venice’s maritime empire in the early modern period 137
III. Motivations and Methods of ExpansionTerritories were acquired for various reasons, and acquisition was not the
driving force of Venetian policy. On several occasions, Venice rejected
proposals of voluntary submission by envoys of several towns and
principalities. For example, Venice repudiated repeated attempts by the
city of Patras, in the Peloponnese, to be part of the Venetian empire. The
city of Cattaro had to appeal several times to the Venetian authorities
before convincing them to take it under its rule.24 According to Marin
Sanudo (Marino Sanuto), Venice rejected in 1422 a proposal to occupy the
entire Peloponnesus, brought by ambassadors of the Byzantine Empire,
the despot of Morea, the despot of Epirus, and the Archbishop of Patras.25
Such refusals were made on the basis of political, military, and economic
considerations. But like other voluntary submissions that were accepted
by Venice, they are typical of a certain period and resulted from specific
circumstances that reigned in the area of the Aegean Sea, the Balkans, and
the Ionian Islands. This model of voluntary surrender by small political
units that were unable to survive on their own, particularly in the face of
Ottoman advance, all but disappeared by the end of the 15th century.
Keeping the maritime lanes open to Venetian shipping was a central
consideration of the Republic, and it often pushed it to seek control of
islands, ports, and straits that would enable Venetian ships to sail safely
and find services and supplies, as well as shelter, when needed. The old
Medieval Balkans (Ann Arbor, 1987); Oliver Jens Schmitt, Das venzianische Albanien (1392–
1479 ) (Munich, 2001); Giuseppe Praga, History of Dalmatia (Pisa, 1993); Monique O’Connell,
Men of Empire. Power and Negotiation in Venice’s Maritime State (Baltimore/London, 2009);
David S. Chambers, The Imperial Age of Venice 1380–1580 (London, 1970); Kenneth M. Setton,
The Papacy and the Levant, 4 vols (Philadelphia, 1976–84), vols 2–4; Setton, Venice, Austria
and the Turks in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia, 1991); Giovanni I. Cassandro,
“Contributo alla storia della dominazione veneta in Puglia,” Archivio Veneto serie 5, vol. 17
(1935), 1–58; Vito Vitale, “L’impresa di Puglia degli anni 1528–1529,” Nuovo Archivio Veneto
n.s., anno VII (1907), vol. 13, part 2, pp. 5–68; ibid., vol. 14, parts 1–2, pp. 120–92, 324–51;
William Miller, Essays on the Latin Orient (Cambridge, 1921; repr. Chicago, 1967); David
Jacoby, La feodalité en Grèce médiévale. Les ‘Assises de Romanie’: sources, application et
diffusion (Paris/The Hague, 1971); Mayhew, Dalmatia; Ben J. Slot, Archipelagus turbatus. Les
Cyclades entre colonisation latine et occupation ottomane, 2 vols (Leiden, 1982); and Marco
Jačov, Le guerre Veneto-Turche del XVII secolo in Dalmazia (Venice, 1991) (Atti e memorie
della Società dalmata di storia patria, vol. 20).
24 Arbel, “Colonie d’oltremare,” pp. 951–52; Reinhold C. Mueller, “Aspects of Venetian
Sovereignty in Medieval and Renaissance Dalmatia,” in Charles Demplsey, ed., Quattrocento
Adriatico. Fifteenth-Century Art of the Adriatic Rim (Bologna, 1996), p. 31.
25 Marin Sanudo, “Vitae ducum venetorum,” in Ludovico Antonio Muratori, ed., Rerum
italicarum scriptores, vol. 22 (Milan, 1733), p. 943.