This two-volume work contains documents from the Venetian state archives from the period 1300-1454. They refer to Venice's dealings with her own empire across the eastern Mediterranean and with foreign powers, including Turkish sultans and Byzantine emperors. At that time, Venetian power was at its zenith (the doges boasted of being rulers of 'one-quarter and one-half of a quarter of the whole world'), but there were dangers to Venetian naval and mercantile supremacy from the continuous advance of the Ottoman Turks across the territory formerly ruled from Constantinople. Volume 2, covering the period 1351-1454, was prepared for the press by Riccardo Predelli (1842-1909) after the death of G. M. Thomas (1817-87), and published in 1899. The final two documents are a declaration of peace with Venice by Sultan Mehmed II in 1451, and a peace treaty with Ibrahim Bey in 1454: between those dates, Constantinople had fallen.
