Venice: A Maritime Republic

"The main reason is that this is just the best book, full stop, about Venice. It’s a little bit highbrow, so if you want an easy, shorter introduction there are other options, which we will talk about. But if you’re a little bit more ambitious, and you say, ‘Okay, what’s the best, most robust book on Venice and the Venetian empire?’ then I would still point to Lane, even though it is from 1973. As a holistic, general take, it’s absolutely brilliant. Perhaps because I’m an economic historian, I think it’s really important when you approach Venice that you’re not trying to reduce it to art and cultural phenomena. The economic element is really important. In many ways, you could say Venice is more akin to a firm than to a state. In the Middle Ages, the Senate is almost akin to a board of directors and the Maggior Consiglio to a stakeholder meeting. Of course, one can challenge all these comparisons, but it’s important to think about Venice a little bit in these terms. Lane does that very effectively. He has been criticized for not including the newest cultural theory and findings and so on, but I think that’s a bit unfair because in terms of a broad, rigorous, comprehensive, overall view, it’s an absolute masterpiece. The second reason I chose it is that we should not be tricked by titles such as a ‘maritime republic’, into thinking that this has nothing to do with empire. To understand modern empires, it’s very important to understand how the two things are linked. It’s probably not a coincidence that Frederic Lane is a US historian. He’s a fantastic historian, but still a child of his time. He had an official function as a naval historian during the Second World War , so he was part of the war effort. For him, thinking about the legitimacy of empires , of modern empires, of the US empire was very important. For the US empire, being a ‘republic’ is a very important legitimizing factor. It says, ‘We are not a totalitarian empire, we are very different from the evil forces we are fighting, we are not a fascist, totalitarian state. Our empire rests on the pillars of civic liberties and freedom, and tolerance and respect.’ And so on. So his take on Venice, which is very subtle and does not in any way jeopardize the quality of the account, suggests this line that Venice is a predecessor of the modern empire in that it rests on a republican base. This is something you also find in the sources of the time. The Venetians are emphasizing that all the time, although they have an interesting variation. For them, it’s not so much that they’re a republic, but that they are the ideal combination of all three classical types of states: they are combining aristocracy, monarchy, and democracy. In that sense, it is maybe more about empire (and the US), than the title would at first suggest. He does that really well. He shows how it is very much driven by economic factors. Long-distance trade is an important element. In many ways, the empire building, if you want to call it that, is following the trade routes. They’re trying to stabilize, buttress and maintain a system of long-distance trade that is jeopardized by the implosion of or the challenge to pre-existing, ‘real’ empires: the Byzantine Empire and the Mamluk Empire . An important aspect of the classic empire is to guarantee freedom of trade; the protection of the merchants by the emperor. There is a bit of a debate about this in legal historical circles. Some people say it is all nonsense or empty words and that there was no imperial protection of traders. All trade relationships were negotiated on the ground and ad hoc—in some game-theoretical way. In that scenario there would be no international law, that would be anachronistic. I would say, no, while the term international law is anachronistic, there still was something there, a shared idea of both what the rights of merchants should be, and a shared understanding, also, that these were often not respected. That’s the point at which it becomes interesting, and it becomes clear how Venice started acting as an empire. It’s not because they are consciously trying to formally become an empire. They actually studiously avoided that. This is about maintaining the empire that is always there and that guarantees mercantile freedoms. Now, if the Byzantine emperor cannot guarantee freedom of trade, and the protection of merchants anymore, well, someone has to do it. So the Venetians have to do it themselves, not because they wanted to be the new emperor, but because the emperor is not there right now and not doing the job of protecting long-distance trade. So Venice acted on behalf of the emperor, if you like, exercising empire without trying to become an empire. That becomes very clear reading Lane, how the necessities of trade, and of defending certain trade privileges, trigger this imperial action. I would go further than Lane and emphasize the importance of a conservative tilt, of trying to uphold old imperial liberties, while Lane emphasizes more the idea that there’s a problem and an opportunity, and the Venetians react. He has, perhaps, more of a developmental perspective."