In the early modern era the Republic of Venice hosted a large cosmopolitan community of merchants from the sultan’s domains. In the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries probably it constituted the most important center of Ottoman commercial deployment in Western Europe. The Ottoman trade with Venice functioned under the legal framework of the capitulations (ahidnames). They were political and commercial agreements between the Ottoman and the Venetian government that enabled the creation of a coherent legal inter-imperial space within which subjects of both the polities could travel with ease. One of the most controversial aspects of these agreements is their alleged unilateralism. Most historians of the Ottoman capitulations, by focusing on their texts and on the Western trade in the Ottoman Empire, had argued that they were unilateral grants of privileges bestowed by the sultans to the subjects of a friendly European power and they did not contain any reference to reciprocity. However, a study of the intensive Ottoman trade with Venice and the attitude of the Ottoman authorities toward it undermines that assumption. In particular, an analysis of the numerous disputes between Ottoman merchants and Venetian subjects and authorities sheds light on the bilateral nature of the capitulations. These controversies arose mostly from frauds between commercial partners, quarrels over the payment of custom duties, and, above all, attacks of pirates in the Adriatic Sea. The archival series Documenti Turchi, Lettere e Scritture Turchesche, and Bailo a Costantinopoli located in the Venetian State Archives contain numerous Ottoman documents, ranging from sultan’s rescripts to legal documents issued by the Ottoman courts, concerning grievances of Ottoman subjects against Venetian subjects and authorities. These documents, alongside of the abundant Venetian documentation, above all the bailo’s correspondence from Istanbul (dispacci), allow the historians to reconstruct the circumstances of the disputes, the litigation between the Venetian and the Ottoman subjects and authorities, and the final settlement. During the negotiations between the two opposing sides the contents of the capitulations were the main source of contention. These negotiations and the support granted to the aggrieved merchants by the Ottoman authorities show that the latter did not only grant privileges to subjects of a foreign ruler but they excepted similar rights for their subjects trading abroad.