venice’s maritime empire in the early modern period 129
These frontier societies were also often at the mercy of Ottoman officials,
who exercised in various ways tactics of extortion from their neighbors.10
Such phenomena, hardly known in the Venetian terraferma, were quite
common in peacetime along the extended landed frontiers of these areas,
especially between the late 15th and the late 17th century.
The chronic insecurity felt in the stato da mar resulted in transforming
military affairs into central elements of life in these territories, to a much
greater degree than in the terraferma. The huge resources invested on for-
tifications and other defensive measures were a great financial burden for
Venice and its subjects and involved numerous hardships for the local
inhabitants. They also symbolized the precariousness of life in the mari-
time territories. Venetian overseas colonies depended to a great extent on
the defensive shield provided by Venice’s fleet, and the role of the Provved-
itore General dell’Armata, who acted not only as a navy commander but
also as supreme authority over the colonies in peacetime as well as during
wars, was another idiosyncratic feature of the overseas colonies.
In addition, a formal distinction between maritime territories and
mainland ones was implemented in the administrative, judicial, and fiscal
spheres. In 1430, the Collegio, the Senate’s steering committee, underwent
a reform, which divided between “ministers” (Savii) who were responsible
for the terraferma and the army, and those, the Savii ai ordini, who were
responsible for the maritime territories, maritime trade, and the fleet.11
From 1440, the registers in which the decisions of the Venetian Senate
were noted down were divided between those pertaining to the city and
the Italian mainland (Deliberazioni Terra), and those dealing with the
maritime dimension of Venice’s life, including the overseas possessions
(Deliberazioni Mar). Magistrates serving in territories lying beyond the
70–75; Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of
Philip II, trans. S. Reynolds, 2 vols (London, 1975), p. 130; Gunther Rothenberg, “Venice
and the Uskoks of Senj, 1537–1618,” Journal of Modern History 33/2 (1961), 148–56; Angeliki
Panopoulou, “Episodi di pirateria nello spazio marittimo di Cerigo tra il XIII i il XVIII
secolo,” in Marina Koumanoudi and Chryssa Maltezou, eds., Venezia e Cerigo (Venice, 2003),
pp. 138–39; Egidio Ivetic, L’Istria moderna. Un introduzione ai secoli XVI–XVIII (Trieste/
Rovigno, 1999), p. 25; Stephan Karl Sander, Urban Elites in the Venetian Commonweath:
Social and Economic Mobility in Early Modern Dalmatia (Zadar/Zara, 1540 to 1570) (Ph.D.
diss., Karl-Franzens Universitat Graz, 2011), p. 260.
10 E.g., Oliver Jens Schmitt, “ ‘Des melons pour la cour du Sancak Beg’: Split et son
arrière-pays ottoman à travers les registres de compte de l’administration vénitienne
dans les années 1570,” in Vera Costantini and Markus Koller, eds., Living in the Ottoman
Ecumenical Community. Essays in Honour of Suraiya Faroqhi (Leiden, 2008), pp. 447–50.
11 Frederic C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore/London, 1973), p. 254.