venice’s maritime empire in the early modern period 223
direct disbursement to the Republic’s central treasury and, consequently,
without leaving any trace in the colonial balance sheets.389
After 1699, the expanse of Venetian territories in Dalmatia and Alba-
nia grew from 2000 to 4500 Italian square miles. The new lands had
belonged to the Ottoman sultan, and after their appropriation by Venice
they became part of the Republic’s demesne.390 These new lands were not
very fertile, and most of the immigrants who reached them from Otto-
man lands, the so-called Morlachs, were accustomed to pasture economy
rather than to agriculture. Problems of food supply therefore became of
pivotal importance, and Venice had to cope with the question of how
to transform the Morlachs into peasants. To solve these problems, the
Republic in 1755 undertook a large-scale agrarian reform in the territories
of the Nuovo and Nuovissimo Acquisto. The state offered lands in perpetual
lease subject to three categories: noblemen could lease 300 Paduan campi
per person, cittadini could lease 200 campi, and Morlachs (the only ones
expected to work the land themselves) 2 campi (about 2/3 of a hectare).
In the absence of direct male heirs, these lands reverted to the state.391
The principles underlying this reform were probably inspired by Venice’s
experience in the early 18th-century Morea, where the Republic had faced
a similar situation of having at its disposal a vast amount of public lands
and had tried different models of leasehold before finally opting for per-
petual lease combined with a low inheritance tax.392
Modern historians consider this project a failure, though not always
for the same reasons. One of its underlying defects was the inability of
the plots allotted to Morlachs to economically sustain their families. That
said, the law provided a basic, though minimal, security to Morlach fami-
lies, both with regard to the plots directly held in lease from the state as
well as for those that were subleased from private landlords. But histo-
rians agree that the law was unable to provide a comprehensive answer
to the multiple problems presented by the new territories and their rela-
tively newly settled inhabitants.393
389 E.g., Arbel, “Greek Magnates,” p. 330; Aristidou, Ανέκδοτα έγγραφα, 4:161.
390 [Anon.], “Economia rurale: alcuni cenni statistici sulla Dalmazia,” Giornale
d’Agricoltura 2 (Jan.–March 1808), p. 3. The Italian mile used here must be the one
officially established in Milan in 1803 (1.482 km.), Ronald Edward Zupko, Italian Weights
and Measures from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1981), p. 153.
391 Berengo, “Problemi economico-sociali,” pp. 474–75. One Paduan campo = 3862.57
sq. metres.
392 Ranke, “Die Venezianer in Morea,” pp. 318–21.
393 Ibid., pp. 475–77; Paladini, ‘Un caos che spaventa,’ pp. 40–42, 95–150.