Vuković and his family were subjects of the Republic of Venice, which had established a corpus of off-shore possessions along the Adriatic coastline – along its eastern reaches, the Venetian possessions cut deeper into the territory of the Balkan peninsula, engulfing eastern portions of Montenegro and northern parts of Albania. The Serbian Despotate had lost its last possession in the region with the fall of Medun to the Ottomans; the regional cities had found salvation in the patronage of the Venetian Republic, an important Mediterranean naval factor. The expansionism of the Ottoman Empire might have been the cause of Vuković's family's decision to seek shelter in the more safe and fortified home that Podgorica offered - or the reason might have been more practical; namely the expansion of trading services - his family was later frequently practicing trade in Venice.