The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

♦Cyprus.♦

These were the kingdoms of Cyprus and Armenia. ♦Famagosta Genoese.♦ The frontier of Cyprus hardly admitted of geographical change, unless it were when, for a part of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the city and haven of Famagosta passed to Genoa. ♦Connexion between Cyprus and Jerusalem.♦ The kings of Cyprus however claimed the crown of Jerusalem, and sometimes, before the whole Syrian coast was lost, they really held this or that piece of territory on the mainland. ♦Armenia acknowledges the Western Emperor, 1190.♦ Meanwhile the Armenian kingdom in some sort entered the Western world, when its king, after receiving one confirmation from the Eastern Emperor, thought it wise to receive another from the Western Emperor also. ♦1342.♦ The kingdom, though sadly cut short by its Mussulman neighbours, lived on under native princes till the middle of the fourteenth century. ♦Connexion between Armenia and Cyprus, 1393.♦ Then the fragments of the kingdom passed, first to a branch of the Cypriot royal family, and then to the reigning king of Cyprus. But the first joint reign was the last. ♦End of Armenia and Cyprus, 1489.♦ The remnant of independent Armenia was swallowed up by the Mameluke lords of Syria, while Cyprus lingered on till Saint Mark and his commonwealth became the heirs of its last king.

The kingdom of Cyprus forms a link between the Latin states in Syria and those which arose in Romania after the crusading capture of Constantinople. And these last again fall into two classes. ♦Frank principalities in Greece.
Possessions of the maritime commonwealths.♦ There are the Frank principalities on the mainland of Greece, and there are the lands, chiefly insular, which fell to the lot of the maritime commonwealths of the West and of their citizens. Among these the first place belongs to the great commonwealth which had now cast off all traces of allegiance to the Empire. ♦Genoa.♦ Genoa, which had no share in the original partition of the Empire, obtained several points of Imperial territory, both for the commonwealth itself and for particular Genoese citizens. ♦Venice.♦ But the part played by Genoa in the East is small beside the great and abiding dominion of Venice. No result of the partition was greater than the field which it gave to Venetian growth. ♦Comparison between the two.♦ The position of the two commonwealths is different. Genoa was a mere stranger in the East; Venice was in a manner at home. Once an outlying possession of the Empire, her really great historical position is due to her share in its overthrow.

§ 4. The Eastern Dominion of Venice and Genoa.

We have already seen the origin of the Venetian state, and the beginning of Venetian rule over the Slavonic coasts of the Hadriatic. ♦Connexion of the Dalmatian and Greek dominion of Venice.♦ The Eastern dominion of Venice now began, and, in a strictly geographical view, her Istrian and Dalmatian dominion cannot be separated from her Albanian and purely Greek dominion. But Venice did not become a great European power till she passed from the Slavonic lands whose connexion with the Empire was nominal or precarious into the Albanian and Greek lands which were among its immediate possessions. ♦Effect of the partition on Venice.♦ The greatness of Venice dates from that partition of the Empire which was the surest proof that she had wholly cast aside her Byzantine allegiance. ♦Comparison between Venice and Sicily.♦ In this point of view the history of Venice may be compared and contrasted with the history of Sicily. In each case, a part of the dominions of the Eastern Rome grew into a separate power; that power passed, so to speak, from Eastern Europe to Western, and, in its new Western character, it appeared as a conqueror in the Eastern lands. But, as Venice and Sicily parted from the Empire in different ways, so their later relations to the Empire were widely different. The Sicilian state began in actual conquests made by foreign invaders at the expense of the Empire. Venice was a dependency of the Empire which gradually drifted into independence. Thus Sicily became more thoroughly Western than Venice. The attempts of the kings, both of the whole Sicilian kingdom and of its divided parts, to establish an Eastern dominion were attacks from without, and were not really lasting. ♦Venice inherits the position of the Empire.♦ But Venice, whose princes were lords of one fourth and one eighth of the Empire of Romania,[30] took up in some sort the position of the Empire itself. If she destroyed one bulwark against the Mussulman, she set up another. As long as Venice was really a great power, her main interests lay east of the Hadriatic. ♦Importance of the fourth crusade in Venetian history.♦ The fourth crusade was her turning point. It was at once the beginning of her Greek dominion and the recovery of her Dalmatian dominion.

♦Territory assigned to Venice by the Act of Partition.♦

The scheme of partition gave to Venice a vast dominion, insular and continental. She was to be mistress of the Hadriatic and Ionian seas. To her were assigned, not only the islands off the west coast of the Empire, but the whole western coast itself, from the north of Albania to the southern point of Peloponnêsos. She was to have some points in the Ægæan, among them Oreos and Karystos at the two ends of Euboia. She was to have her quarter of the capital, with a Thracian and an Asiatic dominion, including, according to some versions, the strange allotment of Lazia at the east of the Euxine[31]. ♦Her actual possessions.♦ The actual possessions of Venice in the East have a very different look. Much of the territory which was assigned to the republic never became hers, while she obtained large possessions which were not assigned to her. ♦Her dominion primarily Hadriatic.♦ But the main point, the dominion of the Hadriatic, was never forgotten, though some both of her earliest and of her latest conquests lay beyond its necessary range.

♦Possessions not assigned by the partition.
Crete. 1206-1669.♦

Among those possessions of Venice which were not assigned to her in the act of partition was her greatest and most lasting possession of all, the island of Crete. ♦1645-1669.♦ This she won almost at the first moment of the conquest, and she kept it for more than four centuries and a half, till the war of Candia handed over all Crete, save two fortresses, to the Ottoman. ♦Acquisition of Cyprus. 1489.♦ Before this loss, Saint Mark had won and lost another great island which lay altogether beyond the scheme of the Latin conquerors of Constantinople. Late in the fifteenth century the republic succeeded the Latin kings in the possession of Cyprus. ♦Loss of Cyprus, 1571.♦ But this was held for less than a century. Cyprus, like Crete and Sicily, was a special scene of struggle between European and barbarian powers. But it shared the fate, not of Sicily but of Crete, and became the solid prize of the Ottoman, when Christendom won the barren laurels of Lepanto. ♦Occupation of Thessalonikê, 1426-1430.♦ Another possession which lay out of the usual course of Venetian dominion was the short occupation of Thessalonikê. Bought of a Greek despot, it was after four years taken by the Turk. Had Thessalonikê been kept, it might have passed as a late compensation to the republic for the early loss of Hadrianople and her other Thracian territory.