A Companion to Venetian History, 1400-1797

VENICE’S MARITIME EMPIRE IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD

Benjamin Arbel

I. The Peculiarities of the stato da mar

Until the late 14th century, most of Venice’s extra urban territories were
overseas.1 It is only from the early 15th century onward that Venice
gradually conquered the extensive territories of the northeastern Italian
mainland. The maritime territories and those situated in the Italian
mainland were then part of the same state, ruled by the same magistrates
and central councils, and according to the same political concepts and
ideas. Nevertheless, there were some significant characteristics that
distinguished between these two components of the Venetian body
politic.
The various terms used to denote Venice’s overseas possessions, such as
terre da mar, stato di mare, stato da mar, stati oltremare, as well as other
similar terms encountered in early modern sources,2 express the pre-
dominantly maritime character of this part of the Venetian state. From a

1 For surveys of Venice’s overseas territories during the Middle Ages, see Freddy Thiriet,
La Romanie vénitienne au Moyen Age. Le développement et l’exploitation du domaine colonial
vénitien (XIIe–XVe siècles), 2nd ed. (Paris, 1975); Giorgio Ravegnani, “La Romania Veneziana,”
in Gino Benzoni and Antonio Menniti Ippolito, eds., Storia di Venezia. Dalle origini alla
caduta della Serenissima, 14 vols (Rome, 1992–2002), vol. 2 (1995): L’età del comune, eds.
Giorgio Cracco and Gherardo Ortalli, pp. 183–232; David Jacoby, “La Venezia d’oltremare”
in Storia di Venezia, vol. 2: L’età del comune, eds. Cracco and Ortalli, pp. 263–99; and Silvano
Borsari, “I veneziani delle colonie,” in Storia di Venezia, vol. 3 (1997): La formazione dello stato
patrizio, eds. Girolamo Arnaldi, Giorgio Cracco, and Alberto Tenenti, pp. 127–58.
2 E.g., Loci a parte maris (Giuseppe Maranini, La costituzione di Venezia, 2 vols (Florence,
1927, repr. 1974), 2:342 n. 3 {1413}); [terre nostre] a parte maris (Vladimir Lamansky, Secrets
d’État de Venise. Documents, extraits, notices et études, 2 vols (St. Petersburg, 1884), 2:721
{1432–3}); lochi marittimi (Girolamo Priuli, I Diarii (1494–1512), 4 vols (1912–38), vol. 2, ed.
Roberto Cessi, p. 145 {1501}); status nostrus marittimus, Lamansky, Secrets d’État, 2:608n
{1503}); le terre nostre da mar (Archivio di stato, Venezia, Senato Mar, reg. 18, fol. 91 {1515});
stato di mare (Giovanni Botero, Relatione della Republica Venetiana (Venice, 1605), pp. 10v,
17–19 {1605}); stati da mar(e) (Museo Civico Correr, MS Donà dalle Rose 21 n.p. {early 17th
century}); li Reggimenti... da Mare (Vettor Sandi, Principi di storia civile della Repubblica
di Venezia... dall’anno di N.S. 1700 sino all’anno 1767, 3 vols (Venice, 1769–72), 1:173 {1769});
stati oltremare (Fabio Besta, Bilanci generali della Repubblica di Venezia, vol. 1/1 (Venice,
1912), p. 358 {1795}). Other terms, such as Romania alta e bassa, were used to denote
overseas regions that were not ruled by Venice.