It appears, then, that in the first of the two views set forth at the beginning of this article, the relation of the Turks to the change of the trade-routes has been misconceived. They were not active agents in deliberately obstructing the routes. They did not by their notorious indifference and conservatism greatly, if at all on the whole, increase the difficulties of the oriental traffic. Nor did they make the discovery of new routes imperative. On the contrary, they lost by the discovery of a new and superior route. Had there been no way around Africa the whole story of the Levant since 1500 might have been very different. In the first place, the Mameluke sultans might have found in their uninterrupted trade sufficient financial support to enable them to resist successfully the attack of the Turks in 1516. But if the Turks had conquered Egypt while the full stream of oriental trade still ran through it, they must either have been deprived far sooner than was actually the case of the control of these routes, or they would have had to accommodate themselves to the great and increasing trade through their dominions. In the latter case they might have been forced into adopting modern ways, and into adding to their wonderful capacity for territorial unification a parallel scheme of organizing their trade. The decay of the lands of the Levant (neglecting the hypothesis of climatic change) might have been arrested and reversed. But there was a Cape route, and for three centuries and a half it took the bulk of the oriental trade. Selim I and Suleiman, the greatest of Ottoman conquerors, were powerless in their efforts to bring back the lucrative flow of Eastern wares. The shifting of the trade-routes was done, not by the Turks, but in their despite and to their disadvantage. The desolation of Egypt and Syria, the decline of the Italian cities, perhaps the very decay of the Ottoman empire itself, are due, not to them, but to the great discoveries, in which, positively or negatively, they had no discernible part. A. H. LYBYER. FOOTNOTES: [*] All rights reserved. [1] W. Heyd, _Le Colonie commerciali degli Italiani in Oriente nel Medio Evo_, Venice, 1866-8. ii. 167. [2] _Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis_ (in Bongars, _Gesta Dei per Francos_, vol. ii, Hanover, 1611), p. 23. [3] For the first three routes see Comte L. de Mas Latrie, _Privilège commercial accordé en 1320 à la république de Venise par un roi de Perse, etc._, Bibl. de l’École des Chartes, xxxi (1870), 79-81. For the last three routes see Marino Sanuto, _loc. cit._, pp. 3, 4, 22. [4] W. Heyd, _Histoire da Commerce du Levant au Moyen Âge_, translated by Furcy Raynaud, Leipzig, 1885, ii. 156 ff., 215 ff. [5] _Ibid._, ii. 72. [6] Ibid., ii. 72 ff., 92 ff.; G. Finlay, _Hist. of Greece_, ed. by H. F. Tozor, Oxford, 1878, iv. 352 ff. [7] Heyd, _Commerce du Levant_, i. 534 ff., especially 537, 542, 545, 550.