Age of Discovery
Rise of European trade

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire largely severed the connection between Europe, and lands further east, Christian Europe was largely a backwater compared to the Arab world, which conquered and incorporated large territories in the Middle East and North Africa. The Christian Crusades to retake the Holy Land, from the Muslims, were not a military success, but did bring Europe into contact with the Middle East and the valuable goods manufactured or traded there. From the 12th century, the European economy was transformed by the interconnecting of river and sea trade routes.

Before the 12th century, an obstacle to trade east of the Strait of Gibraltar, which divided the Mediterranean from the Atlantic Ocean, was Muslim control of territory, including the Iberian Peninsula and the trade monopolies of Christian city-states on the Italian Peninsula, especially Venice and Genoa. Economic growth of Iberia followed the Christian reconquest of Al-Andalus in what is now southern Spain and the siege of Lisbon (1147 AD), in Portugal. The decline of Fatimid Caliphate naval strength, that started before the First Crusade, helped the maritime Italian states, mainly Venice, Genoa and Pisa, dominate trade in the Eastern Mediterranean, with merchants there becoming wealthy and politically influential. Further changing the mercantile situation in the east Mediterranean, was the waning of Christian Byzantine naval power following the death of Emperor Manuel I Komnenos in 1180, whose dynasty had made notable treaties and concessions with Italian traders, permitting the use of Byzantine Christian ports. The Norman Conquest of England, in the late 11th century, allowed for peaceful trade on the North Sea. The Hanseatic League, a confederation of merchant guilds and their towns in north Germany, along the North Sea and Baltic Sea, was instrumental in commercial development of the region. In the 12th century, the regions of Flanders, Hainault, and Brabant produced the finest quality textiles in northwest Europe, which encouraged merchants from Genoa and Venice to sail there from the Mediterranean, through the Strait of Gibraltar, and up the Atlantic coast. Nicolòzzo Spinola made the first recorded direct voyage from Genoa to Flanders in 1277.
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