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5 Conclusion The Myth ofEthnic Homogeneity THE TRADITIONAL VIEW OF Venetian Crete, with its heavy emphasis on monolithic, fundamentally antagonistic ethnic groups, is in part the product of the particular way the sources have been manipulated by scholars. The governmental and literary sources, such as the council deliberations and court records, show that ethnic categories in Crete operated on two levels: the official and the popular. In the council records, most symptoms oftension in the colony are described in ethnic terms. The Venetian colonial authorities lent juridical status to the term "Latin" when it passed down rulings in the fourteenth century in its courts that to be Latin was to be free. Furthermore, the official categories "Latin" and "Greek" appear to have been consistent with the sympathies ofthe island's inhabitants, to judge by the wills made by Latins and Greeks. These are the sources that have received the bulk ofscholarly attention. The notarial registers, in contrast, are filled with the Latins and Greeks of Candia and its district going about their business both jointly and separately . As disadvantageous as Venetian rule was in many ways for Greek Cretans, those who lived in Candia had a better chance of prospering than those in the countryside, not because they were Greek in a different way, but rather because they were not peasants. They made their livings differently , and their material lives were fundamentally different from those of the peasantry. In short, they belonged to a different class ofsociety that, by virtue ofthe differences in how they made their living and in their material lives, put their interests potentially at variance with those of the Greek peasants. Moreover, the notarial sources show that many Latin and Greek Candiotes came to share cultural attributes. The Latin population, both feudatories and commoners, had absorbed aspects ofGreek culture, such as given names, language, customs, and a tolerance of the Greek church, that is sometimes difficult to distinguish from promotion. Marriage between Conclusion: The Myth ofEthnic Homogeneity 169 the Latin feudatories and the Greek noble families was not uncommon, as we saw in the caseofthe Calergi family. Mixed marriages on the lower levels of society were even more common, although at times officially discouraged by the government. Elsewhere I have shown that Greek women, the poorest and least juridically capable section of the population, were engaged in their own right in a variety ofeconomic ventures. 1 Lastly, we have found at least five Greek noble families who held seats in the island's advisory councils. The problem is how to reconcile the two pictures presented by the different sets of sources, because both are to different degrees valid, and how to explain them in light ofthe population's continued use ofterms like "Latin" and "Greek" when it is obvious that the criteria for what defined "Latin" and "Greek" had evolved considerably over the first two centuries ofVenetian rule. After working with these sources closelyfor a long time, it became clear to me that the defining features of "Latin" and "Greek" were less important, since they changed, than the uses to which the ethnic terms were put and the situations in which they were employed. Ranging the evidence for unrest in the colony derived from the governmental sources against notarial evidence of economic life brings into relief the antagonistic divisions in Candiote society, which do not appear fundamentally ethnic. Moreover, the traces of major fault lines are clearest as those dividing the town from the countryside and the longest-established colonial familiesfrom the newer ones. Scratch beneath the surface ofthe socalled Greek revolt in the aftermath of the 1363 rebellion, and there will appear something that looks very much like a peasants' revolt. This means that recognizing the concept of ethnicity, however it is defined, and the categories derived from it, to be a tool first and a state of existence second, opens the way to deepening our understanding of how those who have the power to do so manipulate social perceptions and self-perceptions that have an impact on others. Viewing ethnic or national identity as an ideological tool, or at least a factor that comes into play in specific situations and moments, instead ofbeing an all-pervasive,omnivalent state ofbeing, helps to locate and account for behavior that seems to contradict that sense of collectivity. Two centuries before the settlement of the western hemisphere, Venice , an Old World colonial power, provides the link between colonization and evolving notions of ethnicity. The fourteenth century was a...

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