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The ‘backbone’ of the Serenissima: Venice and the trade with the Holy Roman... 619

Essentially the problem was that the Venetians, and especially the
German merchants of Venice, were losing their roles as intermediaries
between the Mediterranean and the central European markets due to
the cheapness of sea transportation. This problem may have even been
‘covered’ to some degree by the Thirty Years War, as this had caused
a substantial increase in the costs of maritime transportation. Some
evidence from Cologne’s long distance trade to Italy in these years
speaks for this .
14
When we look at the most important Alpine passes that were used
for transit trade between Germany and Italy, we see on all four of them
(from West to East: the Gotthard, the Splügen, the Brenner and the
Tauern) a simultaneous development after 1648. We may present the
example of the Gotthard: after the peace treaty, traffic went rapidly up,
from 905.5 saum (1 saum = ca. 80 kg) in 1648 to 4,857.5 saum in
1653. Then it fell again to 1,240.5 saum in 1655 . The same pattern
15
can be seen in all other transit passes, except for the Splügen, to which
we shall come below .
16
The simultaneity of this rapid succession of rise and fall shows us
that trade relations between Germany and Italy over all passes were
subject to the same basic conditions. With the fall of maritime trans-
portation costs after the conclusion of peace agreements, the sea
routes via Hamburg and Amsterdam to the Mediterranean could play
out their structural advantage over land-based exchange between Ger-
many and Italy. The fact that until 1653 we see a strong resurgence of
trade on the Alpine passes proves that the damages of the Thirty Years
War were presumably not structural, with regard to the German-
Italian exchange over land. This was threatened far more by the cheap-
ness of maritime transportation after the disappearance of the Span-
ish corsair threat.

lochi d’Alemagna, dove li mercanti con loro avantaggio de dodici et più per cento si
vanno a servire in esse fiere, che non farebbero se venissero a Venetia sì come facevano
di prima.”
14 S. Gramulla, Handelsbeziehungen Kölner Kaufleute zwischen 1500 und 1650,
Böhlau, Cologne, 1972, p. 277.
15 F. Glauser, Der Gotthardtransit von 1500 bis 1660: seine Stellung im Alpentransit,
«Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte», A. 29 (1979), p. 49.
16 C. Redolfi Bragagna, Die Finanzgebarung des Bozner Merkantilmagistrates
1633/35-1850, PhD-Ms., University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck 1988, pp. 85-86; W. Bod-
mer, Ursachen der Veränderungen des Verkehrsvolumens auf der Wasserstrasse Wa-
lenstadt-Zürich von 1600 bis 1800, «Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte», A. 27, n.
1/2 (1977), p. 58; H. Hassinger, Geschichte des Zollwesens, Handels und Verkehrs in
den östlichen Alpenländern vom Spätmittelalter bis in die zweite Hälfte des 18. Jahrhun-
derts, Steiner, Stuttgart, 1987, p. 325.

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