Expelled the Arabs in the century. X, the restored Byzantine government in Cyprus assumed, through the work of the governors, the tendencies of an autonomous regiment, resolutely affirmed by Isaac Comnenus in 1184, who openly rebelled against Byzantium and found himself fighting not only against the Byzantines, but also against the Latins, who had located their trading posts in Limassol and Nicosia. Victorious of the former, he was overwhelmed by the latter, with the help of which the English king Richard the Lionheart, in the eastern expedition of 1191, forcefully occupied the strategic coastal points of the island; but he could not keep it for long and soon he gave it first to the Templars, then to Guido di Lusignano for one hundred thousand bezanti. The elevation of the Cypriot government to the dignity of a kingdom and the investiture of the royal crown in Almerico, Immediate successor of Guido, by Henry VI (1196), consecrated the new position of the island regiment, also absorbed in the Latin orbit. Among the inorganic mercantile elements, Venetians, Amalfi, Pisa and Puglia, who had made a stop on the island in the last century, the Genoese prevailed, who, taking a firm position in favor of the Ibelins, during their regency in the minority of Henry I, grandson of Almerico, obtained with large franchises the establishment of the two colonies of Limassol and Famagusta and the correlative consulate (1218). The subsequent struggle against Frederick II, who, sailing to the conquest of the crown of Jerusalem, had forcibly claimed the protection of the minor king held by the Ibelins, had helped to strengthen the influence of the Genoese, that in return for the help given to the Ibelins against imperial claims, they had greatly increased franchises and possessions (privilege of 1232). The Venetian penetration had also been considerable: the Venetian traffickers had been granted exemptions (privileges of King Henry I, 1218-1233, of the regent Piacenza, 1259-1261, of Ugo III, 1267-1284), extensive land holdings and jurisdictional rights. But the Venetians remained extraneous to the political life of the island and therefore exercised less economic activity than the Genoese. For Cyprus 1999, please check estatelearning.com.
The Genoese preponderance became more burdensome after the fall into the hands of the Saracens of St. John of Acre (1292): relations with the natives were intensified and degenerated into brawls and struggles, slowing down the good harmony existing between the Tyrrhenian republic and the Cypriot dynasty at the point of to impose on the colonists the use of the extreme remedies of the abandonment of the island and the use of armed force. The contrast was made even more acute by the presence and pressure of antithetical interests of competing powers. The fall of St. John had driven back to Cyprus, even if opposed, even the Venetian merchants. The island government had tried to ease the economic and political pressure of the Western powers, while avoiding the damage of the diversion of traffic currents. Therefore it was very difficult to find a stable agreement with Genoa and Venice, especially since every concession made to one ran counter to the reaction of the other. The long and painful negotiations between Genoa and King Henry II at the beginning of the century. XIV, peace signed with King Ugo IV, his successor, on February 16, 1329, renewed in February 1338 and followed by new disagreements and new laborious negotiations, finally the agreement of Peter I of 5 March 1363 are as many stages of an irrepressible orgasm that does not find a solution. Similar pressures came from the Venetians, whose presence raised waves of irritation in the Genoese, vented in almost daily more or less serious incidents. The Venetian-Cypriot treaty of 1306 greatly benefited Venetian traffic and the functioning of its organs, and remained the angular basis of Veneto-Cypriot relations, until the advent of Peter I who initially (1360) did not seem to want to detach himself from it.
