Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/370

 362 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July governors-general in vain pointed out the folly of a com- mercial policy which caused the decline of such industries as that of silk at Mistra, until it was revived by the Chiote exiles at Modon. As the foreign garrison could not stomach the resinous wine, and began to import foreign vintages, efforts were made to extend and improve the local vineyards. The currant, which is now successfully cultivated along the Moreote shore of the Corinthian gulf, had, indeed, been known in the peninsula as far back as the fourteenth century, when it is mentioned by Pegalotti ; ^ but it was not till after the Turkish reconquest that it was grown and exported in large quantities for the con- sumption of northern races. Even with these drawbacks, how- ever, and the burden of having to contribute to the maintenance of Cerigo and Aegina, both united administratively with the Morea since the peace, the peninsula not only paid all the expenses of administration but furnished a substantial balance to the naval defence of the republic, in which it was directly interested. Land defence was a more difficult question. Of the natives only the Mainates wanted to be soldiers, nor could the Greeks be trusted with arms, while French consuls, anxious to weaken Venice, encouraged French mercenaries, as at Suda and Spina- longa,^ to desert her service. The fact was that, like Great Britain in the Ionian Islands and Cyprus, and Austria-Hungary in Bosnia and the Herzegovina, Venice had improved the administration, without winning the love of her alien subjects. Foreign domination, even under the most favourable circumstances, never succeeds in satisfying the Balkan races, whose national feelings are keenly developed. The Venetian governors, as their reports show, were well-meaning men, but they were aliens in race and religion to the governed. Even had their administration been perfect, that fact alone would have rendered it unpopular after the first feeling of relief at the expulsion of the Turkish yoke was over. Liberated peoples, especially in the Near East, expect much from their western administrators, while, as we know in Egypt, the evils of the old corrupt rule are soon forgotten. It was so in the Morea. Thus, in 1710, the French traveller. La Motraye,^ found the Greeks of Modon ' praying for their return under Turkish domination, and envying the lot of those Greeks who still lived under it '. This was partly due to the lightness of the Turkish capitation tax, and they added : ' Venetian soldiers are quartered on us^ their officers debauch our wives and daughters, their priests speak against our religion and constantly urge us to embrace was introduced from Naxos about 1580.
 * Buchon, NouveUea Beckerches, n. i. 99, 102, which disprove the statement that it
 * French Consular dispatches apvd' Zinkeisen, v. 486, n. 2.
 * Voyages, i. 462.