Venetian trade, Byzantium, and Ottoman revenue

The economic conclusion reaches backward to Venice's role in weakening the Byzantine economy before Constantinople fell to the Ottomans. Ottoman leaders may have wanted to prevent the same maritime trading system from bypassing their own lands and revenues. Their interest included the spice trade, but the argument covers more than luxury imports from east to west. Commerce also required payment and goods moving west to east unless Europeans could supply extraordinary quantities of precious metal. Control of sea routes was therefore a question of taxation, reciprocal exchange, and state power, rather than a one-way flow of exotic cargo.