Venice and Venetian Intelligence in the European Panorama

It’s only a matter of luck where you wash up in history. What was once Babylon is now Baghdad.¹ Unlike most early modern European states, Venice was a water-locked metropolis, confined and protected by a lagoon. Yet, already by the thirteenth century, Venice had started to expand her territory, both inland, on the Italian mainland, and— more strategically for its commercial conduct—overseas, in the Adriatic and the Mediterranean seas.

Venice and Venetian Intelligence in the European Panorama

Venice’s Mediterranean expansion, in particular, ensued from the Fourth Crusade (1204), which culminated in the sacking of Constantinople and the distribution of the Byzantine territories to the Crusade’s participants. For Venice, this marked the start of ‘a process of substantial territorial acquisition in the Eastern Mediterranean’ that was conducive to the development and consolidation of the Venetian ‘empire’.

During this process, Venice annexed to its dominion a string of territories that were situated on strategic routes, at the crossroads of the commercial arteries between the East and the West. This annexation process started with the acquisition of Coron (1207–1500) and Modon (1207–1500), ‘the two eyes of the Republic’ in the Greek Morea.

Gradually, Venice took over Negroponte (a name used both for the city of Chalcis and the island of Euboea, of which it is the capital) (1209–1470), the islands of Crete (1211–1669), Corfu (1386–1797), Zante (1485–1797), and Cephalonia (1500–1797), the towns of Nauplion (1388–1540) and Malvasia (modern day Monemvasia) (1462–1540) in the Peloponnese, and the island of Cyprus (1489–1571) in the Mediterranean.

 In the Adriatic Sea, Venice seized significant strongholds including Durazzo (modern day Durres) (1392–1501), Zara (contemporary Zadar) (1409–1797), and Spalato (Split) (1420–1797).

In this respect, Venice created a maritime empire composed of some colonies that had inimitable economic significance—such as the islands of the Levant—and some others which, while offering no economic or military benefits, served as vital ‘information relay stations’, where the movement of ships and political developments in nearby territories could be monitored.

As part of this intense annexation process, by the mid-sixteenth century, the Republic of Venice had managed to acquire vast parts of northern Italy and the Balkan peninsula, in addition to several islands of the Levant. This territorial supremacy enabled her to assume commercial hegemony over the most strategic Mediterranean and European trade routes, dominating the commerce of luxury items like silk and spices from India and Egypt, and controlling their distribution to the rest of Europe. 

Inevitably, commerce became Venice’s lifeblood, and her gradual commercial sovereignty became contingent upon the effective administration of both long-distance trade and her overseas possessions.

Consequently, holding ‘the gorgeous East in fee’, as the great Romantic poet William Wordsworth once wrote, became both a commercial and political feat, and mercantile and territorial supremacy became blurrily intertwined for the sprawling Venetian empire. Empires, however, as history has repeatedly shown, are inexorably destined to rise and fall, and Venice was not immune to a natural decline. Its first major territorial loss befell her with the fall of Negroponte during the first OttomanVenetian war (1463–79). 

More specifically, in the summer of 1470, the forces of Sultan Mehmet II managed to curb Venice’s rule over the city of Negroponte, marking the start of a series of territorial losses to Venice’s perennial enemy, the Ottoman Empire. 

Subsequently, during the second Ottoman-Venetian war (1499–1503), Venice forfeited several of her possessions in the Aegean Sea and the Peloponnese, the culmination being the fall of Modon and Coron in 1500. 

Venice’s initial territorial losses were offset by the acquisition of significant outposts in the Ionian Sea, in particular the islands of Zante and Cephalonia, which were the gateway to the Mediterranean from the Adriatic and which, by the 1540s, played a pivotal role in the lucrative currant trade.

In 1509 a large antiVenetian alliance formed by the Pope, the king of France, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Duke of Savoy, and several other European rulers shook the foundations of the Venetian empire, and had significant repercussions for Venice’s control over the Levantine trade.

One of the darkest pages in Venice’s colonial history, however, was written in 1571, when the beleaguered Venetian navy, despite the military support of other Western powers and the fateful victory at the battle of Lepanto, succumbed to the military whims of the Ottomans and forfeited Cyprus, the crown jewel of the Venetian Mediterranean possessions.

As several historians have argued, the fall of Cyprus to the Ottomans caused major structural transformations, both in Venice and in the Mediterranean, signalling the decline of the Republic’s economic and political influence in the European continent. 

This chapter discusses the politico-economic and sociocultural landscape in which Venice’s secret service evolved and developed in the sixteenth century. It also provides a general overview of the intelligence pursuits of some of the most significant players—politically and economically—in early modern Europe, including major Italian city states—such as Milan, Florence, Genoa, and Rome— Spain, England, France, and the Ottoman Empire. 

The chapter analyses the gradual emergence of systematized intelligence in sixteenth-century Europe, as it was instigated by momentous political, economic, social, and religious events. Through this historical analysis, Venice’s state intelligence apparatus emerges as a centrally administered organization, setting the scene for its nuanced examination in the ensuing chapters.

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