A very brief and grossly over-simplified history of Venice
A super-quick overview for the reader totally new to the subject.
The history of Venice is full of myth and legend. Like all histories, there are many versions, not all of them true. As someone living in England, who grew up in Singapore, the analogies with the histories of Venice, England and Singapore have caught my imagination. Some people might be irritated at the way it has been romanticised, but it’s a story which has fascinated me. Here is a brief version of that story.
Refugees
In the centuries leading to its fall, the Roman Empire was invaded by successive waves of barbarians, the best known of whom was Attila the Hun. Around the year 421, refugees from Roman cities on the adjacent mainland fled to the barren, swampy, low-lying islands in the Venetian lagoon, where they settled. Here they could fish and gather salt. In 697, they elected a leader, the Doge (the equivalent of Dux, or Duke). This was the beginning of the Venetian Republic, which would last for 1100 years.
The lagoon is extremely shallow, and it’s very easy to run aground once you stray from the navigable channels. It’s also very large, the largest in the Mediterranean. For centuries, this protected Venice from invasion. In 810, Pepin, the son of Charlemagne besieged Venice. The Venetians removed all the navigational markers which indicated the routes through the shallows, and Pepin failed to get through to the city. After 6 months, ravaged by disease, his army withdrew.
Venice was initially subject to the authority of the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire. Over time, she became a rich and powerful trading city, and a great naval power, independent from the Byzantium.
Sacking Christendom’s greatest city, and thereby acquiring an empire
In 1202, Venice was asked to supply ships to transport crusaders to the Holy Land for the Fourth Crusade. Then crusaders ran out of funds, and couldn’t pay up. To resolve the situation, the crusaders agreed to help Venetians to settle some scores of their own, including a dispute with the Byzantines. First they attacked and pillaged Zara, a Christian city that had rebelled against Venetian rule. Then they moved on to Constantinople, arriving in June 1203. To cut a long story short they attacked, besieged, and eventually conquered and sacked the city, installing a puppet emperor on the throne. The crusaders never reached the Holy Land, but Venice acquired overseas territories from the Byzantines, and became an empire. Vast quantities of loot from Constantinople were brought back to Venice to adorn the Basilica of San Marco. The fatally-weakened Byzantine Empire would eventually be extinguished by the Ottomans, who became Venice’s major rivals.
Government by committee
Venice developed a unique system of government where power was held by councils and committees, rather than a single ruler or family. The Doge was elected by the Maggior Consiglio (Great Council) through a system which involved choosing electors multiple times by lot, so as to avoid anyone exerting undue influence. Although head of state, the Doge was subjected to all manner of constraints, and his freedom was severely limited. From 1297, membership of the Great Council was restricted to those families already represented in it, who became the governing class of the Republic. Unlike aristocrats in the rest of Europe, who despised trade and commerce, Venetian patricians were merchants. Their wealth came from commerce rather than from feudal estates. Amongst patricians, there were no distinctions of rank as there were in other European aristocracies, and although they made up about 5% of the population (footnote 1), this was arguably a more democratic system than that found anywhere else in Europe. For instance, in Britain, home to the “mother of Parliaments”, only about 3 percent of the electorate could register to vote in 1833 (footnote 2).
Eastern trade
Much of Venice’s prosperity had come from trade with the East. Goods brought via overland routes (such as the Silk Road) arrived at ports in the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean. From these ports, Venetians bought and shipped them back to Venice, where they were sold on. When Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to the India and the Far East via the Cape of Good Hope, the balance of power tilted in favour of Atlantic sea-going nations like Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Britain. Now, they could trade directly with the East, bypassing the Venetians. Venice was further weakened when the Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453, putting an end to the Byzantine Empire, and becoming a major rival to Venice and the other Christian powers in Europe.
The long decline of the Republic
Although Venice declined militarily, her arts continued to flourish and she remained wealthy in the centuries leading up to the end of the Republic. Consider, for instance the life of Titian (b1488-90 d1576). He was born over three decades after the fall of Constantinople, and during his lifetime, many Venetian overseas possessions were lost to the Ottomans during the wars which were fought between Venice and the Ottoman Empire
In 1797 the Venetian Republic was abolished without a fight by the Great Council when Napoleon Bonaparte demanded their surrender.
After this, Venice was passed between France and Austria, before joining the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. Henceforth, Venice would be part of the new Italian nation.
Footnotes:
Brown, Patricia Fortini. ‘“Private Lives in Renaissance Venice”’. The New York Times, 5 December 2004, sec. Archives. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/books/chapters/private-lives-in-renaissance-venice.html.
Johnstone, Neil. ‘The History of the Parliamentary Franchise’. Research Paper. London, UK: House of Commons Library, 1 March 2013. https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP13-14/RP13-14.pdf.
