nd commercial realms (Zerwick 49).
The oligarchy's rule was "at least as absolute as that of any dictator," but the city was spared much of the endless internal political and class conflict that plagued other Italian states because of "its inhabitants' unity of economic interests" (Cantor 524-25). State control of economic life is exemplified by the Venetian fleet which was essential both in "supporting and creating commerce" (Wood 67). Because the fleet was built and managed by the state it provided for the necessities of war and commerce. Merchants only rented the space they needed in the public vessels and this lowered their specific exposure in any trading mission and spread risk throughout the community. Diplomatic policy was oriented to the protection of trade routes leading to the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean, and internal policies addressed all aspects of commerce in minute detail--controlling guilds, exports and imports, all manufacturing, and, of course, the levying of high taxes that enabled the state to function as a communal resource. The principal drawback for the Venetian state was that competition had to be fiercely rebuffed. This led to extended wars with competitors such as the prominent mercantile city of Genoa.
By the fourteenth century Venice was faced with threats to its status as the sole arbiter of trade in the Mediterranean. Genoa gained allies as the German imperial forces lost control of northern Italy and northern powers such as Hungary and the Habsburg domains turned against Venice as well. Venice eventually "ruined the Genoese," but the wars weakened the Republic as well (Cantor 525). Thus when the Ottoman Turks began their advance on the Mediterranean Venice was not prepared to fight them off. Constantinople fell in 1453 and this "marked the beginning of a catastrophic decline in Venetian military and political power in the east" (Polak 64).
At this point, however, Venice's ...