent incredible hard- ships, and, upon account of the heat, could march only in the night?"
The Persians were entire strangers to navigation. When they had subdued Egypt, they introduced the same spirit into that country as prevailed in Persia: hence, so great was the supineness of the Persians in this respect, that the Grecian kings found them quite strangers, not only to the commerce of