232 benjamin arbel
manufacturing. Trade in olive oil was at the core of an intensive maritime
trade between Venice and Apulia, which, until the early 18th century, was
Venice’s main olive oil supplier. Venice’s market could also be used for
further distribution of olive oil to the terraferma, to other Italian states,
and to countries outside the peninsula.434
The Republic first attempted to reduce her dependence on the Apulian
supply in 1565, with an act that promised premiums to those who would
plant olive trees in uncultivated lands or in lands belonging to the public
demesne in the stato da mar. In 1599 an order was sent to Corfu, instruct-
ing the island’s governors to act against inhabitants who cut or burned
olive trees and also directed them to oblige agriculturists to plant olive
trees in uncultivated lands. Against the backdrop of a crisis in the Apulian
oil supply in 1623, the Senate again ordered its representatives in Istria,
Dalmatia, Albania, Corfu, Zante, Cephalonia, and Crete to take measures
to significantly increase the number of olive trees, so as to assure inde-
pendence from foreign suppliers and prevent the flow of capital to for-
eign lands.435 The stated motivation exposes a concept of a mercantilist
economy geared to the interests of the metropolis.
Although Apulian olive oil was still dominant in Venetian markets until
the beginning of the following century, greater quantities of oil reached
Venice from the Ionian Islands around the middle of the 17th century.436
But it was only in the 1740s, with the rise in prices of Apulian oil, that a
long-term change took place. From that moment on, most of the olive
oil imported to Venice originated from the Ionian Islands (mainly from
Corfu, but also from Cephalonia, Zante, Paxo, and Santa Maura) and, to a
lesser extent, from Istria and Dalmatia. It was then considered the princi-
pal commodity of Venice’s maritime commerce and also constituted the
434 Salvatore Ciriacono, Olio ed ebrei nella Repubblica veneta del Settecento (Venice,
1975), pp. 9–15; Ivo Mattozzi, “Crisi, stagnazione e mutamento nello stato veneziano sei-
settecentesco: il caso del commercio e della produzione olearia,” Studi veneziani 4 (1980),
199–276; Massimo Costantini, “L’olio della Serenissima, dal commercio alla produzione. Per
una storia dell’uso produttivo di un territorio d’oltremare in una strategia mercantilistica,”
in Massimo Costantini and Aliki Nikiforou, eds., Levante Veneziano. Aspetti di storia delle
Isole Ionie al tempo della Serenissima (Rome, 1996), pp. 11–19.
435 Mattozzi, “Crisi,” pp. 216–17, 222, 227.
436 Ivo Mattozzi, “Olio pugliese e plio ionico nel commercio veneziano sei-settecentesco,”
in Mercati e consumi. Organizzazione e qualificazione del commercio in Italia dal XII al
XX secolo. I° Convegno Nazionale di Storia del commercio in Italia (Reggio Elilia-Modena,
giugno 1984) (Bologna, 1986), p. 150.