126 Papadia-Lala
Ionian Islands and their mainland appendages—surrendered to the forces
of Napoleon. Throughout this long period, the larger region of the Eastern
Mediterranean also fell under other rulers, including Byzantines, various west-
erners and Ottomans. Thus, the Venetian Stato da Mar was in a state of vola-
tility throughout the entire period and its borders constantly fluctuated as a
consequence of the complex developments taking place in the region.20
Τhe Partitio terrarum imperii Romanie awarded Venice a large part of
present-day coastal and island Greece, and Crete was added in August 1204
following an agreement with Boniface of Monferrat.21 However, by the early
13th century, Venetian rule had shrunk to just Crete and its Peloponnesian
bases at Modon and Coron, its dominion even there appearing shaky, while,
during the second half of the 14th century, the Ottoman advance into the
Eastern Mediterranean entirely reset the stage for Venice’s ambitions as regards
consolidation and expansion in the East.
On Crete, virtually the whole of the local Greek-Orthodox aristocracy of
the former Byzantine period, after many decades of revolts, had capitulated to
Venice and had been transformed into a consistently pro-Venetian body. During
this same period, the island of Cythera was annexed by Venice in 1363, while
various Byzantine and Frankish territories were ceded to the Venetian state with
the forbearance, or even at the invitation, of their inhabitants, including Corfu
and its mainland appendage Vouthrotos (1386), Nauplia and Argos (1389/94), the
island of Euboea (1390), the islands of Tenos and Mykonos (1390), the cities of
Parga (1401), Naupactus (1407), Patras (1408, 1417) and Thessalonica (1423).
The Venetians supported the Byzantines during the siege of Constantinople
in 1453, but hastened to sign a commercial treaty with the Ottomans just a year
later in 1454. The islands of Aegina (1451) and the Northern Sporades (1453),
the Peloponnesian city of Monemvasia (1463), the Ionian island of Zakynthos/
20 Of the copious literature on the history of the Venetian-ruled Greek lands, see Freddy
Thiriet, La Romanie Vénitienne au Moyen Age: le développement et l’exploitation du
domaine colonial vénitien (xiie–xve siècles), 2nd ed. (Paris, 1975); Chryssa A. Maltezou, ed.,
Όψεις της ιστορίας του βενετοκρατούμενου Ελληνισμού: aρχειακά τεκμήρια [Aspects of the History
of Venetian Rule in Greece: Archival Evidence] (Athens, 1993), as well as eadem, Angeliki
Tzavara and Despina Vlassi, eds., Βενετοκρατούμενη Ελλάδα: Προσεγγίζοντας την ιστορία της
[Venetian Greece: Approaching its History], 2 vols. (Athens, 2010). See also Benjamin Arbel,
“Venice’s Maritime Empire in the Early Modern Period,” in A Companion to Venetian
History, 1400–1797, ed. Eric R. Dursteler (Leiden, 2013), pp. 125–253.
21 For a different account of how the Venetians acquired Crete, see Guillaume Saint-Guillain,
“Comment les Vénitiens n’ont pas acquis la Crète: note à propos de l’élection impéri-
ale de 1204 et du partage projeté de l’empire byzantine,” Travaux et Mémoires 16 (2010)
[= Mélanges Cécile Morrisson], pp. 713–58.