The appearance of the Portuguese in Ceylon at this critical period, served not only to check the career of the Moors, but to extinguish the independence of the native princes; and looking to the facility with which the former had previously superseded the Malabars, and were fast acquiring an ascendency over the Singhalese chiefs, it is not an unreasonable conjecture that, but for this timely appearance of a Christian power in the Island, Ceylon, instead of a possession of the British crown, might at the present day have been a Mahometan kingdom, under the rule of some Arabian adventurer.

But although the position of the Arabs in relation to the commerce of the East underwent no unfavourable change prior to the arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian seas, numerous circumstances combined in the early part of the sixteenth century to bring other European nations into communication with the East.

The productions of India, whether they passed by the Oxus to the Caspian, or were transported in caravans from the Tigris to the shores of the Black Sea, were poured into the magazines of Constantinople, the merchants of which, previous to the fall of the Lower Empire, were the most opulent in the world.  During the same period, Egypt commanded the trade of the Red Sea; and received, through Aden, the luxuries of the far East, with which she supplied the Moorish princes of Spain, and the countries bordering on the Mediterranean.[1]

[Footnote 1:  ODOARDO BARBOSA, In Ramusio, vol. i. p. 292.  BALDELLI BONI, Relazione dell’ Europa e dell’ Asia, lib. ix. ch. xlvii FARIA Y SOUSA; Portug.  Asia, part i. ch. viii.]

Even when the dominion of the Khalifs was threatened by the rising power of the Turks, and long after the subsidence of the commotions and vicissitudes which marked the period of the Crusades, part of this lucrative commerce was still carried to Alexandria, by the Nile and its canals.  The Genoese and Venetians, each eager to engross the supply of Europe, sought permission from the Emperors to form establishments on the shores of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.  The former advanced their fortified factories as far eastward as Tabriz, to meet the caravans returning from the Persian Gulf[1], and the latter, in addition to the formation of settlements at Tyre, Beyrout, and Acre[2], acquired after the fourth crusade, succeeded (in defiance of the interdict of the Popes against trading with the infidel) in negotiating a treaty with the Mamelukes for a share in the trade of Alexandria.[3] It was through Venice that England and the western nations obtained the delicacies of India and China, down to the period when the overland route and the Red Sea were deserted for the grander passage by the Cape of Good Hope.[4]

[Footnote 1:  GIBBON, Decl. and Fall, ch. lxiii.]

[Footnote 2:  DARU, Hist. de Venise lib. xix. vol. iv. p. 74.  MACPHERSON’S Annals of Commerce, vol. i. p. 370.]