Factors Explaining the Decline of the Venetian Trading Empire
The Venetian trading empire was one of the most formidable forces in the Mediterranean for a number of centuries. From the 1100s through the sixteenth century, the Venetians were a force to be reckoned with. The Empire was not predicated on control of vast swaths of territory, but control of connections between places. Unfortunately for the Venetians, the Mediterranean was a site of great contestation over the control of trading connections. This paper will prove that the Venetians created the circumstances for their own demise by not properly replacing or reviving lost trading positions and by engaging in economically and politically questionable practices that were not sustainable in the long term—especially when viewed in the context of the lost trade advantage.
Since the Venetian economy was based on their seafaring trading abilities, it made sense that the military would function in conjunction with the merchants. However, this posed problems because the decline of the Venetians trading prowess coincided with a decline in the capabilities of the military. The simultaneous deterioration of these components of the Venetian Empire established unfavorable conditions that put the Venetians in a tough position. Beginning with the military:
The land troops of the republic in the last decennium of the eighteenth century amounted to 13,000 men, of whom the majority were Slavonians, and the rest recruits from all countries of Europe, Spain alone excepted. They were badly paid, and were held in well-deserved contempt by all Venetians. The marine was held in greater honour, but at this time it had sunk to some ten ships of the line, a few frigates, and four large galleys. Against the ships of other nations, however, this fleet was powerless.1
This quote shows the degeneration of the Venetian military and its inability to defend Venice from both foreign and domestic enemies. During the Scaligeri affair in the early 1300s, Venice
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had 40,100 volunteers available for conscription to fight the della Scalla brothers and establish a standing presence on the terrafirma. In the 1530s, Venice had a provincial militia numbering 30,000 men, but by the eighteenth century Venice could only gather a little more than 10,000 troops capable of defending her various spaces.2 Leading up to the sixteenth century, the Venetian aristocracy dominated international trade and drove a booming shipping industry that involved a powerful navy. While the short example above does not provide a comprehensive view of the failure of the military, it does introduce a larger issue: that of dependency. Rather than choosing to maintain a separate military that could aid merchants when needed, the Venetian state became dependent on the patriciate or noble class, economically, politically, and militarily; as the patriciate failed, the economy, government, and military also failed. By the eighteenth century, the arsenal had not been updated in centuries and other European powers were developing new ships to grow their own blossoming sea trade. Venice was still using antique ships that were obsolete in every way.3 The deterioration of the Venetian navy would have dire consequences in the centuries to come, as it was the primary means of defending the overseas empire and homeland.
As if the emergence of other European trading powers was not enough, by 1537 the government was on the verge of bankruptcy.4 In August of 1537, Venetian forces were able to defend their territory at Corfu against Sultan Suleiman, but subsequently lost Nauplia, Malvasia, Skiros, Palmos, Aegina, Ios, Paros, and Astipalia. Only rich families were dispatched to rule foreign territory since the families themselves, not the state, were responsible for maintaining the posts. This custom caused severe problems when those posts were attacked since individual families,
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now in desperate economic positions, were unable to independently raise a militia or army to defend Venetian holdings.5
After these losses of territory, Venice began preparing for war with the new Ottoman Sultan, Selim, in 1570. Although the state had recouped some financial stability, private citizens were still in grim financial situations as a result of the loss of Adriatic trading posts. Those families who held on to their patrimony could help in the war effort by equipping their ships and raising private militias. In that year alone, Venice was able to raise 144 ships, including 126 war galleys, but it proved futile against Ottoman forces. On August 1, 1570 Venice surrendered Cyprus, which ended an eighty-one-year occupation.6 Following this defeat, Venice managed to beat Ottoman forces at Lepanto in 1571, but this victory was too little, too late. Sustained, aggressive action by the Ottoman Empire further drained the Venetian economy. Although the Venetians still held Crete, a twenty-two-year siege beginning in 1647 ended with the Venetian surrender of Crete on 6 September 1669. As a result, Venice lost a trading post it had held for 465 years.6 Venice went on to lose Chios in February 1695, but held control of the Morea and Aegina through the Treaty of Karlowitz, and retained her holdings at Santa Maura and other places on the Dalmatian coast.7 Despite reclaiming some control in the Adriatic and Aegean Seas, after 150+ years of war with the Ottomans, which involved the passing back and forth of territory between the two empires, the recolonization of her once prosperous ports did not succeed.
