PREMODERN PELOPONNESUS: THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE UNDER VENETIAN RULE (1685 ‐ 1715) *

In 1685-1687, aided by her papal and Hapsburg allies in the “Holy League” against the Ottoman Empire, Venice conquered all of the Peloponnese except for the rock-fortress of Monemvasia, whose garrision held out until 1690. The Venetians called their vast acquisition the Regno della Morea, i.e., the Kingdom of the Morea. Through it they hoped to revive their once farflung Levantine empire. The peninsula was expected to replace in strategic and economic importance the great island of Crete, where the Turks had only recently ended the long Venetian dominion (1 205-1 669). The home government, with little delay, appointed a commision of three “syndics and chief land-surveyors’’ (sindici e catasticatori) to organize the financial administration and record the resources of the new colony. In the text of their instructions, dated November 29, 1687, we read that they were to divide the country into districts and for each of them have surveyors’ charts and drawings made of the lands along with inventories of every kind of real property.’ In the towns, castles, and estates they must record all structures that had belonged to the Turks and decide which should be converted into Catholic churches, quarters for officials, military ovens and depots, lazarettos, and hospitals. They were to lease lands on a temporary but profitable basis and impose the tithe on the lands held by the Greeks. To the new Greek settlers whom the proveditor general, i.e., governor, of the Morea had admitted into certain districts the syndics were t o convey, on a provisional basis, the fields and houses that they needed. Burdensome taxes and exactions of the Ottomans were t o be abolished and reasonable taxes collected in their place, to relieve a long-suffering people. In regard to the “very important matter” of duties and tolls the syndics were to decide on charges that would benefit both the public interest and the merchants. They were to institute revenue offices and organize the fiscal hureaucracy. Finally, they were t o prepare “a general census of all the people of the districts from place to place.” In it they were to distinguish the Greeks from the Albanians, in order for the proveditor general t o recruit militia forces among the latter and train them in the use of arms. The men appointed to carry out these arduous tasks were three experienced patricians, Girolamo Renier, Marin Michiel, and Domenico Gritti. They arrived in the Morea in the early summer of 1688. They found the country in a chaotic state, with famine and plague continuing the devastation caused during the campaign of conquest. Renier, already 64, died from exhaustion and illness during the first winter. Michiel served for nearly 3 years and Gritti for 3%. The reports or relations (relazioni) that they read to the Senate on their return from