venice’s maritime empire in the early modern period 227
The zone of the Bocche di Cattaro (Boke Kotorske) was characterized
by intensive movements of commodities and people, connecting the
inner Balkans, and even Istanbul, with the Adriatic world.406 The inland
parts of Montenegro relied heavily on the coastal towns for manufac-
tured goods, whereas Cattaro depended on the interior areas for primary
products.407 The importance of the Bocche di Cattaro further increased
in 1687, following the Venetian occupation of Castelnuovo (Herzeg Novi),
the fortified town commanding the entrance to the Bocche. Venetian pub-
lic couriers (mostly Montenegrins) passed regularly through Cattaro on
their voyages between the Venice and Istanbul.408 News (avvisi) from the
inner Balkans and Istanbul were sent from Cattaro to Corfu by special
frigates kept for this purpose.409 The economy of Perasto, the small port
town inside the Bocche which was also known for its shipbuilding activity,
greatly depended on the shipping of comestibles, such as salted cheese
and meat, originating from the inner Balkans, to various Adriatic destina-
tions. At the end of the 16th century it was the base of about 50 ships of
different size.410
From 1590, following the initiative of the Jewish merchant Daniel
Rodriga, Spalato became the major center of transit trade between Venice
and the inner Balkans.411 A special galley service was established, connect-
ing this port with Venice six times yearly, to protect merchants and their
commodities from piratical attacks. In the 1620s, when Spalato was at the
height of its commercial development, about one-quarter of all goods that
reached Venice arrived from this port, providing a fiscal income of about
200,000 ducats.412 The presence of Jewish consuls in 16th-century Venice,
Spalato, and Corfu and in 17th-century Zante also reflected the seminal
Paci, La ‘Scala’ di Spalato, 47–48, 52, 57, 61, 77, 79, 89, 104, 117, 131; Hocquet, Le sel, 1:331–32,
334–35; ibid., 2:280–81.
406 Paci, La ‘Scala’ di Spalato, p. 18.
407 Roberts, Realm of the Black Mountain, p. 111.
408 Francis Seymour Stevenson, A History of Montenegro (London, 1912), pp. 109–10;
Luciano De Zanche, Tra Costantinopoli e Venezia. Dispacci di stato e lettere di mercanti dal
basso medioevo alla caduta sella Serenissima (Prato, 2000), pp. 45–46.
409 Pagratis, ed., Οι εκθέσεις, 398.
410 Ljubić, ed., Commissiones et relationes, 2:48 (1528); Braudel, The Mediterranean,
p. 141. Hocquet, Le sel, 2:280; On Perasto’s shipping see Paci, La ‘Scala’ di Splato, p. 88.
411 Paci, La ‘Scala’ di Splato; Benjamin Ravid, “Daniel Rodriga and the First Decade of
the Jewish Merchants of Venice,” in Aaron Mirsky, Avraham Grossman, and Yosef Kaplan,
eds., Exile and Diaspora. Studies in the History of the Jewish People Presented to Professor
Haim Beinart (Jerusalem, 1991), pp. 203–23.
412 Paci, La ‘Scala’ di Splato, pp. 92–93.