The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

♦Venetian power both Dalmatian and Greek.♦

But the true scene of Venetian enterprise in the East is primarily the Hadriatic, and next to that, the coasts and islands of the Ægæan. She remained both a Dalmatian and a Greek power down to the moment of her overthrow, and, at the moment of her overthrow, it was not eighty years since she had ceased to be a Peloponnesian and an Ægæan power. The Greek dominion of Venice was an enlargement of her Dalmatian dominion. ♦Taking of Zara, 1202.♦ It is significant that Zara was taken—not for the first or the last time—on the way to the taking of Constantinople. ♦Hadriatic dominion of Venice.♦ Already mistress, or striving to be mistress, of the northern part of the eastern coast of the Hadriatic, the partition of the Empire opened to Venice the hope of becoming mistress of the southern part. Mistress of the whole coast she never was at any one moment; one point was gained and another lost. But extension in those lands was steadily aimed at for more than seven hundred years, and the greater part of the eastern Hadriatic coast has been, at one time or another, under Venetian rule.

The story of Venetian dominion in these parts cannot be kept apart from the story of the neighbouring Slavonic lands. The states of Servia and Croatia were from the beginning the inland neighbours of the Dalmatian coast cities. ♦Servian districts on the coast.♦ The river Tzettina may pass as the boundary between the Servian and Croatian states. Pagania on the Narenta, Zachloumia between the Narenta and Ragusa, Terbounia, represented by the modern Trebinje, the coast district of the Canali, Dioklea, taking in the modern Montenegro with the coast as far as the Drin—Skodra or Scutari on its lake, the harbours of Spizza, Antivari, and Dulcigno, were all originally Servian. ♦The Dalmatian cities.♦ The Dalmatian coast cities, Dekatera or Cattaro, Raousion or Ragusa, Tragourion or Traü, Diadora, Jadera, or Zara, formed a Roman fringe on what had become a Slavonic body. It was not even a continuous fringe, as the Slaves came down to the sea at more than one point. ♦Pagania.♦ Pagania above all, the land of the heathen Narentines, cut Roman Dalmatia into two marked parts. ♦The Islands.♦ It even took in most of the great islands, Curzola—once Black Korkyra—Meleda, Lesina—once Pharos—and others. At the separation of the two Empires the Croatian power was strongest in those lands. ♦Croatia under Charles the Great, 806-810.♦ The wars of Charles the Great left the coast cities to the Eastern Empire, while inland Dalmatia and Croatia passed under Frankish rule. ♦825-830.♦ Presently Croatia won its independence of the Western Empire, while the coast cities were practically lost by the Eastern. ♦Settlement under Basil the Macedonian, 868-878.♦ Under Basil the Macedonian the Imperial authority was admitted, in name at least, both by the cities and by the Croatian prince. ♦First Venetian Conquest, 995-997.♦ More than a century later came the first Venetian conquest, which was looked on at Venice as a deliverance of the cities from Croatian rule. The pagan power on the Narenta was destroyed, and the Duke of Venice took the title of Duke of Dalmatia. But all this involved no formal separation from the Empire.[32] ♦The cities under Croatia, 1052.
Dalmatian Kingdom, 1062.♦ Such a separation may be held to have taken place in the middle of the next century, when the cities again passed under Croatian rule, and when the taking of the title of King of Dalmatia by Croatian Kresimir may pass for an assertion of complete independence. ♦Magyar Kingdom of Croatia, 1091;
of Dalmatia, 1102.♦ But the kingdoms, first of Croatia, then of Dalmatia, were presently swallowed up by the growing power of the Magyar. Then comes a time in which this city and that passes to and fro between Venice and Hungary. ♦Croatia and Dalmatia restored to the Empire, 1171.
Dalmatia passes to Hungary.♦ Under Manuel Komnênos the whole of Croatia and Dalmatia was fully restored to the Empire; but ten years later the cities again passed to Hungary. This was their final separation from the Empire, and by this time Venice had thrown off all Byzantine allegiance.

♦Struggle for the dominion of Dalmatia.♦

From this time the history of Croatia forms part of the history of the Hungarian kingdom. The history of Dalmatia becomes part of the long struggle of Venice for Hadriatic dominion. For five hundred years the cities and islands of the whole Hadriatic coast were lost and won over and over again in the strifes of the powers of the mainland. These were in Dalmatia the Hungarian and Bosnian Kings; more to the south they were the endless powers which rose and fell in Albania and northern Greece. In after times the Ottoman took the place of all. And many of the cities were able, amid the disputes of their stronger neighbours, to make themselves independent commonwealths for a longer or shorter time. ♦Independence of Ragusa;♦ Ragusa, above all, kept her independence during the whole time, modified in later times by a certain external dependence on the Turk. ♦of Polizza.♦ And the almost invisible inland commonwealth of Polizza—a Slavonic San Marino—kept its separate being into the present century.

