During The Infancy Of Commerce, As Well As Of Geographical Science, We
Deemed It Proper To Be Particular In Every
Thing that indicated their
growth; but the reasons which proved the necessity, or the advantage, of
such a mode of
Treating these subjects in the former parts of this volume,
no longer exist, but in fact give way to reasons of an opposite
nature - reasons for exhibiting merely a general view of them. Actuated by
these considerations, we have been less minute and particular in what
relates to modern geography, than In what relates to ancient; and we shall
follow the same plan in relation to what remains to be said on the subject
of commerce. So long as any of the causes which tended to advance geography
and commerce acted obscurely and imperfectly - so long as they were in such
a weak state that the continuance of their progress was doubtful, we
entered pretty fully into their history; but after a forward motion was
communicated to them, such as must carry them towards perfection without
the possibility of any great or permanent check, we have thought it proper
to abstain from details, and to confine ourselves to more general views.
Guided by this principle which derives additional weight from the vastness
to which commerce has reached within the last hundred years, we shall now
proceed to a rapid and general sketch of its progress during that period,
and of its present state.
From the first and feeble revival of commerce in the middle ages, till the
discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, the Italian republics, and the
Hanseatic League, nearly monopolized all the trade of Europe; the former,
from their situation, naturally confining themselves to the importation and
circulation of the commodities supplied by the East, and by the European
countries in the south of Europe, and the districts of Africa then known
and accessible; while the latter directed their attention and industry to
those articles which the middle and north of Europe produced or
manufactured.
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