Imperial Rivalries and Agronomic Reform: Tobacco Plantations in the Venetian lonian Islands and Dalmatia, 1760s–1790s

In the late eighteenth century, the eastern Mediterranean was a region of commercial and imperial rivalries, as the increasing Russian presence in the area culminated in the outbreak of the Russo-Ottoman War (1768–1774), adding to tensions along the ‘triple frontier’ of the Venetian, Habsburg, and Ottoman Empires. The war caused supply chain disruption and Venice searched for alternatives in the overseas domains of the Ionian Islands and Dalmatia of the Stato da Mar, where agronomy was a tool deployed for introducing and consolidating tobacco plantations. In the context of fiscal concerns, scientific knowledge circulation, and commodity frontier pressure, this chapter explores a sui generis tobacco culture that, while developed through links with northern European tobacco experts, was implemented within the administration of the general tobacco farm. The plantation of Nona (Venetian Dalmatia) run by the entrepreneur from Zara, Girolamo Manfrin, provides an interesting case in point of the deep interweaving of Agricultural Enlightenment, agronomy, state finance, and military pressure that shaped the efforts to master tobacco cultivation in the Mediterranean colonies of the Venetian Empire in the late eighteenth century.