For many years, Venice was a great center of trade between Europe and the Islamic World. Indeed, until the seafaring nations of Western Europe rose to prominence in the 16th and 17th centuries, most of the trade between the Islamic World and Christendom passed through the port of Venice. Since this trade came largely from Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, Venetian traders had an unusual amount of contact with Muslims in the early modern period.
Though devoutly Catholic, they often adopted Islamic market conventions to be able to get their hands on the goods that Muslims had to offer.
Venetian traders stood to gain much from complying with the market conventions of the Islamic World. Arab Muslims not only had their own goods to offer, but they controlled the flow of luxury goods from China. If Venetian merchants wanted to get their hands on Chinese silks and porcelain, they had to work with Muslims who acted as middle men.
While this necessity changed when Western Europeans began sailing directly to China, it was still intact while Venice remained the prominent trading city in Europe. In fact, it was the very reason that Venice was such an important trading center.
Muslims sometimes took their goods to Venice, but more often than not, Venetian merchants traveled to places like Cairo and Istanbul to trade with the Muslim population. They therefore had to abide by the market conventions of the Muslim world. For example, to maintain good trading relationships with key contacts in Egypt, Venetian merchants went so far as to put the words In the name of God and Mohammad at the beginning of their contracts! Even after the Pope condemned this practice, many continued.
Global trade had become so important that Europeans were willing to obey the conventions of the markets in which they traded even if it meant disobeying the Pope himself! In an age when most of Europe was engaged in a war against Islam, it is unimaginable that any Christian person at that time would have paid such lip service to Islam. Nevertheless, the Venetian traders realized that there was too much profit to be made to refuse working with Muslims on their own terms. Thanks to their pragmatism, some of these trades made themselves extremely wealthy.
As previously hinted, Venice lost its status as the trading capital of Venice as soon as Western Europeans began trading with the Chinese directly, instead of through middlemen. By trading directly with the Chinese instead of buy goods from the Venetians who got them from Muslims who got them from Southeast Asians who got them from the Chinese, Western Europeans were able to drive down the prices for luxury goods from China.
Of course, not everyone could afford these cheaper goods, but enough people could that traders had an incentive to get as much from China as they could. This sparked interest in trade, exploration, and even some limited colonization in China. In time, the center of trade shifted form Venice to London as the British became the dominant players in international trade.
