Venetian–Genoese Wars

The Venetian–Genoese Wars were four conflicts between the Republic of Venice and the Republic of Genoa which took place between 1256 and 1381. Each was resolved almost entirely through naval clashes, and they were connected to each other by interludes during which episodes of piracy and violence between the two Italian trading communities in the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea were commonplace, in a "cold war" climate.

Starting in the 11th century, Venice and Genoa had built commercial empires which, in the 13th century, became thalassocracies so solid as to oust the other maritime republics and to make the two cities privileged interlocutors of state structures such as the Byzantine Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary, etc. In the second half of the 13th century the tensions between Venice and Genoa, exacerbated by the Venetian control over Constantinople following the Fourth Crusade, exploded. The first conflict, known as the War of Saint Sabas (1256-1270), was a Venetian victory, though it did not undermine the growing Genoese power in Constantinople and the Black Sea. The second conflict (1294-1299) recorded a revenge for the Ligurians, with significant military victories. After a temporary alliance against the Mongols during the siege of Caffa (1346), Venice and Genoa clashed again in the War of the Straits (1350-1355), during which Venice dragged in the Kingdom of Aragon, Genoa's emerging Tyrrhenian rival. This third war again ended in stalemate with a Genoese military victory at great cost. The fourth conflict, the War of Chioggia (1377-1381), saw Venice surrounded by various fronts, with the Genoese reaching the entrance to the Venetian Lagoon, but, with an enormous war effort, Venice achieved the final victory, saving the city from destruction, even without a debilitating economic outlay. Acts of piracy between the Venetians and Genoese (subject to French control in the meantime) continued until the Venetian victory at the Battle of Modon (1403). Thirty years later, the two republics faced each other again in the Battle of San Fruttuoso (1431), but in the context of the Wars in Lombardy and with Genoa then subject to the Visconti of Milan.

The real cause of the truce between Venice and Genoa starting in the 15th century was their involvement in systematic conflicts with other powers: for Genoa the confrontation with Aragon, then concluded by the subjugation of the Genoese to the Kingdom of Spain in the 16th century; for Venice the exhausting, centuries-old conflict with the Ottoman Empire. In general, the Ottoman threat to trade and the coasts of the entire Mediterranean, especially thanks to the alliance between the Sultan of Istanbul and the Barbary pirates, favored the rapprochement and collaboration between the two ancient rivals, e.g. in the Battle of Lepanto. At the same time, the decline in the share of world trade passing through the Mediterranean during the Age of Discovery thwarted the Italian republics' ambitions for commercial dominance and the resulting tensions. Despite a significant Genoese military superiority, this series of wars damaged the resources of both sides, leading Genoa into a long series of internal struggles, to the advantage of its neighbors.