The Republic of Venice is a State gradually formed in the Middle Ages around the city of Venice, and which developed through the annexation of various territories and trading posts along the coasts of the Adriatic Sea, in the eastern Mediterranean and in northern Italy to become one of the main European economic powers. Venice played a leading role in economic exchanges between the West and the Mediterranean East, whether Byzantine or Muslim, as well as an essential political role. From the 16th century, the Republic of Venice experienced a phase of political decline and territorial regression somewhat overshadowed by an extraordinary artistic flowering, before disappearing in 1797 under the blows of the French general Napoleon Bonaparte. Venice and what remained of its territorial domain passed under the sovereignty of Austria, before its attachment to unified Italy in 1866.
Creation
Venice depended from its birth in the 6th century on the Byzantine Empire, but the weakness of the exarchate of Ravenna against the Lombards favored the emergence of a local power embodied by the first duke or "doge", Paolucio Anafesto (697-717 ), character on the borders of legend and history. The first doges resided in Heraclea (today Cittanova), as had the representative of the Byzantine power or magister militum. The second doge of the tradition - Marcello Tegalliano (717-726) - would have been himself magister militum when Paolo Lucio treated with the Lombard sovereign Liutprand. The third doge - and the first in history - was the hypatus Orso Ipato (726 to 737), hypatus roughly meaning "consul" in Greek. He tried to shake off the Byzantine tutelage during the iconoclastic crisis and ended up assassinated. Power was exercised for five years by magistri militum before being taken over by Orso's son, Teodato. This transferred its headquarters to Malamocco.
In the 9th century, Venice was emancipated from the Byzantine Empire.
Medieval expansion
The rise of Venice was based first on its commercial relations with Constantinople. In 1082, the Venetians received important trading privileges, as a reward for their naval aid to the Byzantine Empire against the Normans. The expansion first took place in the Adriatic Sea. In the 10th century, the Venetians secured control of the Dalmatian coast. In particular, they eliminated the Croatian pirates who were harming their trade.
Like the three other great ports of Italy, Genoa, Pisa and Amalfi, Venice was a city-state which established its power through maritime proximity, in Italian Repubblica Marinara. It outpaced its competitors in several stages, the first being the Fourth Crusade. In 1202-1204, the Crusaders helped him to conquer several stages on the road to the East (Zara, the Ionian Islands) then launched an assault on Constantinople although this was not originally the goal. of shipment. The dismemberment of the Byzantine Empire founded the greatness of Venice. She received several territories, including many Greek islands and part of the city of Constantinople. These positions assured him commercial control of the entire eastern Mediterranean. Until then queen of the Adriatic, it became an obligatory crossing point between the maritime East and the continental West. The merchant Marco Polo symbolized his entrepreneurial spirit in the 13th century.
The Republic of Venice was at the head of a garland of maritime possessions. His dominance over the mainland was reduced. In northern Italy, its territory did not go beyond Vicenza, Verona, Padua and the coasts of Friuli.
The Venetian expansion passed to a second stage after the War of Chioggia (1378-1381). On several occasions between the 13th century and the last third of the 14th century, Venetians and Genoese engaged in fierce battles. The war of Chiogga finally consecrated the primacy of Venice over Genoa. A primacy that made the city of the doges the center of Mediterranean trade until the start of the Italian wars (1494). The Republic dominated the world economy of the time thanks to its control over the majority of the Adriatic coast (in particular most of the Dalmatian city-states), the islands of the Aegean Sea, including Crete and Cyprus and thanks to its influence noticeable in the Middle East. Venice was “at the heart of the most extensive circulation system of the time, extending to the entire sea”[1]. She won "the largest share of purchases of pepper and spices from the Levant, at least from the Indian Ocean on the scales of the Levant" and she was "par excellence the dealer of these precious commodities in the West, especially to Germany, the largest consumer in Europe”[2]. The historian Élisabeth Crouzet-Pavan notes that Venetian merchants were active in all commercial places, from Constantinople to Crete, from Bruges to Armenia, from North Africa to Euboea. This domination was ensured by the technical superiority of the galleys from the Venetian Arsenal.
The per capita income in 1400 was then fifteen times higher than that of Paris, Madrid or London.
The Italian wars
In the 15th century, the Republic was one of the five main powers in Italy, alongside the Duchy of Milan, the Kingdom of Naples, the Republic of Florence, and the States of the Church. These different states competed for supremacy in Italy. Venice took advantage of this to extend its territory on the mainland (Bergamo, Brescia, Lodi, Friuli), notably at the expense of the Duchy of Milan.