An illuminating chart (Figure 1) is presented in William Miller’s The Latins in the Levant, A History of Frankish Greece (1204-1566), which shows the Venetian rise to dominance in the Adriatic throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the rapid loss of control at the
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hands of the Ottoman Empire. By the time Venice surrendered to Napoleon Bonaparte, the Republic only had four colonies in the Ionian Islands and those were governed at a high cost for the Venetian government and patricians that ruled them.8 The loss of Venetian domination in the Adriatic after the fall of the Byzantine Empire, affected many areas of Venetian life. Long before 1797, Venice was deteriorating economically due to the losses sustained in its trading networks.
While the Venetian economy thrived thanks to shipping in its early history, later it became dependent on forced loans from the aristocracy, the Jews of the city, and from other groups. These loans were used pay for the hundreds of salaries the government provided to nobles, which funded the increasingly popular custom of luxurious living.
In his book, Patricians and Popolani, Dennis Romano outlines the fact that Venice enjoyed some domestic tranquility because the aristocracy was married to trade and the government simultaneously served as a guild for the merchants. As the aristocracy moved away from trade, that opening was filled by non-noble immigrants. Dalmatians, Greeks, and Jewish men became merchants and although shipping was no longer as prosperous as it once was, these men were getting a profit, while the nobility was not. While the nobility no longer engaged in trade as heavily, the Venetian government did force loans and heavy taxation on the Jewish community, and these payments were made with revenue from trade. This shift in the trade environment caused the dissolution of one of the main factors which helped keep the social balance between the aristocracy and the lower socio-economic groups. Venice was clearly dependent on
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immigrants for many societal components, not just in the economy, but also in the military, since the vast majority of its land forces were made up of mercenaries.
The decline of the Venetian presence abroad throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries has already been examined, but it remains important to note that this occurred directly after other unforeseen events damaged its only source of wealth. Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453, Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492, and Vasco de Gama discovered a shipping route around Africa in 1497. Around 1600, Venice lost the expansive revenue earned from trading spices due to the emergence of the Dutch East India Company. Each of these developments greatly damaged the monopoly of trade in and out of Europe that Venice relied on for centuries.9 With the disappearance of trade, one would assume that the wealthy nobles would seek profits through other modes of business, but that did not happen. The aristocracy sunk its money into land and luxury goods.
One of the biggest drains on the Venetian treasury was the expansive population of nobles that depended on the government as their source of income. This was not a new phenomenon, but the volume of the population using the state increased rapidly just as the state’s revenue was decreasing. The nobility was divided between old families and new families, but it was also divided based on income level. There were three subgroups within the Venetian nobility: the highest who possessed vast wealth and political power, the middle class who were self-sufficient but lackluster in all other areas, and the barnabotti, or lowest echelon of nobility, who were completely dependent on the state and rich nobles to live and exercise political influence.10 As the government swelled to accommodate the nobles that were no longer participating in the
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shipping industry, the loss of revenue and increasing salaries that the state was held responsible for fed into consequences that would have disastrous effects.
In his book, The Venetian Patriciate, Donald Queller assesses the various income levels of the patriciate in order to explain how the ever-expanding bureaucracy of Venice was essentially a charity for many noble families. Although it appears to be an oversimplification, Queller agrees that the 200,000 ducats a year that the Venetian government paid out to nobles consumed all of Venice’s “liberal income,” which meant that the government survived on forced loans when money was needed for other purposes.11
The income levels of the nobility of Venice were so divided that rich nobles (and their government) became a welfare state for the less affluent members of the patriciate. This is indicated in an act from 1490, which states that a majority of nobles were dependent on holding public offices for subsistence.12 At that time, some current government positions and many jobs were created as sinecures. This meant that the state was continuously paying a large portion of the population and getting nothing in exchange.13 These sinecures even permeated the military. Queller uses the position of balestrieri della popa or bowmen of the quarterdeck as an example. Records show that the Venetian government appointed a woman, a blind man, and a number of noble teenagers to this paid position.14 While some of the balestrieri positions were sinecures, Queller indicates that the position was first created to train young, poor nobles in the art of seafaring, in order to prepare them for later merchant activities. The position of bowman of the quarterdeck came with a 60-ducat salary paid by the owner of the vessel, but also allowed bowmen a small amount of space on the vessel to shelve goods, which they could trade or sell
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when they arrived at their port. This opportunity meant that bowmen could earn up to 200 ducats per trip, with the possibility of many voyages a year, thanks to the state provided job.15 These positions were so important for providing money that the Great Council often mandated them on vessels departing Venice. Nobles were also allowed to serve in this position multiple times a year. By the mid-1400s it was required that each merchant leaving Venetian waters employ a small number of “noble balestrieri” and by 1520, 200 nobles held these positions each year.16 This is just one specific example of the different sinecures and government offices that were regularly filled by various nobles.