♦Fluctuations between Venice and Hungary, 1315.♦

The crusading conquest of Zara was the beginning of this long struggle. The frontier fluctuated during the whole of the thirteenth century; early in the fourteenth the whole coast was again Venetian. Meanwhile the republic was striving to make good her position further south. The Epeirot despotat long hindered her establishment either on the coasts or the islands of northern Greece. ♦Final conquest of Durazzo and Corfu, 1206.
1216.♦ Durazzo, the central point between the older and the newer Venetian range, was won, along with Corfu, in the earliest days of the conquest; but they were presently lost, to come back again in after times. ♦History of Corfu.♦ The famous island of Korkyra or Corfu has a special history of its own. No part of Greece has been so often cut off from the Greek body. Under Pyrrhos and Agathoklês, no less than under Michael Angelos and Roger, it obeyed an Epeirot or a Sicilian master. It was among the first parts of Greece to pass permanently under Roman dependence. ♦Second Venetian conquest of Corfu, 1386-1797.♦ At last, after yet another turn of Sicilian rule, it passed for four hundred years to the great commonwealth. In our own day Corfu was not added to free Greece till long after the deliverance of Attica and Peloponnêsos. But, under so many changes of foreign masters, the island has always remained part of Europe and of Christendom. Alone among the Greek lands, Corfu has never passed under barbarian rule. ♦1716.
1800.♦ It has seen the Turk only, for one moment as an invader, for another moment as a nominal overlord.

♦Greek advance of Venice.♦

The second Venetian occupation of Corfu was the beginning of a great advance among the neighbouring islands. But, during the hundred and eighty years between the two occupations, the main fields of Venetian action lay more to the north and more to the south. The Greek acquisitions of the republic at this time were in Peloponnêsos and the Ægæan islands. ♦Modon and Coron, 1206.♦ On the mainland she won, at the very beginning of Latin settlement in the East, the south-western peninsula of Peloponnêsos, with the towns of Methônê and Kôrônê—otherwise Modon and Coron—which she held for nearly three hundred years. ♦History of Euboia.♦ Among the Ægæan islands Venice began very early to win an influence in the greatest of their number, that of Euboia, often disguised under the specially barbarous name of Negropont.[33] The history of that island, the endless shiftings between its Latin lords and the neighbouring powers of all kinds, is the most perplexed part of the perplexed Greek history of the time. ♦Complete occupation of Euboia, 1390.♦ Venice, mixed up in its affairs throughout, obtained in the end complete possession, but not till after the second occupation of Corfu. ♦Turkish conquest of Euboia, 1470.♦ The island was kept till the Turkish conquest eighty years later. Several other islands were held by the republic at different times. ♦Loss of the Ægæan islands, 1718.♦ Of these Tênos and Mykonos were not finally lost till Venice was in the eighteenth century confined to the western seas.

Between the first and the second occupation of Corfu, the Venetian power in Dalmatia had risen and fallen again. ♦Peace of Zara, 1358.
Dalmatia Hungarian.♦ By the peace of Zara, Lewis the Great of Hungary shut out Venice altogether from the Dalmatian coasts, and, as Dalmatian King, he required the Venetian Duke to give up his Dalmatian title. ♦New advance of Venice.♦ Later in the century Venice again gained ground, and her Dalmatian, Albanian, and Greek possessions began to draw near together, and to form one whole, though never a continuous whole. ♦1378-1455.
Recovery of Dalmatia.♦ In the space of about eighty years, amid many fluctuations towards Hungary, Bosnia, and Genoa—a new claimant called into rivalry by the war of Chioggia—Venice again became mistress of the greater part of Dalmatia. Some districts however formed part of the Duchy of Saint Sava, and Hungary kept part of the inland territory, with the fortress of Clissa. The point where the Hadriatic coast turns nearly due south may be taken as the boundary of the lasting and nearly continuous dominion of the Republic; but for the present the Venetian power went on spreading far south of that point. ♦Advance in Albania and Greece, 1392.♦ On the second occupation of Corfu followed the acquisition of Durazzo, Alessio, and of the Albanian Skodra or Scutari. ♦1401.
1407.♦ Butrinto and the ever memorable Parga put themselves under Venetian protection, and Lepanto was ceded by a Prince of Achaia. ♦1388.♦ In Peloponnêsos the Messenian towns were still held, and to them were now added Argos and its port of Nauplia, known in Italian as Napoli di Romania. ♦1408-1415.
1419.
1423.♦ Patras was held for a few years, Monembasia was won, and the isle of Aigina, which might almost pass for part of Peloponnêsos. On the other side of Greece, the possession of Corfu led to the acquisition of the other so-called Ionian Islands. ♦The Western Islands. 1449.♦ The prince of Kephallênia, of Zakynthos or Zante, and of Leukadia or Santa Maura, found it to his interest, for fear of the advancing Ottoman, to put his dominions under the overlordship of Saint Mark.