52 | The Genoese of Pera in the Fifteenth Century
Spinola, who died there, and which was at that time inhabited by Nicholai de
Amingdola.
Francesco Draperio appears in the sources for the last time in 1455 as a result
of a crisis between him, as the tax farmer of alum mines, and the Genoese in Chios
on the payment of a debt of 40,000 ducats for alum. When the Genoese Chiots
refused to pay, Draperio asked for help from Sultan Mehmed II. On Dra perio’s
request, the sultan sent a fleet to demand payment from the Genoese Chiots.
The negotiations failed and ended in blood on the Ottoman side. Consequently,
Mehmed II forgave the debt Draperio owed him and took over his claim against
the Chiots. This example indicates that the personal interests of the Genoese
often prevailed over the communal interests and made it impossible to cooper-
ate with other Genoese. As an Ottoman subject and tax farmer of Mehmed II, it
was more apt (even profitable) for Draperio to side with the sultan in the conflict
between the Genoese Chiots and the Ottoman Empire.
On the other hand, in 1454, one year after the conquest, a member of the
Spinola family, Luciano Spinola, and Baldassare Maruffo, former podestà of Pera,
went to Mehmed II as representatives of the home administration in Genoa to
ask whether the sultan would repair the walls of the city and return the city to the
control of the Genoese. This was a vain hope; Pera remained under Ottoman
control, and soon the dominance of the Genoese was replaced by other Italians
and Greeks, Armenians, and Muslims. However, this demonstrates the compli-
cated network of relations of the Genoese of Pera with different powers. On the
one hand, the Draperio family acted on the side of the Ottoman administration.
On the other hand, members of the Spinola family collaborated with both sides,
the home administration in Genoa and the Ottoman Empire, to promote their
own interests.
It is this flexibility that helped the Genoese community survive in a foreign
environment and culture for a long time. Through their adaptability to chang-
ing conditions, the members of the community often tipped the scales in their
favor. Sometimes they pursued policies that did not fit with the patria Genoa. As
is clear from the examples above, some Genoese families preferred negotiation
and diplomatic gifts in their relations with the Ottomans, while others joined
anti-Ottoman expeditions; some acted with the Ottoman sultan against their
compatriots, while others sought independence from Ottoman control with the
support of the administration in Genoa. Thus, instead of acting in unity and
adopting stable ideological policies in their relations with the Byzantines and the
Ottomans, the members of the Genoese community followed individual patterns
and developed short-term pragmatic solutions mostly shaped by personal rela-
tions and economic concerns.
The conquest of Constantinople certainly affected the Genoese in Pera. How -
ever, to assume that it struck a serious blow to the community is misleading.