In Venice
by Anders HoveLook around the history section of the bookstore and you don't see crowds forming around long, sweeping histories of Great European States. A nearby Borders bookstore allows its volumes of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall to gather dust by the inches. On nearby shelves, as forgotten as Ozymandias, lies A History of Venice by John Julius Norwich. Read it for the history, and as an excellent test of whether history is more than trivia.
I'm a history skeptic. I don't accept on faith the oft-repeated precept that a good perusal of history is necessary to avoid its mistakes - too often it produces simplistic analogies rather than wisdom. A glance through the quote book shows doubt surrounding history-learning is as prominent as hope. Consider Hegel's Philosophy of History: "What experience and history teach is this - that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it." That's a little more erudite than Henry Ford's more popular, "History is more or less bunk," as cited by the Chicago Tribune in 1916.
There are two schools of thought among those who would learn from history. The first, and most popular, favors "deep analysis" of single, epic events. Naturally, historians are into deep analysis. We fondly imagine our aged profs wending their way through stacks of yellowed newsprint and old tomes with wracked bindings, searching for the last missing tidbit to their otherwise complete understanding of whether Jack Fisher's dreadnought advocacy was truly an instance of military innovation, or whether Dean Acheson provoked the Korean War by not mentioning the peninsula in a speech on Asian security. Also adhering to this school are those middle-age-and-above sedentary males who have lapped up every book pertaining to D-Day and the early Cold War - one suspects as a result of nostalgia and father-homage rather than seriousness of purpose.
The problem with "deep analysis" is that it so often produces dreary single-mindedness. And it provokes clash-of-the-analogies standoffs in which one talking head says Vietnam tells us one thing while another claims it teaches the opposite.
Hence the second school, which advocates studying the broad curve of history rather than its trivia. If we must classify it, A History of Venice falls gently into this camp. Does the method work? There's no proof either way. Like the Deep Analysis school, the Long Curve approach has benefits and pitfalls. The main pitfall is that we still tend to look for those historical analogies. The benefit is that we get more chances to test and debunk the analogies, especially when - as with Italian warfare - we watch the same events recurring with slightly modified antecedents and consequences. Many observations don't make a science, but they subdue our simplifying impulses.
And so to Venice
Broad arm of history, thy name is Venice. Its first settlers arrived with the barbarian invasions of the 400s and 500s. Political independence was attained in the 700s, its first doge (duke) named in 726. Venice was an independent, republican state for 1000 years, meaning it was not conquered or occupied and its government consisted of various aristocratic legislative and quasi-elective executive bodies. Napoleon's conquest ended the Venetian state. Everything in between is a test of Venice's unique government, society, strategy, and economic order.
Our guide to Venice, John Julius Norwich, loves his subject and treats it admirably. Yet one wonders if he has wallowed rather deeply in Venice's consciousness. Of Marcantonio Bragadin, a Venetian general fighting the Turks in Cyprus, we learn not only that the Turks killed him by dragging him to death, beheading him, and skinning his trunk - we learn also that the skin was later stolen from Istanbul and deposited in the church of S. Gregorio, then on May 18, 1571, transferred to a certain spot behind a certain urn of a certain memorial in a certain SS. Giovanni e Paolo. Such trivia interests us only in that it reveals the peculiar fascination medievals had with celebrity death and its odd relics. A fascination we know all too well.
Not that Venice's celebrity relics have no romance today. In the 900s, the body of St. Mark was stolen from Alexandria and deposited in Venice; resulting in heraldry and art lasting a dozen centuries. Such branding! Such marketing push! After 300 pages of tense, seesaw battling we can't help openly rooting for the fluttering banner of St. Mark. And when we read that, at a time when Venice's enemies were close at her heels, a furious gale tore away a wing of the winged lion of St. Mark atop its column in the Piazetta, we feel the grimness of the omen as though it were a hammer blow.
In a thousand-year history it would be difficult to pick out a handful of individuals of extraordinary color and character; yet Norwich admits that Venetian history almost lacks such figures altogether. Our author: "Doges apart - and even those appear a fairly dim lot when viewed in the mass, if only because they had little opportunity to express themselves once they had reached the supreme office - few indeed are the figures who stand out as creatures of flesh and blood, worthy of our reverence, hatred, or even contempt, and who were none the less permitted to influence the turn of events." Despite this dearth, Norwich plucks captains-general, podesta (governors), admirals, and warrior-doges from obscurity, presents them for our examination over the course of three or four pages, then lets us pass on.
The problem, as Norwich's statement about doges indicates, is that Venice's republican system of government created a kind of political and historical veil. Power was dispersed broadly across the aristocracy, not concentrated in the doge, whose manner of election and authorities were all neatly circumscribed by an unspeakable array of regulations and laws. The Venetian Republic was a bureaucracy par excellence, and to this Norwich attributes its stability and survival throughout the centuries. Venice weathered plots, scandals, plagues, attempted coups, foreign intrigues, and wars that spanned continents and civilizations. In each case, the basic system of government survived intact.
