Expansion and Contraction of Maritime Power
From the late eighth century, the upper Adriatic became an area of exchange, albeit still weak, between the rich Levant and Western Europe. Venetian mariners and merchants sailed the Mediterranean Sea, exporting slaves and raw materials to the Byzantine and Muslim ports, and importing manufactured goods, spices, and silks.
Along with commercial services, the Venetians also provided protection, and so the Byzantines exchanged military support for fiscal and jurisdictional privileges. Trade and warfare allowed the small city at the head of the Adriatic to grow into one of the most important hubs of the time.[1620]What was perhaps the most important turning point in Venetian history occurred in 1202, when a specially commissioned Venetian fleet set out with the forces of the Fourth Crusade, which were supposed to go to the defense of the Holy Land. Their leaders had previously made a deal with the doge of Venice, committing themselves to pay the huge sum of 85,000 marks (about 20,000 kilograms) of silver in exchange for the transport and supplies necessary to feed an army of 35,000 soldiers for a year. On arrival in Venice, though, the Crusaders were unable to honor their commitment, and the Venetians succeeded, in lieu of money, in contracting their services. In 1204, the majority of the Crusading army was diverted to Constantinople, which was conquered and became the capital of a new state—the Latin Empire of the East. While the Latin emperors only lasted until 1261, Venice held on to the territorial gains it had made. It consolidated its position in Dalmatia and above all got Crete, Negroponte, Modon, and Coron, as well as other strategic bases for the control of the east-west sea routes. Venice, thus, was able to create a vast network of colonies that stretched from the Istrian peninsula to the Black Sea.
The Fourth Crusade marked the beginning of the imperial history of Venice.
Although the Venetians had not planned the creation of a broad overseas dominion, from the early thirteenth century, a military and economic expansion began that was to characterize Venice's role in the Mediterranean for several centuries. In 1209, the image of the doge replaced that of the Byzantine emperor on the golden Pale, a wooden screen painted with holy images in the Basilica of St. Mark. At the same time, the emperor disappeared from Venetian coins and was replaced by the doge, shown receiving a standard from St. Mark.[1621]From the thirteenth century, Venice progressively turned her trade network into an empire. Her galleys and sailing ships connected a wide area from the Black Sea to Flanders. Venetian consuls and representatives operated across this space, and a string of fortresses from the upper Adriatic to the Aegean Sea supported friendly merchants sailing in the region. The system was useful both to protect sea routes and to supply ships with food, fresh water, and naval supplies.
The advantages gained by Venice drew a sharp reaction from Genoa, the other great Italian maritime power of the late Middle Ages. From the mid-thirteenth century to the end of the fourteenth, economic rivalry between the two was the cause of repeated warfare. The fourth war against Genoa (1378-1381) brought severe consequences: it was, in Frederic Lane's words, “the most severe test of the cohesion of Venetian society and of the strength of its republican institutions.”[1622] Interests in the Black Sea were the fuse that ignited the war. The early phases proved favorable to the Genoese and their allies, who in 1379 even entered the lagoon and threatened to occupy Venice itself. In the end, though, the Genoese were compelled to depart. It is interesting to note that this was the first war in which Venetian ships used artillery.[1623] Equally significant, the number of warships manned was smaller than a century before, due to demographic decline after the Black Death, as well as financial difficulties.
This trend was to continue for most of the fifteenth century, when military commitments in mainland Italy and the cooling of the rivalry with Genoa prompted a further reduction of the fleet.These military commitments in mainland Italy stemmed from events that occurred during the decisive phase of territorial annexations and state-building—in the first half of the fifteenth century—by the peninsula’s five main regional states. In that brief period Venice succeeded in accumulating widespread dominions from Friuli to Bergamo. Unlike the navy, Venice’s land army consisted of mercenary troops alongside a few Venetian soldiers. We will shortly specify the precise differences between the Republic’s military organization on land and at sea.
The fifteenth century saw the decline of Genoese commercial competition, but also the emergence of the Ottoman Empire, which was to pose the greatest military threat to Venice. In the first half of the century, the navy was seldom involved in important campaigns. However, the first, long war against the Ottomans, from 1463 to 1479, set a different tone for the second half of the century. Significantly, it was Venice that started the war—a sign of government confidence in its military strength, and in particular in its navy. Initial conquests followed in the Peloponnese, but when the Ottomans subsequently engaged their enormous military potential, they managed to reverse this Venetian initiative. Ottoman cavalry even penetrated the eastern provinces of the Venetian mainland, sacking and destroying minor settlements, while in the Aegean Sea, Mehmed II’s counteroffensive successfully conquered Negroponte, even though in the meantime the Crusader kingdom of Cyprus passed under Venetian control.
The year 1494 proved to be fateful, with Charles VIII of France’s campaign in Italy opening a new phase of Italian and European history. In the initial years of the Italian Wars (1494-1530), the Republic of Venice achieved its greatest territorial expansion on the peninsula.
