The Venetian Empire

Over the fifteenth century Venice began to look at its overseas dominions more as a territory to be ruled than to be merely exploited; after the crisis of Cambrai the attitude of the government changed, by choosing a policy of closer control of the mainland. In the sixteenth century several central offices were established to manage subjected provinces. Along with these institutional aspects, however, specific informal and clientage relations emerged that in some way strengthened the connective fabric between the capital and its dominions. In the fifteenth century family and patronage connections characterized the relations between overseas elites and some Venetian ruling families. It is likely that the establishment of extra-institutional links mitigated tensions between centre and peripheries and at the same time allowed the government to enter as protagonist into local dynamics. It is no accident that the riots that had characterized the political life of thirteenth and fourteenth-century Crete disappeared later on. The same mechanism can be observed in the sixteenth-century Venetian mainland. The increasing presence of Venetian landowners and the crisis of provincial aristocratic clans strengthened the role of capital’s institutions. Between the sixteenth and the seventeenth century, within a lively economic and social context, a new principle of power relations between local elites and the Venetian ruling group was established; a principle based on clientage and patronage relationships, strongly however biased in favor of the lagoon patriciate. Thus, the different parts of the Venetian empire were primarily linked via clientage bonds, which allowed the Venetian patricians to maintain sufficient control of the dominions but prevented them from building a homogeneous state.