"The imperative of the long-distance seaborne trade of Europeans, from the age of exploration, was to acquire the goods of the exotic East--the silks and porcelains and tea of China, the spices of the spice islands and the textiles of India. Goods from the East focuses on the trade in fine...

For a very long time, the areas available for continuous long-distance trade were limited to territories the size of Braudel's Mediterranée (1949). Whatever the commercial organizations (merchants in the Roman or the Fatimid Empires, the Hanseatic League, the Florentine Companies), their trade...