venice’s maritime empire in the early modern period 131
inter civitates et terras nostras a parte terrae.17 Its location at a relatively
short distance from Venice and the fact that it was culturally an Italian
town may have led to this change, but the very fact that such a change
necessitated a decision by the Council of Ten is significant.
Istria presents an even more ambiguous case. More culturally akin to
Italy than to Crete or Cyprus, it still differed from Venice and even from
Friuli, the easternmost province of the terraferma. Despite its location
across the northern Adriatic, it was occasionally treated as part of the
terraferma,18 as is reflected in the above-mentioned distinction between
territories lying beyond the Quarnaro Gulf and those located to the north
of it.19 But more often, especially during the first centuries covered by this
volume, Istria was considered part of Venice’s maritime possessions. In
the Senate’s registers, decisions related to Istria are normally, though not
always, included in the series Deliberazioni Mar.20 In his description of
the Venetian Republic, published in Venice in 1605, Giovanni Botero also
considers Istria part of the stato di mare.21 At any rate, being the mari-
time province closest to Venice, there was a constant movement between
the Istrian port towns and the imperial metropolis. To use Egidio Ivetic’s
expression, Istria was “Venice’s maritime springboard.”22
II. The Changing FrontiersThe See-Saw of Acquisitions and Losses
No systematic chronology of Venetian acquisitions and losses in its early-
modern overseas empire exists, which may account for the numerous
impressionistic affirmations regarding the stato da mar. Since editorial
constraints preclude a detailed narration of acquisitions and losses in this
chapter, I have condensed the relevant data in the following table, leaving
a more detailed discussion of these developments to my forthcoming
book on Venice’s overseas dominions in the early modern period.23
17 Benjamin Arbel, “Colonie d’oltremare,” in Storia di Venezia, vol. 5 (1996): Il
Rinascimento. Società ed economia, eds. Alberto Tenenti and Ugo Tucci, pp. 954–55.
18 Marin Sanudo, Itinerario di Marin Sanuto per la Terraferma veneziana l’anno
MCCCCLXXXIII, ed. Rawdon Brown (Padua, 1847), p. 147.
19 Michael Knapton, “L’Istria nel Sei-Settecento,” Archivio Storico Italiano 599 (2004), 128.
20 Ibid.
21 Botero, Relatione della Republica venetiana, pp. 10v, 17.
22 Ivetic, L’Istria moderna, p. 33.
23 Some relatively detailed accounts of the territorial changes in Venice’s overseas
territories can be found in Thiriet, La Romanie vénitienne; John V.A. Fine, The Late