CHAPTER III
VENETIAN SUPREMACY
   I.—THE CONSTITUTION AND THE LAWS, 1204-1276.
During the next hundred and fifty years, save for two or three short interruptions between 1221 and 1233, Ragusa is admittedly a vassal state of the Venetian Republic, ruled by Venetian counts appointed by the Doge. Venice was, however, the protectress rather than the absolute mistress of the Dalmatian townships, which continued to enjoy a considerable measure of self-government. Venetian influence was useful to them as a protection both against the pirates which infested the Adriatic and the turbulence of the Slavonic princes, although as regards her relations with the latter, Ragusa, at all events, was free to manage even her foreign policy to a great extent. It will be well to examine the conditions of the Slavonic hinterland at this period.
   During the twelfth century the Slave lands were beginning to assume a semblance of order, and early in the thirteenth century, out of the chaos of barbarous and more or less independent tribes, four principal states had taken shape. They were Servia or Rascia, Bosnia, Hlum or Hum, and Doclea. The most important of these was Servia, welded into a kingdom by the Nemanja dynasty, who had extended their frontiers southwards
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