The Latin communities in the east were composed predominantly of minority groups of westerners settled, permanently or temporarily, in the eastern Mediterranean, largely in consequence of earlier movements of Latin expansion. The cosmopolitan world of scattered Levantine ports and islands was united by its seas, by its shipping and by the extensive trade which the Latins moved across them. Latin Levantine outposts and activities depended for their survival upon an overall naval superiority which Ottoman or Mamluk fleets could seldom match. The southern Levant trade was not a Venetian monopoly but Venice increasingly assumed the predominant role in it after about 1410, while the hitherto considerable presence of Genoese, Catalans and other westerners diminished. The Latins on Cyprus reserved political power and fiscal advantages to themselves, maintaining a social distance from the Greeks which was rooted in religion and culture. In the Levant the Turks normally expelled Latin settlers while reaching accommodations with the Greeks.