Duchy of the Archipelago: Encyclopedia II - Duchy of the Archipelago - Background and foundation

Duchy of the Archipelago - Background and foundation

The Italian city states, especially Genoa, Pisa, and Venice, had been interested in the islands of the Aegean long before the Fourth Crusade. There were Italian trading colonies in Constantinople and Italian pirates frequently attacked settlements in the Aegean in the 12th century. After the collapse of the Byzantine Empire in 1204, in which the Venetians played a major role, Venetian interests in the Aegean could be more thoroughly realized.

The Duchy of the Archipelago was created in 1207 by Marco Sanudo, a participant in the Crusade and a nephew of the former Venetian doge Enrico Dandolo, who had led the Venetian fleet to Constantinople. This was an independent venture, without the consent of the Latin emperor Henry of Flanders. Sanudo was accompanied by Marino Dandolo and Andrea and Geremia Ghisi, as well as Ravano dalle Carceri, lord of Euboea, and Philocalo Navigaioso, lord of Lemnos. He arranged for the loan of eight galleys from the Venetian Arsenal, and with his latter-day Argonauts cast anchor in the harbor of Potamidides, in the southwest of the island, and largely captured the island. The Orthodox Naxiotes did not give in easily: they holed up in the inland Greek fortress of Apalyros/Apalire, which fell to Sanudo after five or six weeks' siege, despite the succor rendered to the Greeks by the Genoese, who were none too happy to be excluded from Aegean trade by a nest of such officially-sanctioned Venetian pirates.

With Naxos in hand in 1210, Sanudo and his brigand adventurers soon conquered Melos and the rest of the islands of the Cyclades, and he established himself as Duke of Naxia, or Duke of the Archipelago, with his headquarters at Naxos. Sanudo rebuilt a strong fortress and divided the island into 56 provinces, which he shared out as feudal fiefs among the leaders of his men, most of whom were working on spec and apparently paid their own expenses. His companions Carceri and Navigaoiso had been granted their islands by Henry of Flanders and were technically vassals of the Latin Empire. Sanudo too recognized Henry's authority rather than making the Duchy a vassal of Venice.

The conqueror himself ruled as Duke Marcos I for twenty years (1207-1227) surrounded in the Archipelago by Latin seigneurs in more than two dozen islands in the Aegean, for which some of them did homage to the Duke of Naxos, and some directly to the Latin Emperor at Constantinople. Sanudo also held in his personal possession Paros, Antiparos, Melos, Sifnos, Kithnos, Ios, Amorgos, Kimolos, Sikinos, Syros, and Pholegandros. Other islands included Andros (held by Dandolo), Tinos, Mykonos, Skyros, Skopelos, Serifos, Chios (held by the Ghisis), Thera (held by Jacopo Barozzi), Anaphe (held by Leonardo Foscolo), Kythera (held by Marco Venier), and Cerigotto (held by Jacopo Viaro).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Background and foundation", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki