Genoa and the Levant. Social and Cultural Circulations through the Stato da Mar, 14th-18th Centuries

Many were the Genoeses who crossed the Stato da Mar during the modern age and who, in many cases, intensely interacted with its institutions and people. They were either enemies, or valuable collaborators of the Venetian Republic. In this context, the military engineers, men-at-arms and corsairs are particularly important. The latter were mostly renegades, as well as great protagonists of the history of Med- iterranean seafaring. Genoese and Venetian diplomats had to repeatedly deal with their exploits. Thousands of slaves also passed through the Stato da Mar, Christians who had become prisoners of the Ottomans or Barbary pirates, and vice versa. Less known is the case of freedmen of Eastern origin, who fled from Genoa to reach the Venetian ports, and that of the trade of holy relics (in which, for example, the Giustiniani were involved during the Candian war)