The beginning of Dutch navigation and trade with the Levant

by: Daniel Koster, historian, 2003

At first sight it seems a miracle that a small country as the Dutch Republic became such a formidable maritime and mercantile power. However, with the exception of Great Britain in the 19th century no other country has ever exerted such primacy in world trade and over such a long period as the Dutch. From the last decade of the 16th century until the middle of the 18th century the Dutch dominated world commerce. This economic supremacy was by no means evenly balanced, for although the Dutch monopolized the northern Russian trade and large parts of the East Indies, their role was less predominant in the Mediterranean. Nevertheless the Dutch merchant and shipping elite had a keen interest in the navigation in the Mediterranean and the trade with the Levant. But they achieved a preeminent position in that area for only two limited periods. Most of the time the Dutch had to accept second or third place after their competitors England, France and Venice.

The Dutch economic historian J.G. van Dillen tried to distinguish several phases in the long period of Dutch economic domination of World Trade. He saw a powerfull early phase from 1590 till 1620. This period of boom was followed by a recession which lasted until 1645. Between 1646 and 1670 the Dutch republic reached the apogee of its economic development. During this flourishing period the Dutch were also able to regain their position in the Meditteranean and the Levant vis-à-vis the Vene-tians and the English, because the outbreak of the Turco-Venetian war over Crete paralyzed Venetian trade and the English civil war had an negative impact on their trade into the Levant. This period of boom was reversed when in 1672 the English, the French and some German states declared war on the Dutch republic, a year which became known in Dutch historiography as „het Rampjaar“ (the year of the catastrophe) and a long period of relative decline did set in.

In his article on the Dutch „straatvaart“ the well-known English historian Jonathan Israel refined this four phases scheme. He distinguished seven major phases of which he divided Van Dillens first phase in two periods: (1) 1590-1607 and (2) 1608-1621. During his first phase the Dutch extended their activities to all sides of the globe. Initially in the carrying trade, but gradually on their own account. Progress was especially made in the White Sea (Moermansk and Archangel), the Meditterranean and the East Indies. For instance between 1595 and 1602 at least fourteen fleets containing a total of 65 ships set sail for Asia.

The reason behind this development was political as well as economical. In 1590 Philip II of Spain changed his policy towards the rebellious Dutch overnight. He phocussed his attention to France and lifted the blockade which had been in strength between 1585 and 1590. That change of policy gave the Dutch access to Spanish silver. The capture of Antwerp by the Spanish troops , the tightening of the naval blockade of the river Scheldt and the Flemish coast and the more stable situation in the Republic caused many of the elite merchants from Antwerp to settle in the maritime provinces of Holland and Zeeland. This influx of capital and know-how enabled the Dutch to shift their attention from the trade in bulk of relatively low value like cereals, Baltic ware, hides and unprocessed metals to that of the so-called „rich trades“, the trade in textiles, sugar and spices, dyestuff, arms and ammunition, ironry, jewelry and other industrial endproducts, to name the most important. In this way they conquered or infiltrated ever wider markets.

Secondly, between 1590 and 1594 and again between 1597-1598 and 1607-1608 a series of failures of cereal harvests in the Mediterranean basin forced the Italians to comply for Baltic grain of which Amsterdam was already the main staple. As the Dutch were at that time the biggest shipping nation of Europe they eagerly exploited this opportunity. They sailed to Genua, to the new freeport of Leghorn and also into the Adriatic to Venice. Another important factor was that Dutch freight and insurance rates to the Mediterranean also fell sharply. In general the Dutch freight rates were already lower than those of their competitors. The system of shareholding in Dutch shipping meant that a very large part of the Dutch merchant marine was owned by Dutch merchants themselves, but there was also a technological component as the construction of the so-called Fluteship proved to be very advantageous in regard to the crew-freight ratio.

Apart from Baltic grain they started to transport the luxury products of Northern Russia as furs, caviar, leather and wax from Archangel to the Italian ports and took over the control of spices from the Portuguese. In short, progress made in the so-called rich trades elsewhere, also accelerated progress in the Mediterranean. The volume of Dutch shipping grew spectacularily, but this does not mean that the Dutch were in the position to controll mediterranean commerce like they did elsewhere.

As around 1590 about 21 Flemish firms were active in Venice it is no wonder that the Dutch were often chartered by them, but not exlusively, because more and more Italians made use of the Dutch „termites“ as Fernand Braudel used to call the Dutch masters with their big merchantmen, as in Italy a great shortage of tonnage did exist. In that way the Dutch became acquainted with the Venetian held Ionian islands like Corfu, Cephalonia and Zante and also with Crete, where apart from cotton, grain, hides, oil and some silk, the main staple was Malvasywine. Almost contemporarily they started to sail to the trade centres of the near eastern Levant.

