Venice: A Documentary History 1450-1630

"It’s a collection of primary sources. It seems an odd choice, but it’s complicated finding Venetian historic texts talking about this ‘imperial period.’ The primary sources are circumspect in how they’re talking of and about empire. This collection of sources is one great way into the subject. There are a few others translated into English as well, like Marino Sanuto’s travelogue, his account of an inspection trip on the Terraferma. That’s a great book about the Venetian empire, but it’s just about the Terraferma. In this source edition, you have excerpts from that but also samples of many other primary sources. Thanks to the editors—who are familiar with Anglo-American scholarship’s ideas about the Venetian empire—they include lots of very useful sources on different elements of the empire. That’s why I included it. One of my favourites is a relatively late source. It’s a Spanish ambassador writing very critically about the Venetian empire. He writes that Venice has acquired “a vast and spacious empire of great wealth and power, both maritime and terrestrial. Hence it can truly be called a great and powerful commonwealth…But to tell Your Majesty [i.e. the Spanish King] the truth, they are all for the most part uninhabited and barren, and to put it bluntly, they are more of a vile beasts’ lair or a robbers’ roost than places of great importance.” That’s just one example. There are many interesting sources in the book that show the problems around the very notion of a Venetian empire."