ABSTRACT
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Three centuries after the fifteenth-century destruction of the Byzantine Empire, Greeks once again became important in the maritime and commercial affairs of the eastern Mediterranean. In the interim, the Genoese, Venetians and Raguzans in the sixteenth century, the Dutch and English in the seventeenth, and the French and English in the eighteenth controlled the trade and shipping of the Aegean, Ionian and Adriatic seas.1 In the ‘most hospitable sea of the globe’, the Aegean archipelago was part of the commercial and maritime empires of the Genoese and Venetians.2 Throughout the fifteenth century the Italians took advantage of the Ottomans’ naval weakness and concentration on the Balkans to establish themselves on strategic islands. Their commerce had an important impact on subsequent developments. The island of Chios, home of the most important eighteenth-,nineteenth-and twentieth-century Greek merchants and shipowners, was a Genoese colony for more than two centuries; even after it was conquered by the Turks in 1566 it was granted special privileges and a high degree of autonomy. The islands of Syros and Andros, as well as the other Cycladic islands that formed the core of nineteenth-century Greek shipping, were ruled by Venice for three centuries before coming under the Ottomans in the sixteenth century. Andros was conquered in 1566 and Syros in 1537.