Before 1599 there was no case of direct contact between the Dutch staplemarket and the tradecentres of the Levant. Cotton from Cyprus, Turkish mohair and Ionian currants and raw silk from the Near East reached Amsterdam in the nineties in Dutch ships, but these had been loaded in Venice and the merchandise was sent by Venetian merchants in consignment, for up that moment Venice was the main staple of Levantine products to Western Europe. Venice exported: cotton, raw silk, silken textiles, oil, alum, Milanese rice, Venetian mirrors and marble.

Israels second phase runs parallel with the Twelfth Year Truce. This Treaty concluded between the Republic and Spain which lasted from 1609 until 1621 again lifted various economic and political obstacles and lead up to the great leap forward in Dutch navigation into the Mediterranean and the trade with the Levant. Equipped with Spanish silver and pepper and spices (which trade the Dutch had wrested from the Portuguese and expanded into the Mediterranean) the Dutch managed to become a force to be reckoned with in the trade to Italy and the lands of the Ottoman Empire. Although Israel made use of the available statistics for Spain and Italy , he did not research the Levantine data to be found in the card indices of the notarial records in the Amsterdam Municipal Archives. So I decided to fill up this omission and to check the card-indices to Italy and the lands of the Ottoman Empire on Levantine destinations. To this data I added the various shippingreports published in several publications of primary source material and related monographs.

Statistics „Straatvaart“

Ia. Phase I
Year Spain Italy Corfu Cephalonia Zante Crete
1594 20 (-) 26 (--) - (-) - (-) - (-) - (-)
1595 18 (-) 2 (--) - (-) - (-) - (-) - (-)
1596 15 (-) 38 (--) - (-) - (-) - (-) - (-)
1597 34 (-) 4 (26) - (1) - (-) 1 (-) 1 (-)
1598 31 (-) 16 (--) 1 (-) - (-) 2 (-) 2 (-)
1599 2 (-) 9 (13) 1 (1) 1 (-) 2 (-) 1 (-)
1600 6 (-) 15 (19) 2 (-) 1 (-) 3 (-) 5 (2)
1601 6 (-) 27 (21) (6) 2 (1) 2 (-) 5 (1) 2 (1)
1602 5 (-) 59 ( 7) (1) - (-) 1 (-) 2 (2) 2 (2)
1603 - (-) 16 (59) (1) 2 (-) 1 (-) 1 (1) 3 (1)
1604 - (-) 59 (46) 3 (1) 3 (-) 3 (-) 3 (1)
1605 - (-) 38 (62) - (1) - (-) 1 (-) 5 (1)
1606 - (-) 115 (--) 2 (-) - (-) 3 (-) 3 (1)
1607 - (-) 261 (--) (1) 1 (-) - (-) - (-) 2 (-)
1608 - (-) 40 (--) (2) 2 (-) - (-) 2 (1) 5 (3)
Total 137 (-) 713 (322) (11) 16 (5) 9 (-) 25 (5) 34 (12)

IIb. Phase II
Year Morea Greek Mainland Archipel Smyrna Constantinople
1609 - (--) - (--) 1 (--) 2 (--) - (--)
1610 - ( 1) - ( 2) 1 ( 1) - (--) - (--)
1611 - (--) - (-2) 1 (--) 2 (--) 2 (--)
1612 - ( 1) - ( 1) 1 ( 3) 2 (--) ( 2)
1613 - ( 2) - (--) - ( 2) 2 ( 2) - ( 4)
1614 - ( 1) - (--) - ( 3) - ( 2) - ( 2)
1615 - ( 1) - (--) 1 (--) - (--) - ( 3)
1616 - (--) - (--) 2 ( 3) 1 ( 2) - ( 3)
1617 - (--) - (--) - (--) - (--) - ( 1)
1618 - ( 3) - ( 2) 1 ( 4) - ( 1) - ( 2)
1619 - ( 9) - ( 7) - (--) - ( 3) 1 ( 1)
1620 - ( 2) - (--) - ( 5) - ( 1) 1 (--)
1621 - ( 1) - (--) - ( 4) - ( 1) - (--)
Total - (21) - (14) 8 (25) 9 (12) 4 (18)

