Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable rise of Venice in the eastern Mediterranean. Unlike other Italian cities of the early medieval period, Venice had not been settled during the Roman Empire. Rather, it was a refuge for those fleeing unrest after the fall of Rome who settled on these boggy islands on a lagoon and developed into a power that ran an empire from mainland Italy, down the Adriatic coast, across the Peloponnese to Crete and Cyprus, past Constantinople and into the Black Sea. This was a city without walls, just one of the surprises for visitors who marvelled at the stability and influence of Venice right up to the 17th Century when the Ottomans, Spain, France and the Hapsburgs were to prove too much especially with trade shifting to the Atlantic. With Maartje van Gelder Professor in Early Modern History at the University of Amsterdam Stephen Bowd Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Edinburgh And Georg Christ Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern History at the University of Manchester Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Michel Balard and Christian Buchet (eds.), The Sea in History: The Medieval World (Boydell & Brewer, 2017), especially ‘The Naval Power of Venice in the Eastern Mediterranean’ by Ruthy Gertwagen Stephen D. Bowd, Venice's Most Loyal City: Civic Identity in Renaissance Brescia (Harward University Press, 2010) Frederic Chapin Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973) Georg Christ and Franz-Julius Morche (eds.), Cultures of Empire: Rethinking Venetian rule 1400–1700: Essays in Honour of Benjamin Arbel (Brill, 2020), especially ‘Orating Venice's Empire: Politics and Persuasion in Fifteenth Century Funeral Orations’ by Monique O'Connell Eric R. Dursteler, A Companion to Venetian History, 1400-1797 (Brill, 2013), especially ‘Venice's Maritime Empire in the Early Modern Period’ by Benjamin Arbel Iain Fenlon, The Ceremonial City: History, Memory and Myth in Renaissance Venice (Yale University Press, 2007) Joanne M. Ferraro, Venice: History of the Floating City (Cambridge University Press, 2012) Maria Fusaro, Political Economies of Empire: The Decline of Venice and the Rise of England 1450-1700 (Cambridge University Press, 2015) Maartje van Gelder, Trading Places: The Netherlandish Merchant Community in Early Modern Venice, 1590-1650 (Brill, 2009) Deborah Howard, The Architectural History of Venice (Yale University Press, 2004) Kristin L. Huffman (ed.), A View of Venice: Portrait of a Renaissance City (Duke University Press, 2024) Peter Humfrey, Venice and the Veneto: Artistic Centers of the Italian Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 2008) John Jeffries Martin and Dennis Romano (eds.), Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297-1797 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000) Erin Maglaque, Venice’s Intimate Empire: Family Life and Scholarship in the Renaissance Mediterranean (Cornell University Press, 2018) Michael E Mallett and John Rigby Hale, The Military Organization of a Renaissance State Venice, c.1400 to 1617 (Cambridge University Press, 1984) William Hardy McNeill, Venice: The Hinge of Europe (The University of Chicago Press, 1974) Jan Morris, The Venetian Empire: A Sea Voyage (Faber & Faber, 1980) Monique O'Connell, Men of Empire: Power and Negotiation in Venice’s Maritime State (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009) Dennis Romano, Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City (Oxford University Press, 2023) David Rosand, Myths of Venice: The Figuration of a State (University of North Carolina Press, 2001) David Sanderson Chambers, The Imperial Age of Venice, 1380-1580 (Thames and Hudson, 1970) Sandra Toffolo, Describing the City, Describing the State: Representations of Venice and the Venetian Terraferma in the Renaissance (Brill, 2020) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production .
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Hello.
In just a few hundred years, Venice grew from some boggy islands on a mosquito infested lagoon to running an empire from mainland Italy down the Adriatic coast, across the Peloponnese to Crete, Cyprus, past Constantinople and into the Black Sea.
Visitors found it extraordinary that this city without walls, the Serenissima, could be so stable and influential, growing in wealth and spreading the so called justice of Venice.
And the Venetians did all they could to keep the image up.
Yet the strain of the strengthening Ottomans in Spain, France and the Habsburgs were to prove too much.
And with trade shifting to the Atlantic, the power of Venice began to.
With me to discuss the rise and fall of the Venetian Empire are Stephen Bowd, professor of Early Modern History at the University of Edinburgh, Georg Christ, Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern History at the University of Manchester, and Marcia Van Helder, professor in Early Modern History at the University of Amsterdam.
Marcia, when and how did Venice come into being?
The origin story of Venice is a bit murky in the sense that what we know is that during the time of ancient Rome, there was no such thing as a city in that northern lagoon, the north of the Adriatic Sea.
It was basically barren mudflats, marshes, like you said, a mosquito infested lagoon.
There were some fishermen and boatmen there, but no real community.
So the transformation of these barren marshes into a new city occurs somewhere between the 5th and the 7th century and is closely connected to the so called barbarian hordes invading the Roman Empire.
So when the Huns and the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths conquer Roman territory, the lagoon becomes a safe haven in a sense for settlers from Roman cities who flee these invasions and flee the violence of these invasive hordes.
So Venice is a city formed by immigrants, by refugees, and that idea of a safe haven, of a safe place, becomes part of Venice's foundational myth.
Can I ask you, you studied there, right?
By the Grand Canal.