Feudalism was a source of income for many nobles in Europe throughout the Middle Ages, but it was not until the 1500s that the Venetians began to invest in land and create their campagna on the mainland. Venice had holdings on the terrafirma as far back as the 1300s, but the aristocracy waited until the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century to devote their resources to procuring land, which they then subinfeudated. This shift to feudalism also provides an example of how ineffective the laws passed by the Great Council were. As late as 1677, a law existed that prevented nobles from engaging in feudalism on the terrafirma.17 This law was clearly not enforced as many nobles participated in feudalism.
Before discussing the feudal practices of Venetian nobles and their effects on the Republic, it must be noted that families conducted business as a unit. This practice came to be known as fraterna.18 This meant that while one brother sought a career in politics, other brothers would pursue additional complementary professions that would help grow the family’s wealth. The idea of shared familial wealth makes sense, but if one brother makes a poor business decision, it
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leads the entire family into poverty and dependence on the rest of society (if possible, which it very much was in this case). The fraterna and all its complications helps explain how even in its most prosperous years, Venice supported a large number of nobles who were nothing but a drain on the economy.
Venetians nobles who had money were not necessarily in a less culpable position though because they were obsessed with luxury and while they were no longer enjoying the same enormous incomes they saw in earlier centuries, they were still spending in the same manner. The obsession with luxury was ingrained in Venetian aristocratic culture and created systemic problems for the government. As Dennis Romano notes, the geography and topography of Venice, as well as the urban design, meant that the popolani, cittadini, and nobili regularly lived side-by-side. In an attempt to maintain order and curtail some of the excessive luxury, the Venetian government passed sumptuary laws in 1504. Even as trade declined in the 1600s, the nobility insisted on maintaining their luxurious lifestyle and eventually this led to an even more desperate economic situation.19 The obsession with luxury and admiration of the landed nobilities of Europe, decline of trade, as well as a spike in grain prices in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries led to the Venetian transition from a merchant economy to a feudal one.
The terrafirma had always provided Venice with some sustenance, but a number of scholars believe rising grain prices motivated wealthy Venetians to buy land as a way to secure their own food supplies while also collecting rents through the mezzadria system. By 1750, Venetian nobles owned thirty-two percent of privately held land on the terrafirma. Even the last Doge of Venice operated in feudalism as his family owned twenty-three miles of land.20 These land
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holdings could have made up for a lot of the lost revenue from trade, but the next paragraph will elucidate how the Venetians lacked the farming savvy required to reap the maximum rewards
An unfortunate side effect of this shift came due to ignorance in the area of agricultural practices. Venetians used the mezzadria pattern for the setup of their farms, which holds similarities to American share-cropping. This system was unlike the prevalent English system in which villagers maintained their fields in common. In mezzadria, each family farmed a piece of land by themselves that was then managed by a representative of the lord who owned all the land. Once the produce was harvested, the family was given half of the crop and the other half went to the reigning lord. Having previously been shipbuilders, navigators, and merchants, the Venetians knew little about farming. They did not use fertilizer and only plowed the land with primitive tools.21 This ignorance led to calamity in the event that a family chose to invest all of its available money in land, but was then unable to produce enough crops to sell, therefore forcing them to take a loss on their investment.
The Venetian trading empire ascended quite rapidly throughout the twelfth, thirteen, and even fourteenth centuries as a dominating economic force, but its lack of economic diversity meant that the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 would have consequences that further exacerbated future bad decisions and conditions of hardship. Furthermore, the loss of trading positions and a lack of adequate replacements forced the Venetians to adopt practices that were not as profitable for them. Additionally, by depending on immigrants for military service as well as taxes and loans, the Venetians ensured the hollowing out of their society. Lastly, the Venetians did themselves no favors by supporting a large portion of their society in an intense version of the
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welfare state system. All in all, by the time Napoleon came hunting, the Venetians had already decided that they would not put up much of a fight.
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