Thanks for that Timothy. 
I have honestly been having trouble seeing the Saffron Trade as such a big deal.
The best i had come up with was seeing it as a modern day drug cartel.
Taking a different tack , i can see framing someone as being an illegal Saffron supplier ,
as a possibly more useful tactic than being a Black Market supplier yourself.
Timothy,
I'm don't disagree with your basic thesis (e.g. Venetians were tough people to mess with during the late middle ages) but I'm curious where you developed this view of the all-encompassing Venetian threat. Do you have a recommendation of some sources that are particularly insightful in describing their activities in this regard?
Well, Spufford handles the Ventian Empire to some degree: for example their wars to control even small deposits of alum. Most histories of the Fourht Crusade or the Ventian War with Genoa will talk about the need for trade being the same as the need for security to the Ventians.
Tim,
Was aware of the saffron monopoly and Venice's encompassing desire to control the eastern med and Black Sea trade, but hadn't heard about alum control.
Next question on Venetian trade practices - Once the various trade goods where collected from the various depots (Constantiople, Venice itself, Tyre), how would they then be distributed to buyers? Was Venice the central market for the goods of the east or did Venice simply serve as an intermodal link moving goods into Lombardy or north for furtjher distribution. I'm sure there's a good story that can made from this...
Oh, there. This is the Fleets.
Venice has perhaps the most powerful navy in the world. They develop an assembly-line method for making war galleys and they churn them out before the invasion of Constnatinople. After the war, they retire their old stock, so they have a big, new navy.
They use their big new navy of galleys to guard, or in some cases just to carry, goods shipped from their colonial bases of operations. These convoys are called the Fleets. Sometimes a fleet is as small as two ships, but oftentimes, the fleet is just Venice going to North Africa and picking up a year's supply of grain or going to Cyrpus and picking pretty much the entire European saffron crop for the year. After the game period, they go even further afield: the English thought they were being invaded when one of these fleets turned up in Southampton.
The Fleets are the reason we have the word "average". I believe. The average is the fee you pay to another person if your goods were saved because of the loss of their goods. For example, if a ship leaks and the hole is stuffed with their flour, you and all of the other people with cargo aboard pay them an "average" as a sort of naval insurance.
So, bascially you get war fleets that are sent out to pickup thousands of tonnes of stuff. From Venice you can ship it around however you like, and you can participate in ventures other than the Fleets, because the Fleets are limited by the committee. The point though is that this means that the fortunes of many of the richest guys in Venice are all tied together, and they know they are onto a good thing.
The Fleets are run by a committee, and the amount of cargo you get to put on a the fleet is up to these guys. A fleet is as close as you can get to a license ot print money. The fleets do fail a couple of times over the two hundred years, but the city pulls together and invents some modern banking practices for debt financing to get everyone out of the soup.
Spufford even has maps of the fleets as I recall...
Thanks for a series of very interesting, and enlightening, posts on saffron and the Venetians.
Tim,
This is great stuff, but not to be tiresome, how was the mercantile empire of the Venetians set up? The government is effectively an oligarchy republic with the wealthiest (merchants, any major landholders?) having the controlling political interest. But for the economic side, the Venetians did the various merchant houses. Were they like independent competitors within the Venetian economy, did they form buying and selling cartels, or did they pool their resources at the sub-Venetian government level for profit? In essence, did they practice an early form of capitalism with the formation of corporations that allowed for shares in a venture. As I remember economic history from many years past, the first recognizable corporations, as prototypes of the modern, came from the northern Italian city-states around the late 1300s.
As a tie in to Ars Magica, and not just a really cool history lesson, in short were the Venetian merchant houses cooperative, competitive or simply civic minded when it came to their public works and empire?
Much, much appreciation for this discussion. Venice and its "empire" should be campaign book for Ars.
There are no "major landholders" in the Ventian system in the way of, say, an English House of Lords, no.
Sometimes. The Fleets aside, each house had its own ventures, and these were competitive or collaborative as seemed to fit.
Effectively, yes, at times they did.
Yes, although it tended to be on a venture by venture basis.
Yes, but they don't -yet- have enduring coporations that outlive single ventures. Although they are going that way, and there are arguably corporations hidene in their family structures. That is, they do have shareas in ventures, but do not yet have shares in legal entities that persist beyond each individual venture, as I recall. That being said they will have them within the lifetime of PCs.
True.
[/quote]
As a tie in to Ars Magica, and not just a really cool history lesson, in short were the Venetian merchant houses cooperative, competitive or simply civic minded when it came to their public works and empire?
Much, much appreciation for this discussion. Venice and its "empire" should be campaign book for Ars.
[/quote]
Anyone interested in an outworked university like this? I have many ideas and I think outting them onto electronic paper could be fun.
This rather takes the Mythic out of Dragon for me , as a rule.
And seems a tad cliché D&D.
Dragons for my mind are more in the Tolkien mold.
They do not need mere mortal knowledge.
Rather , mortals seek them out to bargain for wisdom or insight into Ancient Magics.
Chinese Dragons are a more likely possibility.
But even then , there would need to be something significantly rare to attract them.
Maybe one in a thousand years as a visitor sort of thing.
But i do quite like the idea overall.
Same here. It is the only point of the (otherwise excellent) 4th edition LoFaI supplement that I didn't like: the dragon being too "human" in behavior.
Cheers,
Xavi