Venice, the Ottomans, and the Sea (1381–1517)

Abstract

This book is the first comprehensive study of Venice’s economic and political relations with the Ottoman Empire in the transitional period between late Middle Ages and early modernity. It offers an integrated view of trade and sea power transcending the paradigms of trade—Ottoman territories as a land of opportunity—and crusade—the Ottomans as a threat—to uncover the interplay between economic structures and political decision making that shaped the period between the end of Venice’s most devastating war with Genoa in 1381 and the Ottoman conquest of Mamluk Egypt in 1517. The book clarifies the trajectory of Venice’s trade with the Ottomans, the evolution of Venetian defensive measures in the Balkans and of Venetian naval warfare, Venice’s attempt to aid the Byzantine Empire in 1453, the dynamics of the Venetian–Ottoman war of 1463–79, and the interconnections between Venice’s Italian and Ottoman politics. In the process, it restores human agency to the Ottomans, whose success has typically been explained through structural factors, while adding structural analysis to the explanation of Venetian actions, often seen through the prism of (un)heroic individual choices and actions. From a broader Mediterranean perspective, the book highlights the intersections of political, social, economic, and technological factors behind accelerated historical change in the second half of the fifteenth century and offers a case study in the ways in which a Mediterranean elite maintained its privileged position over time.