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stood repeated Ottoman raids and attempts to take the island during the
16th and 17th centuries.291
Pirates and Corsairs
Raids on coasts, towns, and villages, pillages across the frontier, and
piratical activities at sea were a constant plague in the early modern
Mediterranean. The inner sea was the hunting zone for several piratical
organizations: the Order of St. John of Rhodes (later of Malta); the Order
of Saint Stephen; Ottoman corsairs from Almissa (Omiš), Valona, Dulcigno
(Ulcinj), and Obrovazzo (Obrovac) from the 15th century onward;292 and
corsairs from Algiers and Tunis between the 16th and the 18th centuries.
The Venetian conquest of Almissa in 1444 liberated the nearby islands
from constant raids originating from this piratical nest, enabling their
demographic and economic resurgence.293 In the following century, the
outstanding piratical threat to life in the northern and central Adriatic
were the Uskoks, military colonists who were settled by Emperor Ferdi-
nand I in the small port town of Segna (Senj) in the Quarnaro Gulf after
being evacuated from the Dalmatian enclave in which they had served as
border fighters against the Ottomans. During the late 16th century they
engaged in piracy, with Habsburg support, and became extremely harm-
ful to Venetian shipping, with occasional incursions against Istrian port
towns, particularly between the 1580s and the 1610s. Uskok attacks on
Ottoman ships also risked disturbing the delicate relationship between
Venice and the Ottomans. The Republic reacted with reprisals against Tri-
est, Fiume, and Laurana. These clashes finally led to an open war in 1615.
The peace of Madrid (ratified in 1618) did not bring any territorial changes,
but the cause of the war—the Uskoks—was removed from Segna.294
In the twilight of Venice’s existence as an independent state, its navy
conducted an operation against Algerian and Tunisian bases of maraud-
ers who had caused great damage to Venetian territories in the southern
Adriatic. On his return to Venice after concluding in 1789 an agreement
291 Slot, Archipelagus, pp. 75, 93, 394 n. 20 (1538–39, 1570, 1652, 1654, 1658, 1661); Pietro
Garzoni, Istoria della Repubblica di Venezia in tempo della Sacra Lega contro Maometto IV e
tre suoi successori gran sultani de’ turchi. Parte prima, 4th ed. (Venice, 1720), p. 75 (1684).
292 Carter, “Settlement and Population,” pp. 9, 24; Maria Pia Pedani, Venezia porta
d’Oriente (Bologna, 2010), p. 235.
293 Carter, “Settlement and Population,” pp. 9, 24.
294 Rothenberg, “Venice and the Uskoks”; Bracewell, The Uskoks; Ivetic, L’Istria moderna,
23–24.