History of the Republic of Venice were little compensation. This was the last war of the Republic with Turkey. The decline of Venice in the 18th century was also due not only to Genoa, Venice's old rival, but also to Livorno, a new port on the Tyrrhenian Sea created by the grand dukes of Tuscany and chosen as staging-post for British trade in the Mediterranean. Still more injurious were the Papal town of Ancona and Habsburg Trieste, a free port since 1719, in the Adriatic Sea, which no longer constituted a "Venetian Gulf". An eminent Venetian politician of the time declared, "Apart from the residue which
Gulf of Bothnia Gulf of Bothnia The Gulf of Bothnia (; ) is the northernmost arm of the Baltic Sea. It is situated between Finland's west coast and Sweden's east coast. In the south of the gulf lie the Åland Islands, between the Sea of Åland and the Archipelago Sea. Bothnia is a latinization. The Swedish name "Bottenviken" was originally just "Botn(en)" with botn being Old Norse for "gulf" or "bay"; which is also the meaning of the second element "vik". The name "botn" was applied to the Gulf of Bothnia as "Helsingjabotn" in Old Norse, after Hälsingland, which at the time referred