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618 Magnus Ressel

The authors gave as an explanation the attraction of the markets
around the North Sea, especially Amsterdam and London. In further
pages, they also emphasised the increasing industrial potential of
France, which was more and more able to produce the luxury textiles
for Germany that had hitherto been furnished by Venice.
It seems, however, as if the empirical evidence is right in this case, but
that the interpretation a bit lopsided. The authors concentrated on the
export markets of the North Sea and regarded these as more absorptive
than Venice and the Mediterranean. German textile production certainly
found rapidly expanding markets in the North Sea, as this was the entry
also to the henceforth continuously growing colonial and African mar-
kets, with their insatiable demand for Saxon and Silesian linen . How-
11
ever, this does not fully explain the shrinking of German trade with Italy.
These trading relations had traditionally been characterised much more
by a transit structure than by a bilateral exchange. The Germans had
bought in Venice goods from the Levant and their products had been sold
into the wider Mediterranean . Such a structure should have been more
12
independent from the developments in Northern Europe. The specific
problem had been succinctly identified by the Venetian authorities al-
ready in 1608, when they wrote:

The loss of customs revenue at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi is assumed to
derive from the navigation undertaken by the Flemish, English and French,
because they go with their own vessels to the Levant to buy silk, spices, cotton
and other goods and then take them to Marseille, Flanders and England from
where they are then taken to the fairs of Frankfurt and other places in Ger-
many, where the merchants have a price advantage of twelve and more per
cent when buying at these fairs in comparison of what they would get if they
came to Venice as they did before. 13

Hambourg, pour 34,600 taler seulement à Nuremberg, Augsbourg et Francfort réunies.
Dans le rapprochement de ces données, à défaut de véritable série, ne pourrait-on voir
le signe d’un changement d’orientation à l’intérieur de l’Allemagne? Changement lent,
qui donne l’avantage, au cours du troisième quart du siècle seulement, aux lignes ouest-
est sur les lignes nord-sud.”
11 On this vast topic see just the recent contribution of: K. Weber, A. Steffen, Spin-
ning and Weaving for the Slave Trade: Proto-industry in Eighteenth-Century Silesia, in F.
Brahm, E. Rosenhaft (eds.), Slavery Hinterland: Transatlantic Slavery and Continental
Europe, 1680-1850, Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge, 2016, pp. 87-107.
12 S. Backmann, Der Fondaco dei Tedeschi cit., p. 106-110.
13 Domenico Sella, Commerci e industrie a Venezia nel secolo XVII, Cini, Venice, 1961,
p. 26: “La Perdita del Datio del Fonteco dei Todeschi si stima derivi dalla navigatione
presa da fiamenghi, inglesi et francesi, perché vanno con lì proprij loro vascelli in Le-
vante a comprar sedde, speciarie, gottoni et altre merci et quelle poi conducono a Mar-
silia, Fiandra et Inghilterra di dove sono poi condotte nelle fiere di Franco Forte et altri

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