IIIa. Phase I
Year Cyprus Syria Palestine Egypt
1594 - (--) - (-) - (-) - (-)
1595 - (--) - (-) - (-) - (-)
1596 - (--) - (-) - (-) - (-)
1597 - (--) - (1) - (-) - (-)
1598 - (--) - (-) - (-) - (-)
1599 - (--) - (1) - (-) - (-)
1600 1 (-1) - (-) - (-) - (-)
1601 1 (-2) - (1) - (-) - (-)
1602 - (-2) - (1) - (-) - (-)
1603 1 (--) 1 (-) - (-) - (-)
1604 6 (-5) 4 (1) - (-) - (-)
1605 5 (-1) 4 (-) - (-) - (-)
1606 8 (-4) 6 (-) 1 (-) - (-)
1607 4 (--) 3 (1) 2 (-) 2 (-)
1608 8 (-6) 9 (1) 6 (-) 3 (2)
Total 35 (21) 27 (7) 9 (-) 5 (2)

IIIb. Phase II
Year Cyprus Syria Palestine Egypt
1609 8 (10/13) 7 (8/11) 6 (7/10) 2 (9/11)
1610 5 ( 2) 5 (--) 5 (-) 4 (-)
1611 8 (--) 7 ( 1) 7 (-) 6 (-)
1612 3 ( 2) 3 ( 9) 3 (-) 2 (2)
1613 5 ( 2) 5 ( 3) 5 (-) 3 (2)
1614 2 ( 3) 2 ( 9) 2 (-) 2 (-)
1615 4 ( 2) 3 ( 9) 3 (-) 2 (2)
1616 - ( 1) - (10) 2 (-) 3 (2)
1617 - ( 1) 1 ( 1) 1 (-) 2 (1)
1618 2 ( 3) 2 ( 1) 1 (-) - (5)
1619 1 ( 7) 1 ( 7) - (-) - (8)
1620 1 ( 2) 1 ( 3) 1 (-) 1 (-)
1621 - ( 2) - ( 1) - (-) - (-)
Total 39 (38/41) 37 (63/66) 36 (7/10) 27 (33/35)

From the card indices we learn that the Dutch merchants already at an early stage did send their factors to the various staples and scales of the Levant, first to the Italian ports but also to Crete, Cyprus and the Near East. A certain Berthelmus Christoffelsen, the clerk of Salomon Voerknecht, one of the foremost merchants in Amsterdam had been factor in Candia before he was ordered to set sail to Cyprus in 1604. From Seusenius’ travel account we learn that a certain Paulo de Willem from Hamburg, but living in Amsterdam had rented a house in Candia near the church of St. Peter in the summer of 1602. He was of Flemish origin and migrated after the Fall of Antwerp in 1585 firstly to Hamburg and finally settled in 1609 in Amsterdam. The process of sending clerks and factors to the Levant accelerated during the second phase (1609-1621) of which Crete in particular is a very well documented example. It showed the growing Dutch interest in the commerce with the Venetian held Greek world and in particular the trade with Crete. From 1609 onwards, but probably earlier, until 1614 Jan de Coninck was the Cretan factor of the merchant Jacques Bernaert.

This period covers more or less the first period (1608-1613) in Angelikis Panopoulou’s article on Candian shipping (note 14). The total number of vessels registered there in that period was 278. Twentyone were Flemish (in this context and in these years Flemish means Dutch), nineteen were French and only fourteen were English, which proves that the Dutch Republic was the leading mercantile power. However, when we look into more detail, we notice that among those 278 registered vessels at least 145 were large merchantmen of the westeuropean type like the berton or nave. This implies that the amount of northern ships must have been much larger than 54. The problem has been caused by the fact that the Venetian authorities in charge in most cases omitted the nationality of the shipmasters. By checking carefully their names and those of their vessels, I could retrieve a lot of other Dutch shipmasters and their ships. The result of my research is that at least 71 of the 145 „nordic“ ships were Dutch (almost 50%), which means that the number of Dutch ships outnumbered the total of English and French ships together, for a substantial number among the remaining 74 big merchantmen were vessels bought by the Venetians and others. Dutch supremacy in this short period seems to be overwhelming. These figures are al-most in line with the amount of 41 chartercontracts concluded in Amsterdam during the same years. They surely show a peak during the entire second phase in which almost thrice as much contracts were concluded than in the first phase. When we compare the num-ber of the shipping reports, the difference is even more striking. However, a large part of Dutch shipping was still in the field of the carrying trade between Venice and other Mediterranean and Levantine destinations, among them Crete, for outside parties. Nevertheless, even if we take into consideration that the 41 contracts have not been executed integrally, the amount of charterparties related to direct trade between Amsterdam and Candia is so substantial that Dutch dominance in this short interval cannot be denied.