venice’s maritime empire in the early modern period 237
In Search of a Turning Point
Several important works on various provinces of the stato da mar during
the last century of Venetian rule depict a rather lugubrious picture of the
Venetian colonial administration. Time and again, the magistrates who
ruled these territories expressed their frustration at being unable to impose
law and order, as they understood these concepts, on local societies. In
fact, Venice itself appears to have been slack in implementing its own
laws regarding the administration of its empire. If this was the case in the
administrative milieu itself, no wonder that colonial subjects found ways
to evade the law, to avoid their fiscal and other obligations, to circumvent
judicial decisions, and to use violence and terror on other inhabitants of
their own country.453
The extent to which such phenomena were expressed in the different
territories changes, of course, according to time and place. For example,
in Cephalonia, the ability of the governors to exercise their authority
seems to have been particularly limited, because of the existence of strong
local (and often rival) families who dominated the social scene.454 Meth-
ods of organized violence, of patti di famiglia and of fratellanza, could be
observed, though probably in relatively less violent forms, on Corfu and
Zante as well.455 Venice was unable to alter these realities.
Was there a process of deterioration in the level of Venice’s admin-
istration of the stato da mar, and, if so, can we detect a turning point
from which such a deterioration can be observed? For the Ionian Islands,
Alfredo Viggiano has suggested considering the early 1760s as such a turn-
ing point, a non-reversible crisis in Venice’s authority resulting in a power
vacuum in the islands, which was quickly filled by local powerful families.456
Yet the question remains whether these difficulties were really symptoms
of a new process of colonial decline or, perhaps, only a worsening of a
long-term chronic malady. Reading O’Connell’s recent book on the stato
da mar in the 15th century,457 one gets a similar impression, and, most
453 Alfredo Viggiano, “Venezia e le isole del Levante. Cultura politica e incombenze
amministrative nel dominio da mar del XVIII secolo,” Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze,
Lettere ed Arti 151 (1993), 753–95; Viggiano, Lo specchio, pp. 113–195; André Grasset Saint-
Sauveur, Voyage historique littéraire et pittoresque dans les isles et possessions ci-devant
vénitiennes du Levant, 3 vols (Paris, 1800); Miller, “The Ionian Islands,” pp. 235–36; Paladini,
‘Un caos che spaventa,’ p. 13.
454 Viggiano, “Venezia e le isole del Levante,” p. 781.
455 Folin, “Spunti,” pp. 344–45.
456 Viggiano, Lo specchio, p. 139.
457 O’Connell, Men of Empire.