Among those with no compunctions about human trafficking were the inhabitants of an unpromising lagoon located at the northern point of the Adriatic. The wealth it accumulated from slave trading and human suffering was to lay the basis for its transformation into one of the crown jewels of the medieval Mediterranean: Venice.

The Venetians proved to be singularly successful when it came to business. A dazzling city rose up from the marches, adorned with glorious churches and beautiful palazzi, built on the lucrative proceeds of prolific trading with the east. While it stands today as a glorious vision of the past, the spark for Venice’s growth came from its willingness to sell future generations into captivity. Merchants became involved in the slave trade as early as the second half of the Eighth Century, at the very dawn of the new settlement of Venice, though it took time for the benefits and the profits to flow through in volume. That they eventually did so is indicated by a series of treaties drawn up a century later, in which the Venetians agreed to be bound by restrictions on the sale of slaves, including returning slaves to other towns in Italy who had been brought to Venice illegally for sale. These negotiations were in part a reaction to the growing success of the city, an attempt to clip Venetian wings by those threatened by its affluence.[1]

In the short term, the restrictions were circumvented by raiding parties that captured non-Christians from Bohemia and Dalmatia, and sold them on at a profit.[2] In the longer term, however, normal business was resumed. Treatises from the late Ninth Century suggest that Venice simply paid lip-service to local rulers who were concerned that it was not just slaves that were being sold but also freemen. The Venetians were accused of willingly selling the subjects of neighboring lands, whether Christians or not.[3]

From Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2016 (first published in 2015), pp. 122-123.

Addendum (September 22, 2019)

It is good to remember that Slavs reached Dalmatia in the Seventh Century, and that they were largely non-Christian at the time. By the Eighth Century, they reached Istria, the westernmost part of today’s Croatia, as well as today’s Slovenia. It does not take much imagination to figure out that they were perfect slaves for the Venetian merchants at the time. Not surprisingly, Venetian toponyms bear witness of the lucrative trade. Right next to Palazzo Ducale on Piazza San Marco in the heart of Venice there is a stretch of shoreline named Riva degli Schiavoni—that is, Quay of Slaves or Slavs. The two terms are interchangeable, as a matter of fact. A merchandise straight from heaven, no doubt.

Footnotes

1. Pactum Hlotharii I, in M. McCormick, “New Light on the ‘Dark Ages’: How the Slave Trade Fueled the Carolingian Economy,” Past & Present, Vol. 177, 2002, p. 47.

2. G. Luzzato, An Economic History of Italy from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Sixteenth Century, translated by P. Jones, London, 1961, pp. 35, 51-53.

3. M. McCormick, “New Light on the ‘Dark Ages’: How the Slave Trade Fueled the Carolingian Economy,” Past & Present, Vol. 177, 2002, pp. 48-49.