ABSTRACT
The main change in the political organization of Central Europe between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries was the establishment of the decisive presence of the Ottoman Empire across Anatolia and the Balkans during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Poland-Lithuania was located at the core of Central Europe, alongside the lands of the Kingdom of Hungary, then mostly either directly incorporated into the Ottoman Empire, or made into this Empire’s vassal (autonomous) Principality of Erdel (Transylvania). The Ottomans accorded a similar status to the Danubian Principalities of Boğdan (Moldavia) and Eflâk (Walachia), which previously had been in Hungary’s (and the former also in Poland’s) sphere of influence during the late Middle Ages. The Ottoman Empire made the Black Sea into its internal body of water. The Holy Roman Empire under Habsburg rule dominated the west of Central Europe. They also controlled the westernmost sliver of Hungary (including Croatia and today’s Slovakia), not seized by the Ottomans. What is more, the House of Habsburg established itself on the Spanish throne, meaning they ruled most of the Apennine Peninsula (alongside Sicily), apart from the Papal States and Veneto, the latter dominated by the merchant Republic of Venice. For almost a millennium (from around 800 until 1797) Venice controlled trade in the Adriatic, the Aegean, and much of the eastern Mediterranean. Venice underpinned its commercial and economic success by seizing a string of islands and bridgeheads in this area, together with the Adriatic littoral of the Balkans. To a degree, this republic’s success was a legacy of Venice’s participation in the crusades and due to the fact that its direct competitor, the similarly merchant Republic of Genoa (1005–1797), was permanently pushed out from this area, following the loss of its territories in the Black Sea and the Aegean, either to the Ottomans or to Venice. After the mid-sixteenth century, Genoa’s commercial dominance was largely contained to the western Mediterranean.
