Beneško-osmanski pomorski spopadi na Jadranu v 16. stoletju
The sixteenth-century naval conflicts between Venice and the Ottomans in the Adriatic

Summary/Abstract: The sixteenth-century naval conflicts in the Adriatic between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire were at first limited to Ottoman as well as Venetian pirate attacks and, consequently, to the war of central autohorities, mostly Venetian and to a lesser extent Ottoman, against them. The most intense period of the Ottoman piracy in the Tyrrhenian, Ionian and Adriatic Sea, as well as the central Mediterranean, Italian Coast and, to a lesser extent, France and Spain began in the second half of the fifteenth century as an immediate consequence of the Ottoman acquisition of Constantinople in 1453. The extensive set of naval operations, attacks and robberies, termed by the contemporaries ‘the pirate wars’ (guerra di corsa), hounded the Adriatic and turned the years following the Battle of Lepant into the least stable period of the sixteenth century. Pirate activities in the Adriatic were thus not of occasional character but rather part of the everyday life. They reveal various characteristics of a permanent organization, supported financially, via infrastructure and important trade routes, by merchants who profited greatly from the flourishing trade in slaves and stolen goods. In addition to that, the Ottoman army made occasional incursions into the Adriatic Sea, in particular during the wars between Venice and the Ottoman Empire. As a rule, Venetians preferred defensive tactics to a direct and total confrontation with the Ottomans.

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