Venice was not a democracy: the word "republic" hints at the manner of election of its officials by the aristocracy. Yet that aristocracy was extremely broad-based, comprising up to 2000 noble families registered in the Golden Book - all this in a single city on a handful of islands. Justice was administered by means of secretive but generally fair judicial committees. By the time of the Age of Reason these committees had gained Venice a reputation as a police state - but in fact, argues Norwich, when Napoleon finally conquered Venice and ordered political prisoners released, they found there were none. Throughout its history, Venice was among the most tolerant cities in Europe, prizing free expression, free practice of religion, and, after the invention of moveable type, unfettered publication of books. What explains this tolerance? Perhaps capitalism - Venice as trading empire dominated by commerical concerns. Perhaps history - Venice as exile-founded lagoon-girt haven. Perhaps geography - Venice wedged between warring parties of Europe, then between Christianity and Islam. Perhaps luxury - Venice wealthier and more secure than its escetic neighbors.
Whatever its commercial prowess, war was central to the survival of the Venetian state in the Middle Ages and beyond. Wading through the torturous cycles of alliances and counteralliances, particularly during the 1500s, one is almost at a loss to predict the next sequence of events. Nothing is plain. But some have tried to make order from chaos by borrowing a page from Guicciardini and assuming these Italian states' actions arose from rationality, self-interest, and self-aggrandizement. Harvard's Randall Schweller, writing for International Security in 1994, was one: he classified states as status-quo and revisionist, and broke these two groups into lambs and lions on the status-quo side, jackals and wolves on the revisionist side. Schweller created these four groups because he was trying to understand why sometimes states will ally with one another to protect themselves at some times and not at others, herd together to aggress at some times and not at others.
This is classic 1500s Italy. Venice sides with France to expand its territory in North Italy. A few battles on and the alliances shift. Now the pope has formed the League of Cambrai among France, Austria, Spain - against Venice. A couple years later Venice is leagued with the Pope and Austria against France. Why the whirlwind?
Lest we be tempted to think states in 1500s Italy were just trying to balance power against hungry, wolfish revisionists as best they could given their universally self-interested ways, Venice's history provides ample evidence that states pursued their interests quite well by notbalancing against the strongest power. For decades Venice fought the Turks alone, pleading for aid from the rest of Europe. Why did Europe leave Venice to fend (badly) for itself? Call it the behavior of lambs: the other Western powers were relatively status-quo, calculating they could leave Venice to be gobbled up (or not) while steeling themselves for a later fight if need be.
Besides, Venice wasn't merely protecting its own: the lion of St. Mark hungered for as much territory from whatever Eastern neighbor presented itself. How else can we explain the execrable 4th Crusade (1216 AD), in which Venice tricked its Frankish compatriots into attacking not Islam, but Byzantine (Christian) Constantinople, where Venetian trading interests had been threatened? Constantinople fell to Venice's fleet, was put to three days' sack. Then Venice angrily gobbled up the Eastern Empire and held it for a few dozen years against Balkan, Islamic, and Greek attempts to assail it. Venice held a variety of empires in her history: she was married to the sea, lord of Dalmatia, ruler of Cyprus and Acre, conquerer of the Pelopponese, sovereign of Crete, and owner of a variety of Aegean islands. When the Portugese rounded Africa and deprived Venice of her trade, she let her eastern empire slip gradually away, replacing it with acquisitions on terra firma of the Italian peninsula: Verona, Padua, Apulia, Friuli, Brescia, and on up the Po River.
After 1600 Venice grew decidedly apathetic in matters of war and diplomacy. It was as though Venice saw herself no longer on the cusp of history, but rather as a trailing edge. Instead of looking to war, her people turned inward, building a spendid culture of opera, play, writing, and gambling. Venice: the model for Riviera casinos and, later, Las Vegas. Always known for gaudy celebrations, Venice grew ever more opulent and drunken. It became a neutral country, but not a Switzerland - for its territories weren't easy to defend and Venice didn't bother to arm herself for their defense. Indeed, Venice didn't even go to great lengths to protect what little trade was left to her. The tabline: Venice's behavior wasn't explained by self-interest either revisionist or status-quo. It was determined partly by spirit. As a neutral, Venice was emplicitly a status-quo power, but she engaged irrationally in lamb-like behavior - hoping to be the last devoured by the wolf. Does Schweller's theory explain Venice? Almost, but not quite - Schweller does not predict its apathy.
Yet the centuries-long curve of Venice's decline is the best proof of the resilience of her form of government. Checks and balances - and Venice had way more than the U.S. does now - proved vastly effective. For much of her history, Venice was the most enlightened government known to Europe, and this made it far easier for Venice to prevent revolt in its empire. Indeed, there was a Venetian nationalism: when other Italian or European powers conquered Venetian lands, the people often rose up to cast out their new overlords and welcome the return of Venetian podesta (sometimes with calamitous results when the colonies weren't strong enough to ward off the yokes of Milan, France or Austria). Where Venice's rule was harshest and least tolerant, in the eastern Med, the Aegean, Dalmatia, and Greece, her subjects did her no homage and sometimes aided the Turks and others. Rule by the people, Middle Ages-style.
During Venice's heyday, however, active defense and exploitation of its geopolitical position were necessary to its continuation as a state. Democracy and wealth aren't enough. Less defensible Florence and Genoa saw their republics go up in flames repeatedly, replaced by Medician despotism or French conquest.
Venice gives us plenty of food and fodder for thought, certainly. Here is a history every bit as enlightening as that of any other thousand-year civilization. Yet it recalls above all the history of Athens, that other enlightened aristocracy, whose golden age of empire was snuffed out by Sparta, thus fertilizing a golden age of philosophy, science, and the arts. Do a society's greatest achievements always arise after its political, economic, and imperial ways are cast aside? Not always - Britain and France lost empires without notable cultural spawn - but certainly Venice, and Renaissance Italy, argue for rainbows after the deluge.