[2] Amongst the Venetian provincial administrators, the Duke of Candia was the foremost, followed in order of seniority by the leaders of Negroponte, Corfu, Modon and Coron and Argos-Nauplion.
[5][6] To protect its military and commercial interests the Republic of Venice had established missions in key locations in the Ionian Sea and the Aegean.
The Venetians were very concerned about the Ottoman incursions which threatened the dominion and commerce of Venice and its dependencies in the Adriatic and the Strait of Otranto.
In 1538 in one such message the bailo of Corfu remarked:[10] "[P]lease pay no attention to the last scheme forwarded to you by the military governor here, it is 'criticised by everyone' and I have had to dismiss the engineer Zanin 'who, though he seems stupid when he speaks, being from the Bergamasco, is in mind and deed full of excellent ideas and of sense and experience – but he does have the defect of being unable to communicate his ideas to anyone else ... Could we not have Michel [Michele Sanmicheli] ... who was so much praised by the late Duke of Urbino?
'"This list is derived from Karl Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes inédites ou peu connues (Berlin: Weidmann, 1873), pp. 392–96.