222 benjamin arbel
in Venice. As long as Cyprus remained under Venetian rule, the number
of Venetian merchantmen, especially big ones, reached unprecedented
proportions,383 a situation which would probably not reoccur. After the
loss of Cyprus and its lucrative salt pans, the Republic spent a quarter of a
million ducats to develop the salt-pans in Crete, in the Bay of Suda.384
In Istria, Pirano was the most important salt producer. Here the sys-
tem was different from those in Cyprus or Crete. The local community
was responsible for the production and sold to the salt office in Venice
pre-established quantities on a contractual basis (partito de’ sali). The
community also enjoyed fiscal revenues derived from the salt production.
A substantial part of Pirano’s working population was employed in this
industry. The salt-pans of Muggia and Capodistria were less productive
but had their good moments as well.385 Between 1587 and 1593 the salt
exported from the small island of Pago to Venice constituted nearly
22 per cent of the Serenissima’s total salt imports. One-quarter of the
island’s production could be marketed by the local entrepreneurs in other
places and was mainly used as a means of payment for wheat and other
comestibles bought on the Adriatic mainland, as well as for shipments to
Lesina, where this product was used for the salted fish industry.386
Colonial Land Resources
The land market of Venice’s overseas dominions was of vast proportions,
and the state was the biggest landowner there. Lands leased out by the state
were subject to payments in kind and in cash and constituted a primary
source of revenue.387 Many lands were feudal estates, so in the absence
of direct heirs, they reverted to the Dominante, which could dispose of
them as it saw fit. In Cyprus and Corfu, and presumably also elsewhere,
Venice used a form of “feudal sale,” which kept landed estates subjected
to feudal laws.388 Quite often, such transactions took place in Venice by
383 Frederic C. Lane, “Venetian Shipping during the Commercial Revolution,” American
Historical Review 38 (1933), 8, repr. in his Venice and History, The Collected Papers of
Frederic C. Lane (Baltimore, 1966), pp. 3–24.
384 Hocquet, Le sel, 1:138–141, 302.
385 Ivetic, L’Istria moderna, pp. 84–87; Ivetic, Oltremare, pp. 174–80.
386 Hocquet, “Fiscalité,” pp. 282, 285, 300–05, 310–11.
387 For Negroponte, see Silvano Borsari, L’Eubea veneziana (Venice, 2007), p. 128; for
Cyprus, Arbel, “H Κύπρος,” p. 483 n. 144.
388 Arbel, “Greek Magnates,” pp. 330–31; Lunzi, Della condizione, pp. 470–71. See also
Giuseppe Gullino, “Un problema aperto: Venezia e il tardo feudalesimo,” Studi veneziani
n.s. 7 (1983), 96.