Venice: the Hinge of Europe

"Yes, a little bit later. In any case, too late for Lane to change the outlook of his book as I just tried to sketch out. There’s something amiss or out of sync with that developmental perspective, this image of a small little entity, a few villages in the lagoon, starting to acquire some salt monopolies, then bashing down their local competitors, like Comacchio and Narona, and then growing and growing and growing. Something is amiss because Venetian long-distance trade predates Venetian military muscle by a long, long time. The Venetians are active in Alexandria way before the Venetians are able to project military power to Alexandria. Also, it’s important not to forget that they never really do. They never tried to conquer Alexandria. McNeill was very important for me in understanding that. He is a global historian, a herald of world history, with great books on the plague and many other things as well, who thinks very broadly. He is a fantastic writer. His book takes a step back and de-centres Venice. He emphasizes the importance of seeing Venice as a hinge, a connector between realms, the two easts—the Orthodox east and the Islamic east—and the Latin west. It’s a history of connectivity. I think foregrounding Venice merely as a connector, as a node was a really important shift and although it’s a famous book, it has not penetrated mainstream historiography as much as it ought to. A node can be powerful, of course, but it cannot really replace the things it’s connecting unless it becomes a total, universal empire. It had a much more mercenary side than maybe comes through in some of the mainstream accounts. Lane, before he wrote his masterpiece that we just discussed, was really a specialist in the Venetian navy, focusing on its institutionalization. Before, it was really a mercenary force. The earlier story is of Venice as an entrepreneur, pulling together galleys from different sources, from private, local entrepreneurs. The Venetian fleet, when it was helping the Byzantines against Normans or Muslim raiders is probably still a composite fleet. A lot of the outfitting of the ships is financed by private money, with the Venetian government coordinating and acting as a meta-contractor, basically. It’s representing a sort of consortium of ship owners and then negotiating with the Byzantine emperor on their behalf. But this becomes more and more of a state affair because part of what comes out of it is not just payment that goes to these different operators of ships, but also political privileges and rights that are then held and controlled by the Venetian community, the city of Venice. That’s really the story of Byzantine-Venetian relations, at least from the year 1000 until the breakdown of relations in 1204, with the Venetians acting as maritime mercenaries. Venice used its naval might to renegotiate the terms of trade and its privileges within this integrated economic area that was the Byzantine Empire. The Venetians continue to do that, along similar lines, with the Islamic empire of the Mamluks in Egypt and Syria, except that there we don’t have big naval encounters. It’s more subtle. They are acting against pirates, but it’s a very delicate affair because these pirates claim to be Crusaders. The Venetians are intervening de facto on the side of the Mamluks, so you have this mercenary element there as well: naval services in exchange for smooth trade relations. Then you have it at Lepanto. There’s not a very strong Venetian interest in that, but they cannot really step aside in such a big, papal crusading enterprise. You also have it with the Crusader States, if you take a step back. So yes, that’s a very important element of Venetian diplomacy and of Venice’s interaction with other players, not least imperial players: they use their fleet as a bargaining chip to renegotiate their position."