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614 Magnus Ressel

the city of Venice; MR], but which, since the early seventeenth century, had
rapidly lost share as the French, English and Dutch had supplanted the Ve-
netians as suppliers of silk and cotton to the German market 1 .

With this lengthy statement, Domenico Sella summarised in 1994
the state of research on the German-Venetian trade relations in the
decades around 1600. This trade had been before the 17 century
th
“somewhat the backbone” of the Serenissima, but it contracted dra-
matically in the first decades of the following century. This mere fact
cannot be doubted, as there have been numerous confirmations of this
fact in recent years . One more addition from the German side of the
2
Alps may be put forward here, to confirm Sella’s summary. Here (in
table 1) we see in the city of Augsburg, the most important trading
partner of Venice in Germany, an all-time peak in textile output from
1600 to 1610. It fell modestly to 1620, then rapidly to 1630.

Table 1: Annual turnover of Fustians in Augsburg in pieces
Years Bleached Dyed and Raw
1595-1599 102,634 378,362
1600-1604 108,715 413,464
1605-1609 106,497 405,984
1610-1614 92,273 347,502
1615-1619 91,616 300,405
1620-1624 82,960 277,513
1625-1629 52,735 238,327
1630-1634 19,355 107,949
Source: R. Hildebrandt, Die wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen zwischen Oberdeutschland und
Venedig um 1600. Konturen eines Gesamtbildes, in B. Roeck (ed.), Venedig und Oberdeutsch-
land in der Renaissance: Beziehungen zwischen Kunst und Wirtschaft, Thorbecke, Sigma-
ringen, 1993, pp. 277-288, here p. 281.

1 D. Sella, L’economia, in P. Prodi, G. Cozzi (eds.), Storia di Venezia. Dalle origini alla
caduta della Serenissima, Vol. 6: Dal Rinascimento al Barocco, Treccani, Rome, 1994,
pp. 651-711, here p. 702: “Più difficile dire quanto, nel primo trentennio del [diciasset-
tesimo] secolo, restasse a Venezia dell’antico commercio di transito tra il Levante e i
paesi tedeschi, quel commercio che per secoli aveva costituito un po’ la spina dorsale
dell’economia realtina, ma che, fin dai primi anni del Seicento, aveva rapidamente perso
quota via che Francesi, Inglesi e Olandesi avevano soppiantato i Veneziani come forni-
tori di seta e di cotone al mercato tedesco.”
2 See most recently: S. Backmann, Der Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venedig: Inklusion
und Exklusion oberdeutscher Kaufleute in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (1550-1650), PhD-
Ms., University of Zurich, 2018, Zurich, URL: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/16
0593 [25.4.2022], p. 110-112. Very remarkable is Backmann’s summary of a Venetian
opinion from the year 1607: «Among the five foreign nations that played an economic
role in Venice, the Germans were weaker in importance compared to the Florentines,
Genoese, Milanese, and Flemings», ivi, p. 133. On the Flemish/Dutch merchants
around 1600 see: M. van Gelder, Trading Places: The Netherlandish Merchants in Early
Modern Venice, Brill, Leiden, 2009, pp. 99-106.

Mediterranea – ricerche storiche – Anno XIX – Dicembre 2022
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)