CONSERVATIVE

MODZZAK/CC BY-SA 1.0
The flag bearing the slogan “Libertas”, flown by
Dubrovnik’s merchant fleet.
Sultan. Circumstances in the end, however, left it little
option and in 1442 the historic decision was made
to begin to pay the tribute, called harač. There were
real dangers involved. Payment of the harač implied in
Ottoman eyes recognition of the Sultan’s sovereignty,
and how he interpreted that sovereignty was entirely
in his hands.
The Turks, as an Islamic superpower, had little
reason to look favourably on Catholic Dubrovnik.
They began by trying to extract as much as they could
from it. The harač thus rose sharply in the last part
of the 15th century. In exchange, Dubrovnik received
privileged treatment within the Empire, but these
privileges were fragile and the cost was high—not
least in the bribery and bullying of Ottoman officials
and soldiers. Only under Suleyman the Magnificent
in 1521 was the commercial relationship between the
Empire and its precocious little tributary confirmed
on highly favourable terms.
Dubrovnik now gained in effect a new monopoly
of the Balkan trade. It paid a fixed sum, raised by its
own people from its own merchants, to the Sultan. And
because of a suspiciously fortunate miscalculation of
exchange rates by a doubtless venal Turkish financial
official, while the real value of Dubrovnik’s trade
assessed in Venetian ducats rose, its payments in
Turkish aspers did not.
Rather than follow the intricate struggles between
the Counter-Reformation West and the Ottoman East
during the 16th and early 17th centuries, I shall just
point out two ways in which they affected Dubrovnik.
First, Dubrovnik was well placed to appeal to both
sides. Its most persistent foe was Venice, to whom it
was both a rival and a reproach. But against Venice it
had a distinctly odd couple of protectors. On the one
hand, there was the Pope, with support from Spain,
who regarded Dubrovnik as the last toe-hold for
Catholicism in the region.
Equally powerful a friend, albeit a somewhat
unpredictable one, was the [Sublime] Porte itself.
The Turks needed Dubrovnik as an entrepot for
trade with the West, and they infinitely preferred
Ragusan merchants, whom they could dominate, to
the arrogant Venetians whom they feared. Meanwhile,
Dubrovnik juggled and spied on and lied to the two
sides to survive. Hence the jibes:
A Frenchman—it had to be a Frenchman—
who visited Dubrovnik in January 1658 noted that the
inhabitants were known as “the Ragusans of the sette
bandiere (the seven flags)” because they (allegedly) paid
tribute to seven foreign rulers. He continued: “The
Turks they fear, the Venetians they hate; the Spanish
they love because they are useful; the French they
suffer because of their fame; and foreigners they spy
on very much.”
It was an unenviable reputation. But to these
sneers the Ragusans could have given a decisive and
irrefutable answer—these tactics allowed them to
survive.
The second benefit of Ottoman rule, which
I’ve already mentioned, was economic. The Ragusans
by now were not just merchants but tax gathers and
entrepreneurs throughout the Ottoman Balkan and
other territories. They had regularised their relations
with Constantinople through a web of bribery,
diplomacy and indeed ceremony—represented above
all by the annual mission of the Republic’s ambassadors.
These poklisari would depart in procession
through the Ploče Gate—together with the dragoman
or interpreter, their priest, their barber-surgeon, their
servants and their Ottoman guards. They would pass
slowly through the Balkan lands from Ragusan colony
to Ragusan colony, resolving outstanding issues in a
quasi-judicial capacity. Finally, they would take up their
lodgings in the Pera district of Constantinople. Here
they would obtain confirmation of privileges, present
the tribute, distribute sweeteners and defuse tensions.
Sometimes it was a dangerous business, involving
imprisonment and even death. But it usually worked.
When the Ottoman Empire was at war, the profits
of Dubrovnik generally rose, because it benefited as
the only neutral commercial go-between – and could
raise its port dues accordingly. But in later years this
advantage was lessened, as growing disorder led to a
contraction of the volume of trade. Dubrovnik, as a
tributary of the Porte, was also regarded as fair game
both by the uskoks—the piratical zealots of Senj—and
the hajduks, a catch-all term for other rebels against
Ottoman rule.
A serious blow to Dubrovnik’s fortunes was
delivered by the opening of Venetian Split as an
alternative entrepot in 1590. Only in 1645, with
the outbreak of a new war between Venice and the
Empire, did Split’s closure allow Dubrovnik to reassert
its quasi-monopoly. But by then wider regional
economic problems were reducing opportunities. And
soon Dubrovnik would be facing the greatest crisis of
its existence.
22
Summer 2015