Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/366

 358 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July 200,000, exclusive of garrisons and foreigners, before the war ; Michiel,-one of the three commissioners, puts it, without Maina, at 97,118, of whom 3,577 were Turks converted to Christianity from interested motives, who required careful watching. Out of 2,111 villages the war and the plague had laid desolate 656, and Cornaro could not find a living soul between Patras and Kalavryta. Under the Venetian rule the population gradually rose to more than it had been in the Turkish time, to 116,000 in 1692, to 176,844 in 1701, to over 250,000 in 1708. These figures were probably below the mark, owing to the character- istically oriental dislike of the natives to be numbered, a proceed- ing regarded as the prelude to that accurate taxation which has never been popular in the Near East. The increase was partly due to emigration from the neighbouring Turkish provinces and the Ionian Islands. Besides the Athenians, mostly congregated at Nauplia, there were the Chiote exiles at Modon, Thebans, and Lepantines (after the peace), Cretans from Canea, and even Bul- garians. Cornaro alone in his two years of office was successful in inducing 6,000 emigrants to enter the Morea, where he gave them lands between Patras and Aigion and at Kalavryta, and promised them exemption from taxes. Ere long there was no one in the Morea who had not his house, his mill, and his bit of land — a thing very rare among the Christians of Turkey — and even the Athenians, the flower of the emigrants, were admittedly much better off than they had been at home. Only material welfare does not satisfy the whole nature of man, else ubi bene, ibi patria would have been an easy solution of many Balkan questions. The population during the Venetian occupation was mixed. The majority was, of course, overwhelmingly Greek, but there was considerable difference between the Greeks of the various districts, as in classical times. The Moreotes did not like ' foreigners ', in which designation, like the modern Italian pea- sants, they included people of their own race from other parts of Greece. The natives of Elis were especially hostile to ' strangers ', whereas their neighbours in Achaia, from their commerce with the Ionian Islands, tolerated ' foreigners '. The Venetians did not give the Moreotes in general a very good character, but the faults which they attributed to them were not due to a double dose of original sin, but to the effects of long years of Turkish rule. They are described in the Venetian reports as suspicious, lazy, and inclined to speak evil of each other. Suspicion is a common quality of southern nations, and laziness was excusable under the Turkish system, when the industrious man was punished by being heavily mulcted in the fruits of his industry. With the Turkish dress the Greeks retained the Turkish maxims, but it was noticed that the women of Monemvasia had preserved from the previous