Venetian Rule

 

 

During the second war between Turkey and Venice (1499-1502) the fortress of Agios Georgios was beseiged and rebuilt. In 1504, a new treaty gave Venice control of the island. Thus, while the rest of Greece was bowing beneath the Turkish yoke, the Ionian islands were governed by the more civilised Vene­tians. They granted tax exemptions and land to brave warriors and settlers from Turkish-controlled areas. They also en­couraged cultivation of grapes for raisins, which brought ships from many countries to Kefalonia. (From Venetian times up to the early 1900s Kefalonia produced 10,000 tons of raisins annually.)

In 1537 Suleiman the Magnificent declared war on Venice. This was when the notorious Khayr al-Din Barbarossa, pirate and later admiral of the Turkish fleet, first made his appearance. In the wake of his attack on the Ionian islands and Parga, the allies found nothing but corpses and rubble.

In 1540 Venice concluded a humiliat­ing peace with Suleiman. But there was no peace for Kefalonia, because 
Dra­goutos, one of Barbarossa's chieftains, attacked the island repeatedly. Another large-scale assault by admiral Ali Pasha in 1571 was directed at Same, Erissos and Thinea, wreaking fearsome destruc­tion; the fortress of Agios Georgios was not attacked as it was considered impregnable.

Two years later the Venetians and the Turks concluded a peace. Throughout these times pirate raids continued ­some of them instigated by other Euro­pean states out of hatred for Venice and her possessions. To deal with such threats, the fortress of Assos was erected in 1593. After the battle of Naupactus in 1571, Algerian pirate raids subsided and trade and shipping began to increase. At that time, Kefalonia had over 200 large and 5,000 small ships plying the seas. But because the authorities were installed in the fortress, sanitary regula­tions were often violated and a black

market came into being, which had a negative effect on the island's economy. That was why in 1603 warehouses were built in the harbour of Argostoli for use by merchants. In 1632 the area began to be settled systematically.

The 17th century saw the first of a series of disastrous earthquakes, more terrible than those the island had previ­ously known. The 1636 quake caused great material damage and took 540 lives. In 1640 a civil war broke out among the nobility, the farmers and poor peas­ants, and did not cease until two years later, when Venice sent an envoy to arrest the leaders of the rebels. Two years later a similar situation developed and continued until 1645, when war broke out between Turkey and Venice over Crete. Kefalonia took part, sending troops and materiel.

The revolts continued from 1647 to 1654, but now it was not only peasants fighting against nobles, but nobles against members of the Frankish nobility who had married Greek women.

In 1658, as the islands' governor was getting ready to launch a campaign against Lefkada, which the Turks had turned into a base of operations for launching assaults on the other Ionian islands, a great earthquake shook the island and razed Lixouri, claiming 320 victims.

Despite the natural disasters that racked Kefalonia and Zakinthos, their economy flourished due to trade; Crete, now embroiled in a war with Turkey, was no longer a competitor. Censuses from that era kept in the archives of Venice show that Kefalonia's population of 70,000 was larger than that of the other Ionian islands; apart from the native Kefalonians, refugees from the Pelopon­nese, central Greece and even Venice had taken up residence on the island. And after the fall of Crete, Cretan families were relocated en masse on Kefalonia.

   The subjugation of Crete to the Turks enraged the Venetians, who were waiting for a pretext to attack. In 1682, Austria declared war on Turkey; two years later Venice was fighting at her side. Aided by the Kefalonians, Morosini took the fortress of Lefkada in August 1682. Dur­ing the years that followed the Kefaloni­ans often helped free other areas of Greece from the Turkish yoke.

   Venice, a great power until the 16th century, went into decline in 1715 when she lost the Peloponnese. The lands in her possession were now plagued by usury, tax evasion and crime. This nasty situation came to a head in 1753, when the island's dignitaries sent loannis Dela­portas to Venice to ask that Argostoli be made administrative centre, and it became the island's capital in 1757.

The dawn of the 18th century found Kefalonia occupied in shipbuilding and trade. In 1753 a free trade agreement was signed by the Venetian government and the pirate states (Algeria and Alba­nia), in an attempt to combat piracy; how­ever, this effort also proved to be fruit­less.

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