During the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, was life truly so abysmal and poverty-stricken for mainland Greeks living under Ottoman military rule as opposed to their Greek brethren living on the Ionian Islands controlled by the Republic of Venice? As many of you may recall, the Ionian Islands were largely controlled by Venice even long before the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Although the majority of the inhabitants remained Orthodox Greek instead of Roman Catholic, the Venetian language became the lingua franca of the upper classes, the currency was the Venetian lira, and general Italian culture was generally accepted in many ways. Yet was the material culture and economy of the islands in a much better position than it was for Greeks living in say Thessaloniki or Athens? At times the Ottomans were able to snatch some of the islands from the Venetians, but they generally remained under stable Venetian control for almost as long as Ottoman Greece existed, relatively speaking (the islands forming the Septinsular Republic in shortly after Napoleon dissolved the Venetian Republic in 1797). Can we really speak of all of Ottoman Greece as being monolithic and virtually the same throughout the entire period in terms of relative lack of material wealth and prosperity compared to the Ionian Islands under Venice? If so, why? Was it due mostly to the existence of the large Ottoman fiefs carved out of Greece and the burdens of taxation exacted on the native Greeks by the Ottoman Turks?