The decline of Venice has less to do with the decline of the Middle East and more to do with the rise of the Ottomans -- whose conquest of Constantinople shuttered a 2-century long dominion of the Bospherous (and the substantial trade thereof) by Venice. Additionally, Mongol incursions at the north end of the Black Sea made the increasingly-expensive trade with the Ottomans very expensive.
On top of all that, the agitation of the Christian West to the Islamic East put Venice in a very tough situation -- one that engendered hatred from both sides and filed down the richness of that international trade they had labored centuries to build.
I just finished reading City of Fortune (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400068207/ref=pe_180000_31...), and this is closer to the truth - the rise of the Ottomans, the fact that Christian Europe couldn't get its act together after the debacle that was the 4th Crusade, etc etc - at one point, Venice was almost single-handedly fighting the Ottomans.
My understanding of the decline of Venice is that a lot of it was driven by the fact that the commerce situation had changed drastically. Why were the Venetians fighting the Ottomans on their own? Because the Mediterranean had ceased to be as important as it had been historically - interest had shifted to the new world, and to sea routes to Asia, which bypassed many of the middlemen, each of whom marked up prices. For the Spanish, for instance, why get much involved when you could be pulling silver out of South America hand over fist and conquering vast chunks of land? Also, with trade shrinking, there were fewer incentives to find peaceful solutions that allowed commerce to continue.
So, yes, the proximate causes were the Ottomans and other problems, but a significant portion of the root cause can be attributed to 1) the discovery of the new world, and 2) new sea routes around Africa to the spice islands and Asia.
At least that's what I've gleaned from what I've read. Naturally, human affairs are often quite complex, and so there are a lot of different things that contribute.
Spain got in the fight at the vehement request of the Papacy -- and because Muslim corsairs were raiding their coastline with substantial vigor (including the Barbarossa twins). Genoa, too, was goaded in to fighting, but they were very reluctant to put their ships on the line as their ships tended to be individual/family owned and there was a built in disdain for the Venetians that cautioned them against committing resources to help.
Thanks Defen - will check it out. I liked Crowley, with a few criticisms:
- the back-and-forth, lack of a completely chronological narrative threw me a couple of times.
- Also, because he was hyper focused on Venice, it was sometimes amazing what he left out (ie, much of what happened under the Latin Empire)
- Lastly, I wish he had covered the final decline and death of the Venetian republic - he stopped for all practical purposes 200 years early.
On top of all that, the agitation of the Christian West to the Islamic East put Venice in a very tough situation -- one that engendered hatred from both sides and filed down the richness of that international trade they had labored centuries to build.