ABSTRACT
Venice was another centre for the expansion of commercial links between Italy and the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Located on a series of islands far north in the Adriatic, it was fairly invulnerable to Muslim raids. The city still formally recognised the supremacy of Byzantium, which in 1082 as a reaction to the Norman advance into Serbia had given Venice exclusive free-trade privileges without any levies or duties. There was a lively slave trade in people who had been captured during raids in the Slav regions of central Europe and the Balkans. This trade decreased as those areas became converted to Christianity, and it was replaced and diversified by trade in other products. For Byzantium, threatened as it was on every side, the support of the Venetian fleet was of strategic importance. For their part, the Venetians profited from the vast material and cultural riches that Byzantium could still provide.