The Peace of Lodi in 1454 ensured a status quo between these regional powers, but the irruption of major foreign powers at the end of the 15th century upset the balance. In 1494, the King of France Charles VIII entered Italy and then subjugated Naples. Venice took the initiative of the reaction. She gathered a coalition, the Holy League, made up of the main Italian states (except Florence and Naples). But their army could not block the king's return to France at Fornoue.
In 1499, Venice took Cremona, Rimini in Romagna and Trieste. This growth on the mainland worried its neighbors who formed an alliance against it in 1508:the League of Cambrai. It included formidable enemies, namely the pope, the emperor, the kings of France, England, Spain and Hungary. Not to mention Florence and Ferrara. Pope Julius II, whose temporal power was threatened by the Venetians in Romagna, pronounced a ban on the Republic on April 27, 1509. In principle, it could therefore no longer hold religious services on its territory. At the same time, the King of France Louis XII led the military operations. He entered Venetia and defeated the Venetian troops at Agnadel (in Italian Ghiaradadda). Despite this resounding defeat, Venice miraculously managed to save its state. The city was not taken and was even able to regain a foothold on the mainland thanks to the support of peasants or artisans[4]. Better still, in 1511, the League of Cambrai turned against the King of France:the Pope, the Spaniards and the English drove him out of Italy.
A few years later, the alliances reversed again. The Venetians supported this time the king of France François Ier who was engaged in a reconquest of the Milanese. This support proved decisive in the Franco-Venetian victory at Marignan in 1515.
In the following years, Italy remained a battlefield. Francis I and Charles V clashed there. Venice was one of the few Italian capitals not to be taken. Even Rome, the papal city, suffered a sack in 1527.
Loss of commercial and maritime supremacy (16th century-1797)
The historian Fernand Braudel brings the two reasons which explain the decline of the Republic from the 16th century:“What got the better of Venice were the roads of the world which move slowly from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic; it is the national states that grow. From the 16th century, Venice came up against these thick bodies:Spain, France, both with imperial pretensions; more still arises the Turkish Empire, colossus of another age, but colossus, against which it will be exhausted”.
The first reason, the calling into question of the old trade routes, intervened at the end of the 15th century when, on the one hand, Christopher Columbus approached America and when, on the other hand, Vasco da Gama doubled the Cap de Bonne- Espérance in 1498. New areas and new promising routes were thus opening up for shipowners and merchants. Bypassing Africa, the road to the Cape of Good Hope allowed Europeans to seek silks and spices from the Orient without going through the usual Venetian intermediary. Venice, like the rest of the Mediterranean, was marginalized and saw its traffic decrease. However, the growth of world consumption allowed the Republic to regain its level of trade in the 1560s. A return which should not hide the fact that it was no longer the largest European port. It never recovered its dominant position, especially since from the end of the 16th century, the Nordics (English and Dutch) interfered in Mediterranean trade and diverted it to their advantage.
The second reason for Venetian decline lies in its confrontation with large neighboring states. The Republic of Venice, despite its wealth and cultural brilliance, weighed little politically and militarily against France or Spain. But it was the newest member of the concert of great European powers, the Ottoman Empire, which caused him the most concern. The Turks captured one by one the Venetian counters on the roads of the Levant. In 1571, the Venetians provided about half of the ships of the Christian fleet which challenged the Ottomans. This was the victory of Lepanto (1571). Despite this success, Venice continued to lose ground. A year after Lepanto, she had to abandon Cyprus, in 1669, Candia. In 1718, the Peace of Passarovitz ratified the loss of the Morea, which the Republic had temporarily succeeded in reconquering in 1697.
The patriciate of Venice had consequently recomposed its economic foundation. The agricultural exploitation of the Mainland (silk, rice, hemp, sheep breeding) attracted the capital hitherto invested in distant trade.
Despite this difficult context, complicated by the plague epidemics at the end of the 16th century, the state was tolerant in the field of religion; free from all fanaticism, he carried out no executions for heresy during the years of the Counter-Reformation, although the population remained predominantly Catholic.
Faced with the Turkish threat, Venice had to ally itself with Austria, which had become the main power in northern Italy. Its economy was badly shaken by the wars. After about a millennium of independence, the Republic of Venice was conquered by Napoleon Bonaparte on May 12, 1797 at the end of the Italian campaign. The invasion of the French thus put an end to the century in which Venice had known the height of its influence, becoming the most elegant and refined European city of the 18th century, with a strong influence on art, architecture and literature. On the other hand, Napoleon was perceived as a sort of liberator by the Jewish population of Venice. He removed the barriers of the Ghetto as well as the movement restrictions imposed on the Jews.
There existed a Venetian or Venetian Republic in 1848-1849.
