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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 3, p. 258.

258 THE INDIAN EMPIRE [CHAP. siderable, for Pliny complains that the annual drain of specie from Europe to India was never less than 55,ooo,ooo sesterces (£45S,ooo). Mediaeval The northern trade-route, though never of great importance period. to India, joined the ancient road between Europe and China, and for a time prospered by the closing of the Syrian route during the Crusades. Under the care of Genoese traders it was a source of wealth to the Byzantine emperors till the Turks took Constantinople in i453. The Syrian caravan trade, which had thriven under the Arabs, was threatened by the Mongols as early as I258 when Baghdad fell, and ultimately shared the fate of the northern path. The Venetians, who had secured the supremacy of the Mediterranean, yielded before the Turks in I470, and early in the sixteenth century the conquest of Egypt placed the command of the last route to Europe in the hands of the Turks. The Portu- Throughout the fifteenth century the Portuguese had been guese. slowly feeling their way down the west coast of Africa, and in 1498 Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut. Along the Malabar coast he found ports or open roadsteads where merchants from Ceylon or Malacca met those from the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea. The Portuguese established their trade at the expense of the Arab merchants by violent measures, and opened factories which were garrisoned by soldiers. A fort at Ormuz commanded the Persian Gulf; the establishment of Goa secured the export trade in pepper and ginger on the Malabar coast; and the conquest of Malacca gave the Portuguese the spice trade with the Farther East. In addition to spices, the exports included gems, drugs, dyes, perfumes, art products, and textiles, which were chiefly paid for in silver, though woollen goods, linen, velvet, hardware, glass, and chemicals were also imported. The Dutch The Portuguese allowed naturalized foreigners to take part and Eng- in the trade with India, the monopoly of which had been secured by a Papal bull, and Antwerp became the great com- mercial centre of Europe. The failure to discover routes by the north-west or north-east had, however, already inclined other nations to trespass, when the union of Spain and Portugal in 1580 and the ruin of Antwerp brought matters to a crisis be- tween the Catholic and Protestant nations of Europe. An English company trading to the Levant received a charter in I58i, and in I593 was authorized to trade overland with India. Fifteen Dutch squadrons sailed for India by the Cape between 1595 and I6o0. The first English East India Company was