Neckties - Silk history from 1204 to 1498

Neckties Silk history from 1204 to 1498

1200's : Mongolian occupation and Silk Road became a path of blood and fear

When, in 1211, Genghis Khan launched the Mongolian campaign to conquer both Europe and Asia, and to create an empire stretching from Peking to the Atlantic Ocean, the Silk Road became a path of blood and fear. However, on his death in 1227, the great leader bequeathed to his four sons the most extensive empire the world had ever known. When Baghdad fell, the frontiers that had once divided the Silk Road from the China Sea to the Black Sea disappeared. This stunning turn of events finally opened first Asia, and then the Far East to the Europeans. Emissaries from the pope and the French king, such as Franciscan monks Jean Plan du Carpin and Guillaume de Rubroek, were the first western Europeans to venture onto this terra incognita, accurate descriptions of which they brought home with them. Meanwhile, the crusades had contributed to the expansion of Italian trading centers such as Genoa, Pisa, and above all Venice, which in the thirteenth century was at the apex of its power. The pax mongolica made it possible for ambassadors, merchants, and missionaries to travel safely all the way from Baghdad to Peking.

1200 - 1300's : Marco Polo brought merchants to China, in search not of silk, but of gold and precious gems

Thanks to the written account left by Marco Polo, we are familiar with the fabulous adventure undertaken by his father and uncle, the first Venetian (or European) merchants ever to explore China. He himself accompanied them on their second expedition, which lasted sixteen years. The journey was later described by Marco Polo in his Book of Travels, a work teeming with wonderful stories, some of them repeated in The Thousand and One Nights. Marco Polo's descriptions-whether accurate or embroidered-attracted many thirteenth- and fourteenth-century merchants to China, in search not of silk, but of gold and precious gems.

1266 : Muslim silk weavers to Almeria, Spain; and non-Muslim weavers-primarily Jewish-to Lucca in Italy

Palermo played a crucial role in the spread of sericulture and fine figured-silk weaving into Italy and France. In 1072, contacts between East and West were widened through the invasion of Sicily by the Normans, who supported and developed manufacture of Palermo silks, developing the craft both technically and artistically.

The reign of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (1194-1250) over Sicily ushered in a period of intense artistic ferment. A cultivated man keenly interested in Islamic mysticism, Frederick supported Palermo as an artistic center, bringing together eastern and western cultures.
In 1266, Charles of Anjou, brother of the French king Louis IX, was crowned king of Sicily by the pope. Just as Charles was preparing to invade the Byzantine empire, eight thousand French inhabitants of Sicily were massacred during the April 28 (Easter Monday) uprising. The exodus that followed sent Muslim silk weavers to Almeria, Spain; and non-Muslim weavers-primarily Jewish-to Lucca in Italy. The uprising was a protest against the brutal treatment meted out to local Sicilians by Charles of Anjou's troops.

The decline of Sicily and exodus of the city's skilled craftsmen led to Lucca's role as the new capital of the European silk industry, which then began to spread gradually to all of western Christendom. The few silks that have survived from this period illustrate the degree to which Sicily, a focal point in the Mediterranean Sea linked directly to both Italian and Arab ports, united all the traditions represented by the Silk Road-Sassanid, Byzantine, Coptic, Berber, Muslim, and Chinese.

Christopher Columbus open up a path to the Americas

As western Europeans gradually learned about the wonders of the East-in part through the glowing descriptions of pioneering travelers like Marco Polo-European navigators became more daring, venturing outside familiar local sea routes in an attempt to find a direct maritime passage to the fabulous treasures of Cathay and the Indies. Although since the time of Ptolemy geographers had believed the Indian Ocean to be land-locked, the fifteenth-century European explorers set out to prove the opposite.

Christopher Columbus, the son of a Genoese weaver, is said to have read the condensed 1485 Antwerp edition of Marco Polo's Description of the World, underlining passages referring to gold, precious gems, pearls, and spices. Columbus believed in the existence of a direct western sea route to the wealth of the Indies, and in his log of the journey, he compared his own discoveries with Marco Polo's reports, on the assumption that he was traveling over some of the same ground. His assumption was mistaken, but his little fleet did eventually open up a path to wealth-the wealth of the Americas.

1498 : the sea route to the Indies had been discovered

On 4 May 1493, yielding to pressure from Spain, Pope Alexander VI decreed the division of the world in two. All lands located to the west of the meridian-i.e. west of the Azores-would belong to Spain; those to the east, including Africa and Asia, would belong to Portugal. The two parties to the agreement subsequently decided to shift the meridian slightly to the west, which six months later resulted in Portugal's acquisition of Brazil.

In 1498, the route to the Indies was discovered by the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama. This discovery, added to that of Brazil, extended the power of tiny Portugal to the frontiers of the known world, a situation that was to last for almost a century.

At the time of Vasco da Gama's arrival in the East, Arab traders still controlled an import-export monopoly with India. Pepper and other spices were carried overland to Jiddah, sent across the Red Sea, and then taken by caravan to Mediterranean ports, where Venetian ships picked them up and carried them to southern Europe. Portugal's goal, in order to lower prices and thus gain control of this vast market, was to break up the monopoly controlled by the Muslim merchants.

When Vasco da Gama returned to Portugal after a voyage lasting two years, he brought with him goods from Calicut on the eastern coast of India, purchased on behalf of the king of Portugal, Manuel I: pepper, musk and other spices, pearls and precious gems, and silks and porcelains. The sea route to the Indies had been discovered.