CHAPTER V
THE TRADE OF RAGUSA
THE whole basis of Ragusa’s prosperity, as we have seen in the first chapter, was trade. The Republic’s territory was too small, and in part too arid, to provide sufficient foodstuffs for the population, and three-quarters of the grain which it consumed annually were imported from abroad. Consequently it was upon trade and industry that the citizens had to depend for their means of livelihood. Manufactures, however, save shipbuilding, never assumed great importance at Ragusa, and it was not until the following century that any industries at all were established. Trade, on the other hand, both sea-borne and overland, received a great additional impetus from the extension of Venetian traffic and from the increasing civilisation of the Slave states. At Ragusa, as at Venice, Florence, Siena, and elsewhere in Italy, the aristocracy as well as the middle classes were all interested in trade. We find members of all the noble families in the Ragusan settlements in Servia and Bosnia and Albania, and no nobleman disdained to travel overseas with his own goods.
   We have seen the division of Ragusan maritime trade into coastwise traffic, navigation intra Culfum, and navigation extra Culfum. This last now became of considerable importance, and Ragusan vessels were found in
«5