The Principal Difference between the Commerce of the Ancients and the Moderns

Commerce has changed through time.

European trade is currently carried on principally from the north to the south.

The difference of climate is the cause that the several nations have great occasion for the merchandizes of each other. For example, the liquors of the south, which are carried to the north, form a commerce little known to the ancients. Thus the burden of vessels, which was formerly computed by measures of corn, is at present determined by tons of liquor.

The ancient commerce was carred on from one port in the Mediterranean to another.

It was almost wholly confined to the south. Now the people of the same climate, having nearly the same things of their own, have not the same need of trading amongst themselves as with those of a different climate. The commerce of Europe was therefore formerly less extended than at present.

This does not at all contradict what I have said of our commerce to the Indies= for here the prodigious difference of climate destroys all relation between their wants and ours.

Chapter 5: Other Differences

COMMERCE is sometimes destroyed by conquerors, sometimes cramped by monarchs.

• it traverses the earth, flies from the places where it is oppressed, and stays where it has liberty to breathe:
• it reigns at present where nothing was formerly to be seen but desarts, seas, and rocks; and where it once reigned, there are only desarts.

Presently, Colchis is a vast forest with a declining population and only defend their liberty to sell themselves by piece-meal to the Turks and Persians. No one would ever imagine that this country had been been full of cities where commerce convened from all the nations of the known world in the Roman times. There are no monuments to be found but only in Pliny and Strabo.

The history of commerce, is that of the communication of people. Their numerous defeats, and the flux and reflux of populations and devastations, here form the most extraordinary events.