226 benjamin arbel
All Venetian towns in Dalmatia and “Albania,” particularly Zara, Trau,
Antivari, Cattaro, and Perasto, as well as the Dalmatian islands, and, from
the late 16th century, also Spalato, were centers of transit trade between
the western Ottoman provinces and the Adriatic world. Despite prohi-
bitions and sanctions in this respect, the economy of these territories
greatly depended on their role as intermediaries between the Balkan hin-
terland and the western shores of the Adriatic, the so-called Sottovento.402
At some point Venice seems to have allowed its Dalmatian subjects to
engage in this trade,403 continuing at the same time its endless struggle
against the competition of rival ports on both the western and eastern
coasts of the Adriatic Sea.404
Venice was greatly interested in attracting commodities originating
from the inner Balkans, especially during the 16th-century heyday of its
demographic and industrial expansion. Food products, such as grains,
cheese, and meat; raw materials for its manufactures, such as hides and
skins, acorns (valonie), kermes (grana), tar, and wool; animals, such as
horses, cattle, and smaller farm animals; and also the principal source of
energy—firewood—all came from those parts. In return for these com-
modities, Venice and Venetian merchants could offer salt, which was in
great demand in the inner Balkan provinces and also on the western Adri-
atic coasts, as well as finished products originating from Venice and its
mainland territories.405
Atti della trentasettesima settimana di studi, Prato, 11–15 Aprile 2005 (Florence, 2005),
p. 403; Karl Appuhn, A Forest on the Sea. Environmental Expertise in Renaissance Venice
(Baltimore, 2009), pp. 37, 167–70, 296. Giorgio Gianighian and Paola Pavanini, Venice—the
Basics (Venice, 2010), pp. 20–21, 31, 42.
402 Levi, Venezia e il Montenegro; Schmitt, Das venezianische Albanien, 459; Ivan
Pederin, “Commercio, economia, pesca, Arti e mestieri in Arbe nel Quattrocento,” Archivio
Storico Italiano 147.2 (1989), 215–49; Schmitt, “Contrabannum,” p. 8; Schmitt, “Korčula,” pp.
62–70.
403 Inferred from the demand of the Corfiots in 1522 to enjoy the same right in this
respect as the Dalmatian merchants; see Gerassimos D. Pagratis, “Trade and Shipping in
Corfu (1496–1538),” International Journal of Maritime History 16.2 (2004), pp. 175–76.
404 Paci, La ‘Scala’ di Spalato; Massimo Costantini, “ ‘Sottovento.’ I traffici veneziani con
la sponda occidentale del medio-basso Adriatico,” Εωα και Εσπερία 4 (1999–2000), pp. 282–
96; Ugo Tucci, “Venezia, Ancona e i problemi della navigazione adriatica nel Cinquecento,”
Atti e memorie della Deputazione di storia patria per le Marche 87 (1982), 147–70; Benjamin
Ravid, “A Tale of Three Cities and their Raison d’État: Ancona, Venice, Livorno and the
Competition for Jewish Merchants in the Sixteenth Century,” Mediterranean Historical
Review 6 (1991), 138–62.
405 Edoardo Demo, “Wool and Silk: The Textile Urban Industry of the Venetian
Mainland (15th–17th Centuries),” in Paola Lanaro, ed., At the Centre of the Old World. Trade
and Manufacturing in Venice and the Venetian Mainland, 1400–1800 (Toronto, 2006), p. 228;