Institutions
The system of government of this state, relatively original for the time, was the Republic. But an oligarchic republic, like Florence, the free cities of the Empire, the United Provinces, and the Swiss Confederation. The great families of the city, represented in the Grand Council, elected the Doge (Duke) who conducted politics during his life. The Venetians developed over the centuries an original and very complex institutional organization aiming, on the one hand to concentrate powers between a limited number of patrician families of ancient origin, and on the other hand to avoid any evolution towards a system of the monarchical, despite the pre-eminence of a character, the Doge, who symbolized the power of the State and represented the Serenissima Republic.
The Arengo
Originally, the popular assembly or arengo had legislative power and elected the doge, head of state vested with executive and judicial powers. The Arengo was gradually replaced by the Grand Council.
Great Council
The Grand Council - supreme authority - replaced the popular assembly called arengo. From it emanated all the other institutions:their multiplication and the entanglement of powers favored the collegiality of decisions but also reciprocal supervision. It was made up of family members registered with the Patriarchate. All men over the age of 25 could participate, provided however that they had not married a commoner. The Venetian aristocracy consisted mainly of shipowners, merchants and bankers, whose income was based more on trade than on land. By the Serrata del Consiglio in 1297, access to the Great Council was restricted to those whose ancestors had been members. Insertion into the Venetian patriciate was therefore closed by right.
Meeting every Sunday, the Grand Council took political decisions, promulgated laws and chose senior magistrates. The tendency to delegate the powers of a large body to a small commission of specialists was a lasting characteristic of the organization of this oligarchic republic.
Senate
A legislative body composed of 200 members, the Senate was responsible for foreign policy and the appointment of ambassadors. Venetian ambassadors of this time sent secret reports of politics and rumors circulating in European courts, which have been a wealth of information for modern historians.
The Doge
The chief executive bore the title of doge (duke). He was theoretically elected for life. The life character was to continue unchanged over the centuries as the Doge gradually lost all personal power. The office of doge was vested in a member of a patrician family chosen from a restricted circle, but the transmission never became hereditary despite the attempts of a few. These attempts also resulted in changing the method of appointing the doge so as to exclude any possibility of hereditary transmission or monopolization by factions. Subsequently, the doges resigned often enough to retire to a monastic life, under pressure from the oligarchs, when they were discredited by their political action.
The Supreme College
Composed of the Doge, his six advisers, the Chancellor and the President of the Council of Ten, the Supreme College was the supreme organ of the Republic.
Council of Ten
Created in 1310 on a provisional basis, then made permanent in 1335, the Council of Ten is a judicial institution intended to sanction plots hatched against the Republic. Made up of 17 members, it had particularly extensive powers, even allowing it to dismiss the doge.
Overseas territories
Over the centuries, Venice occupied many territories of the Adriatic basin and the eastern Mediterranean, with a predilection for islands and ports that could serve its commercial interests. Like colonies of exploitation, these territories supplied it with wine, cereals, fruit, honey, wood and building materials. Two groups can be distinguished in this Venetian empire whose boundaries often varied[6]:
Gulf possessions
The Gulf corresponds to the Adriatic. From the 9th to the 11th century, Venice pursued the objective of dominating all the shores of this sea because it was aware of the risks of asphyxiation for its trade if an enemy had the idea of barring the Gulf. Were part of his possessions, not always at the same time:
* Trieste and Istria
* Zara
* Ragusa, which will then assert its independence
* Spalato
“No doubt these cities only ever recognized Venice as a distant sovereignty”[7]. But what mattered to the Venetians was to force all Adriatic traffic to pass through the port of Venice. The Serenissima fleet was there to call to order the cities recalcitrant to this commercial monopoly.
The possessions of the Levant
The Fourth Crusade generated the first expansion of Venice in the Greek East. Thanks to the logistical help given to the Crusaders, the Venetians participated in the division of the spoils of the Byzantine Empire in 1204. They received the coasts and islands of the Ionian Sea, the greater part of the Peloponnese, the Cyclades and some of the Sporades , places in Euboea, the positions of Gallipoli and Rodosto on the Straits, finally three-eighths of Constantinople, with the Church of Saint Sophia. The restoration of the Byzantine Empire in 1261 eliminated the Venetians from many of these territories.
At the beginning of the 15th century, the Republic possessed:
* Corfu
* Crete (Candia), purchased from the Marquis of Montferrat. Very important stopover on the way to Cyprus, Beirut or Alexandria.
* Coron and Modon, “the eyes of the Republic” in the far south of the Peloponnese.
* Négrepont (Evia)
* Cyprus,
* Lajazzo (?)
* Accre (?)
This set formed stops, strategic places on the road to Constantinople, the Black Sea, Syria or Egypt.