Some ports in the southern Adriatic were conquered to facilitate control of the Adriatic and Ionian Seas, but an unexpected Ottoman attack precipitated the Republic’s first naval crisis. In 1499, an Ottoman army conquered some Venetian bases in the Peloponnese. Other forces raided Venice’s Italian dominion, arriving within a few kilometers of Venice itself. Most importantly, the Ottomans got the better of the Venetians in the naval Battle of Zonchio. This defeat had serious strategic and psychological consequences. The Venetian navy had previously considered itself much stronger than its Ottoman counterpart. The myth of its invincibility was now destroyed. In 1503, the Republic made peace, giving up various colonies in Greece and Albania. The new century therefore opened with the Venetians forced to make a clear choice. They sought to maintain their maritime holdings by avoiding clashes with the Ottomans, and preferred to earmark most resources to the Italian front, where the Republic’s destiny was at stake. The Italian Wars in fact absorbed enormous financial resources and forced the government to maintain an army that sometimes numbered as many as 30,000 men. Venice’s role in the conflict was mainly an active one until the Battle of Pavia (1525), but subsequently became defensive, aiming merely to preserve its existing holdings. In 1509, a major defeat had triggered a major and protracted program of fortification, with the aim of defending Venetian territories stretching from the western boundary of the Italian mainland state east as far as Cyprus. These fortresses formed a true limes—a term borrowed from Braudel—and reflected Venice's strategic choice visibly in its defense of territories and coastal bases.The period between the early sixteenth century and 1670 saw the Ottoman Empire adopt a resolutely aggressive policy against Venice. The loss of Cyprus (1570), despite the victory of the Holy League over the Ottomans at Lepanto on October 7 of the following year, marked a dramatic crisis.
The most important naval battle of the sixteenth century was fought by 100,000 men, of whom at least one-third were deployed and paid by Venice, under the Christian standard. The tremendous cost in men and resources did not, however, prevent the Republic from subsequently ceding this space to the Ottomans and, more importantly, to powerful commercial competitors from northwestern Europe.[1624] The peace signed with the sultan in 1573, as the allied Spanish king was still at war, shows that the Venetian ruling class had calculated that it was no longer worth fighting and mobilizing resources in the Aegean to defend their commercial interests.As a matter of fact, between the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, the preeminence of Venetian merchants in the eastern Mediterranean was severely attacked. Emerging trading powers (e.g., England, Holland, and France) succeeded in displacing, albeit not completely, the traditional commercial intermediaries between East and West. The so-called Northerners were able to sell goods (textiles, manufactured products, precious metals) at lower prices than Venetians, and their vessels and crews proved to be more effective than those used in the Mediterranean. The international market for spices, furthermore, underwent structural change. The traditional route through the Red Sea was blocked and the Cape route, controlled mainly by English and Dutch vessels, established a new link between the Indian Ocean and Europe.
In such a context of economic difficulty, the long war for Crete (1645-1669) shows Venice assuming a defensive stance, despite possessing a strong navy, which remained effective in the seventeenth century. This naval strength was nevertheless insufficient to prevent the loss of Crete, Venice's most important Mediterranean base.
A number of considerations emerge from this brief outline of Venetian naval and commercial history. In the first place, the phases of Venice's economic growth and contraction were closely connected to both the international economy and international politics.
The Venetians' ability to provide naval services allowed them to build a colonial empire dotted with bases and ports of considerable strategic importance. It is important to remember the frequency with which Venetian light or war galleys—the backbone of the navy—needed to restock with supplies and fresh water, given the limited storage on board. The possession of an almost continuous line of bases from the northern Adriatic to the Aegean Sea thus allowed the Republic to organize an effective escort for merchant shipping at sea. The Venetian military system was also characterized by considerable integration between a strict naval component and land fortification. It is no coincidence that the mid-sixteenth century treatise of the admiral Cristoforo Da Canal on the Venetian navy contains the picture of a galley inside a quadrilateral at whose four angles stood fortresses.[1625]The conquest of Levantine territories represented an enormous source of wealth for Venice. Although the central government had to send money to overseas territories to balance local—mostly military—expenditures, the control of colonies provided Venice with remarkable advantages. The production and distribution of salt, for example, was exploited by the government as an important fiscal source. The economy of the capital benefited from commercial profits (ranging from 10 to 20 percent of investments in net terms), revenues from landownership and ecclesiastical benefices, and imports of cereals, olive oil, raw silk, timber, and other commodities. Along with these material advantages there were immaterial ones, such as the continuous flow of information to the capital, which supported the Venetians' political and economic decisions. The Venetian case corresponds rather closely to the model that the sociologist and historian Charles Tilly calls “capitalized- coercion”—that is, a polity whose rulers intensively employ sources of capital to improve the structures of the state.[1626] Military power under such circumstances aims to strengthen the state economically and helps to create a market economy favorable to the needs of the ruling group. It has rightly been said that the Venetian senate, the most important political organism in government, can be regarded as the Republic's board of directors. Until the early sixteenth century the majority of the senate's members were in fact patricians involved in maritime trade. One can thus argue that government decisions were strongly influenced by the needs of merchants and of international trade, more broadly.