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 Tomini Gulf of Tomini The Gulf of Tomini (), also known as the Bay of Tomini, is the equatorial gulf which separates the Minahassa (Northern) and East Peninsulas of the island of Sulawesi (Celebes) in Indonesia. The Togian Islands lie near its center. To the east, it opens onto the Molukka Sea. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) defines the Gulf of Tomini as being one of the divisions of the East Indian Archipelago. It is defined as the waters west of the "Western limit of the Molukka Sea", which is elsewhere defined as the line running from "Tg. Pasir Pandjang ()...