Duchy of the Archipelago

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The Duchy of Naxos and states in the Morea, carved from the Byzantine Empire, as they were in 1265 (William R. Shepherd, Historical Atlas, 1911)
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The Duchy of Naxos and states in the Morea, carved from the Byzantine Empire, as they were in 1265 (William R. Shepherd, Historical Atlas, 1911)

The Republic of Venice's Duchy of the Archipelago (also called Egeon Pelagos in Greek) was a maritime state created in the Cyclades islands of the Aegean Sea, in the aftermath the Fourth Crusade. It was centered on the islands of Naxos and Paros.

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[edit] Background and foundation

The Italian city states, especially the Republic of Genoa, Pisa, and the Republic of Venice, had been interested in the islands of the Aegean long before the Fourth Crusade. There were Italian trading colonies in Constantinople and Italian pirates frequently attacked settlements in the Aegean in the 12th century. After the collapse of the Byzantine Empire in 1204, in which the Venetians played a major role, Venetian interests in the Aegean could be more thoroughly realized.

The Duchy of the Archipelago was created in 1207 by Marco Sanudo, a participant in the Crusade and a nephew of the former Venetian doge Enrico Dandolo, who had led the Venetian fleet to Constantinople. This was an independent venture, without the consent of the Latin emperor Henry of Flanders. Sanudo was accompanied by Marino Dandolo and Andrea and Geremia Ghisi, as well as Ravano dalle Carceri, lord of Euboea, and Philocalo Navigaioso, lord of Lemnos. He arranged for the loan of eight galleys from the Venetian Arsenal, set anchor in the harbor of Potamidides, in the southwest of Naxos, and largely captured the island.

The Orthodox Greek Naxiotes continued to resist, however, and established a base inland, around the fortress of Apalyros/Apalire. The latter fell to Sanudo after five or six weeks' siege, despite the assistance rendered to the Greeks by the Genoese (Venice's main competitors).

With the entire island occupied in 1210, Sanudo and his associaties soon conquered Melos and the rest of the islands of the Cyclades, and he established himself as Duke of Naxia, or Duke of the Archipelago, with his headquarters on Naxos. Sanudo rebuilt a strong fortress and divided the island into 56 provinces, which he shared out as fiefs among the leaders of his men, most of whom were highly autonomous and apparently paid their own expenses. Carceri and Navigaoiso had been granted their island domains by Henry of Flanders and were technically vassals of the Latin Empire; Sanudo himself recognized Henry's authority rather than making the Duchy a vassal of Venice.

The conqueror himself ruled as Duke Marcos I for twenty years (1207-1227). He held in his personal possession Paros, Antiparos, Melos, Sifnos, Kithnos, Ios, Amorgos, Kimolos, Sikinos, Syros, and Pholegandros. Other islands included Andros (held by Dandolo), Tinos, Mykonos, Skyros, Skopelos, Serifos, Cea (held by the Ghisis), Thera (held by Jacopo Barozzi), Anaphe (held by Leonardo Foscolo), Kythera (held by Marco Venier), and Cerigotto (held by Jacopo Viaro).

[edit] Administration and economics

In effect, the substitution of a Latin feudalism caused little disruption to the Greek islanders, who were familiar with the rights of a landowner class under the similar Byzantine system of the pronoia. In most cases, they lived relatively peacefully with their new Venetian lords; the latter lived in the towns on the islands while the Greeks tended to live in the countryside.

The Venetians brought the Catholic Church with them, but, as they were a minority of habitually absentee landowners, most Greeks remained Greek Orthodox.

The major concerns of the Venetians in the Duchy were the valuable trade routes with the larger islands off of Anatolia, which they could now control, although those islands themselves remained part of the Latin Empire, and later the restored Byzantine Empire, until taken by the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century. Aside from providing safe traveling routes to fellow Venetian ships, the Venetians also exported to Venice corundum and marble, which they mined on Naxos. Certain Latin feudal rights survived in the island of Naxos and elsewhere until they were abrogated in 1720 by the Ottomans.

[edit] Later history

The Annals of the Latin Archipelago center on the family histories of Sanudo and Dandolo, Ghisi, Crispo and Sommaripa, Venier and Quirini, Barozzi and Gozzadini. Twenty-one dukes of the two dynasties ruled the Archipelago, successively as vassals of the Latin Emperors at Constantinople, of the Villehardouin dynasty of princes of Achaea, of the Angevins of the Kingdom of Naples, and after 1418 of the Republic of Venice.

In 1236, the Duchy was nominally granted to William of Villehardouin, later Prince of Achaea, and many of the islands, except Naxos and Paros, were reconquered by the Byzantine Empire by the end of the 13th century. In 1317 the Catalan Grand Company raided the remnants of the Duchy; in 1383, the Crispo family led an armed insurrection and overthrew Sanudo's heirs as Dukes of Archipelago. Under the Crispo dukes, social order and agriculture decayed, and piracy became dominant.

[edit] Collapse and Ottoman conquest

Before the last Latin Christian duke, Jacopo IV Crispo, was deposed in 1566 by Ottoman Sultan Selim II, he was already paying the Sultan tribute. The Sultan's appointed representative, the last Duke of Archipelago (1566-79) was a Portuguese Jew (Marrano), Joseph Nasi.

Nasi was married to his cousin, Doña Reyna Nasi, the heiress of the House of Mendes (who had taken refuge with its wealth after the Alhambra decree of expulsion). Upon Joseph's death in 1579, the Sultan expropriated much of his widow's wealth except for the 90,000 dinars stipulated in her ketubah (marriage contract). With this inheritance, Doña Reyna kept a Hebrew printing press, first in her palatial residence in Belvedere, then in a suburb of Constantinople (Istanbul).

Latin Christian rule was not entirely removed after that date: the Gozzadini family in Bologna survived as lords of Siphnos and other little islands in the Cyclades until 1617, and the island of Tenos remained Venetian until 1714. The last Venetian ports in Morea (the Peloponnese) were captured in 1718. Gaspar Graziani, a Dalmatian nobleman, was awarded the title of Duke of the Archipelago sometime after 1579 (he probably lost it either upon his ascension as Prince of Moldavia in 1619, or upon his execution in 1620).

[edit] Other Venetian territories in the Aegean

The Venetians also controlled other islands as colonies, not as part of the Duchy or the Latin Empire. They bought Crete from Boniface of Montferrat, leader of the Fourth Crusade, in 1204, and from 1207 to 1211 the Venetians conquered it from the Maltese Enrico Pescatore (who had taken it in 1206). Jacopo Tiepolo was installed as the first duke.

Venice also controlled much of Euboea (Negroponte), where they had a trading colony, and controlled various ports on mainland Greece.

[edit] Dukes of the Archipelago

[edit] Sanudo dynasty

[edit] Crispo dynasty

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