THE DENIZENS OF SPLIT IN VENETIAN OVERSEAS INFANTRY UNITS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.38003/zrffs.14.2
Lovorka Čoralić, Hrvatski institut za povijest, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9333-7221
Abstract:
During the Early Modern Period, mainly in the time of the Veneto-Ottoman wars in
the seventeenth and the eighteenth century, the backbone of Venetian Trans-Adriatic
armed forces were units called Fanti oltramarini and Croati a cavallo, whose soldiers
were recruited primarily from the Venetian acquisitions stretching from Istria to
Albania and Greece. In this article, the central topic of research relates to the part the
denizens of Split played in the aforementioned military units during the eighteenth
century. The article is based on the analysis of sources kept in the Archivio di Stato
di Venezia (archival series: Inquisitori sopra l’amministrazione dei pubblici ruoli),
containing full lists of military complements of regiments and companies. Based
on the extant data, personal data of the soldiers and their physical characteristics
(age, stature, colour of hair) are analysed. Analysis of the documents shows that
in quantitative sense the denizens of Split made one of the most numerous groups
of Croatians within Venetian infantry and cavalry. The analysis also shows that the
soldiers from Split served in the units mostly commanded by prominent military
commanders, who were by their origin also coming from Dalmatia and Boka, and it
is evident that those units (regiments and companies) were extremely mobile and
collocated all around Venetian Italian and overseas acquisitions. In the end of the
article, it is concluded that problematics of the part played by the Croats in Venetian
military units, in this particular case of the denizens of Split, due to the rich sources
at our disposal, still leaves enough space for future research and scholarly discussion.
As an appendix to the article is given full list of hitherto discovered soldiers from Split
in the infantry overseas units of the armed forces of Venetian Republic.
Key words:
Split, Dalmatia, the Republic of Venice, Fanti oltramarini, military history,
the eighteenth-century history
