4 EARLY COMPETITION FOR INDIAN COMMERCE

ninth centuries more completely than it has ever done since in any one city "; the Greek navy was the largest then in existence. But misrule, fiscal oppression, and foreign invasions ruined the Byzantine empire. As Constantinople de- clined, Venice and Genoa, the cities of the inland sea which lay beyond the desolating range of Asiatic con- quest, rose into splendid prominence. It was the spirit of very short-sighted commercial jealousy that actu- ated the Venetians when, having contracted to convey the armies of the Fourth Crusade across the Mediter- ranean to Egypt, they insisted on an expedition against Constantinople, which was taken by the Latins in 1204. The blow fatally weakened the Greek power in the East, which henceforward opposed less and less resist- ance to the invading Turkish hordes. In the mean- time the Italian cities had become the principal agents for the importation into Europe of the precious com- modities of Asia; insomuch that in the fifteenth cen- tury the Venetians appeared literally to " hold the gorgeous East in fee," for they were not far from pos- sessing the whole of this enormously profitable business. At the end of that century two capital events in the annals of the world's commerce occurred suddenly and almost simultaneously the discovery of America and the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope. Their effect was to give vast extension to the sea-borne trade with Asia, to turn its main volume into new channels by opening out direct communication by ships between South Asia and the countries bordering on the Atlantic,