1434: The Year a Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance. Gavin Menzies
have been placed on the guns; then the sailors could begin their shore leave. We can imagine Chinese sailors preparing to go ashore in a manner very similar to that of my fellow sailors fifty years ago when the HMS Diamond berthed opposite the Riva degli Schiavoni: we trimmed our beards, cut our long hair, gave ourselves a good wash. For the Chinese, perhaps first a swim in the Lido before donning their best clothes, having a drink, and collecting presents to give out to the girls. In 1434 these were likely to have been children’s toys or miniature carts, junks or whirligigs, or perhaps one of the pocket encyclopedias such as the Nung Shu, showing how to design farm machinery.
Once ashore, the Chinese sailors could have been excused if they thought they were back in Quanzhou—their Mongolian counterparts were everywhere. Venice was the gateway to Tuscany and the funnel through which slaves reached Europe. Lazari writes: “Many of the slave girls described in the Registro degli Schiavi, mostly in their teens were sold in a state of pregnancy and later used as nurses…. In this way a large influx of Asiatic blood penetrated into the Tuscan population.”
Lynn White quotes Lazari: “Lazari, who has studied most carefully the records of these unfortunates in Venice, assures us that the largest number came from the regions bordering Tibet and China in the north. ‘As they came in their thousands and were rapidly absorbed by the indigenous population, a certain Mongolian strain could not have been rare in Tuscan homes and streets.’”20
Iris Origo paints a vivid picture of the slaves who reached Florence from Venice:
A traveller arriving in Tuscany at this time might well have been startled by the appearance of the serving-maids and grooms of the Florentine ladies. Mostly small and squat, with yellow skins, black hair, high cheek-bones and dark slanting eyes…they certainly seemed to belong to a different race from the Florentine…and if the traveller had friends in one of the Florentine palazzi and went to call, he found several other exotic figures there too: swarthy or yellow little girls of eleven or twelve…acting as nursemaids or playmates for the little Florentine merchant-princes.
All these were slaves: most of them Tartars….
Even a notary’s wife, or a small shop keeper’s, would have at least one, and it was far from uncommon to find one among the possessions of a priest or nun. And a glimpse of them—perhaps slightly romanticised—even appears in a popular song describing little slaves shaking the carpets out of the windows on the Lungarno:
“La schiavette amorose Scotendo le robe la mattina Fresche e giorose come fior di spina”*
[*“The charming little slave-girls—shaking out the clothes in the morning—as fresh and joyful as hawthorn buds.”]21
Now let us follow the rich Chinese ambassador and the poor slave girls across the wooded plains of Tuscany to Florence.
Notes Chapter 7
1. “Geography of the Mediterranean” The first two paragraphs of this chapter are a paraphrase of the celebrated French historian and politician Fernand Braudel’s marvelous work The Mediterranean in the Time of Philip II. I have referred to this masterpiece time and again, for in my view Braudel is perhaps the greatest European historian, capable of summarizing a vast array of disparate facts into a coherent and readable whole.
2. Norwich, Venice: The Greatness; Hibbert, Biography of a City; Lorenzetti, Venice and Its Lagoon; Brion, Masque of Italy. See also Venice and the Islands (London: 1956), p. 22.
3. Ibid.
4. I am indebted to a number of writers who are house hold names. Norwich, Venice is a classic. Norwich, in his own words, is an “unashamed populariser”—a great achievement. Those who denigrate popular izers have no idea how difficult popularizing is. Another popular izer who is also erudite and who writes in a charming style is Jan Morris. My descriptions of life on Venetian galleys and of harbors within the Venetian Empire are taken largely from her Venetian Empire.
5. Descriptions of the Venetian Empire Morris, Venetian Empire, has colorful descriptions not only of the Venetian in the eastern Mediterranean but also of life aboard Venetian galleys. She brings to life the tough and skillful traders and seamen who made Venice. I have extensively paraphrased her book from p.135 onward. Also Norwich, Venice
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