Venice: A New History

Given that the last major history of Venice in the English language was published in 1982 (John Julius Norwich's most excellent 'A History of Venice'), Madden's goal in his book is to use recent scholarship to create a new history of Venice. And while I am not always of the opinion that new is better, I do think Madden succeeds in writing a history of Venice that does feel fresh and that also addresses some of the more pernicious myths of Venetian history. I just wished he had stopped with the Congress of Vienna.Madden's style is accessible. He wanted to write a history meant for the popular audience. This is why there are no footnotes and, quite sadly, no true bibliography; though there is a further reading list. Regarding footnotes - John Julius Norwich also wrote a popular history of Venice. With footnotes. Footnotes that were sublime. This gets back to the idea that new is not always better. Madden also succeeds in situating Venice within the history of the times, though too often one of his claims about how representative government in Venice was and how different it was ignores histories of other areas. This myopia of his is most likely self-induced because he wants to defend his thesis that Venetian government was unique.Beginning with the turmoil affecting the 5th century Roman Empire, the history of Venice is an intriguing one. Beset by enemies on all sides, the people of the area fled to the lagoon for protection from invading armies and the crumbling empire's chaos and instability. But because they considered themselves Romans, the Venetians looked on the surviving half of the Empire - what became known as the Byzantine Empire - rather than on other cities and areas in what we now call Western Europe. This focus on the Byzantine Empire, combined with Venice's unique geography that meant the Venetians needed to focus on trade to meet their needs, would affect the course of Venice's evolution over the next millennium.Madden does an excellent job of detailing this evolution, although his treatment of art and architecture could be better. In particular his explanation of the details behind the Fourth Crusade (one of the most significant cultural low points of human history)and his treatment of Venice's decline because it failed to take advantage of the changed landscape of the 15th and 16th centuries is excellent. Poor Venice. Constantinople had fallen. And the Portuguese had found a way to the riches of the East that left no room for Venice as the middleman. Trade, which had once sustained the Venetian Empire, began to ebb. And Ottoman conquests in the Eastern Mediterranean saw Venice's empire shrink to nothing.The events after Napoleon could have been summarized in one chapter given how this is the low point of Venetian history and how Madden's book is not able to give the centuries as much detail as he should. Still, this is a good history of Venice and should not be missed on the reader's Grand Tour of Venetian histories.

I really wish I had read this book before visiting Venice. That said, Madden provides a fascinating and detailed biography of Venice, his emphasis on its unique place in European history as a republic and as a center of commerce and capitalism hundreds of years before the rest of the Continent adapted these ideas. The unique relationship of Venice with Constantinople and its place as a major medieval commercial center are the primary foci of the book. It is at once entertaining, informative and insightful.This high praise aside, there are two issues I took with Madden's writing. The first is the almost unapologetically Venetian view he takes on Venice's role and place in Mediterranean politics. I cannot imagine a historian of Genoa (Venice's Italian maritime rival to the west) having the same attitude and coming to the same conclusions about Venice's role as Madden does. Similarly, Madden's treatment of the Fourth Crusade, if not a white-wash of Venice's role in the sacking of Constantinople, than something close to it, was a bit much for my tastes. Admittedly the Byzantine Emperors were often some shady characters, but as Madden writes it, the Venetians were wholly unsoiled of any wrongdoing. The second issue I have is with its lack of detail since the Napoleonic age.Some allowance can be made on this point, as Madden's area of expertise is the Middle Ages and Early Modern period; still, given the depth and fascinating details of the birth and growth of the Venetian republic, I had anticipated the same of his coverage of Venice in the 19th century: its relationship to the Habsburgs, the unification of Italy, the "Italia Irredenta" of the early 20th century. Instead there is an almost maudlin tone as Madden seems to grieve the decay and collapse of the once-great city, only to be imagined (and reborn) as a tourist haven and "Disneyland for adults."In the final analysis, though, I loved the book. The history is terribly interesting, and the minute details of the city, its architecture and art are information I wish I had before I visited. Alas, it seems I will have to return to that magical place now armed with an eye for the history hidden in plain sight. A highly recommended read.

I’m only a couple of chapters into the book so reviewing it may be a bit premature. However, here goes. So far I find it very easy to read and very informative. I particularly appreciated how the picture of the gradual colonisation of the lagoon islands was built up as it’s difficult to imagine for yourself how such a developed city state could arise in a swamp.However, I have to say that for a general reader the amount of detail is unnecessary and quickly gets rather bewildering. A list of characters at the end of the book with a basic description of their role in Venice’s history would be very helpful.

A good introduction to the history of Venice that makes you want to research further into a fascinating and unique city.

Readable and informative - covering the development of Venice from its beginnings to the present day.

I come from a family of academic historians, with more than a passing knowledge of Venice. I have some respect for Madden as historian - albeit a very opinionated and sometimes controversial one - of the middle ages. However, rarely have I encountered quite such a spectacularly bad book as this one. You really should not waste your money on it. The chapters that deal with the eighteenth century onwards are quite remarkably ill-informed, and, indeed, contrive to misinform the reader. Heaven help the poor soul who trusts this as accurate or based on any real scholarly engagement with the literature on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Venice. Let me just highlight a few of the more outrageous statements. On p.358 Madden tells us that 'For more than a thousand years Venice had been the only republic in the world - one that flourished in an age of kings, emperors, and tyrants.' True Venice was the longest lived republic in history, but the only republic? Prof. Madden, in the late eighteenth-century before the invasion of the French there were still republics in Genoa and Lucca. In the renaissance there had been republics in Milan and Florence. Has Prof. Madden never heard of the Dutch Republic? Was not the Commonwealth in England a republic? On the same page he tells us that 'In the seventeenth century European thinkers began to rediscover republican government ...' Well quite a few Italians had been pretty keen on it before then. Has Prof. Madden never heard of Machiavelli? I suspect if he has, his knowledge goes no further than Il Principe, because if he had read the Art of War or the Discorsi (to which Machiavelli alluded in the Prince) then he would have been well aware of a sixteenth-century engagement with republican ideals in the works of the great Florentine.A few pages later Madden tells the reader that Venice 'in a supreme irony ... would die at the hands of a liberal republic'. Well, not really.The Directory was only 'liberal' if one wants to use the loosest of definitions. Moreover, it was not really the Directory that brought an end to Serenissima, but the young Napoleone Buonaparte (for thus he was called) acting very much on his own initiative. Venice was 'not executed for the crime of medieval tyranny' (although Napoleon's apologist Daru tried to make this case later ... a fact which, Prof. Madden actually recognises on p.383), but was wiped off the map because it happened to match Bonaparte's own ambitions and French strategy to attack the neutral power. (The caricature of the French Revolution that is contained in the same paragraph beggars belief, and is the sort of glib nonsense that ought to get a mediocre undergraduate a firm talking to.) Similarly the contrasting comparison between France and Spain on the one hand, and the Venetian Republic on the other is appallingly misleading ... the former we are told 'were a collection of diverse regions each with its own language, customs, and concerns'. Well, was this not equally true of the Venetian Republic, which even at its end ruled over Greeks and Slavs, and a variety of Italians speaking languages pretty much as diverse as those in France? (I would advise Prof. Madden to look at a dictionary of Bergamaco, even if he has no interest in the Greek or Dalmatian- speaking subjects of the Serenissima if he thinks Venetian subjects on the Terraferma all spoke the same language!) Moreover, if he thinks the French suddenly all became 'French' with the revolution he has another thing coming. It's old, but he might start with a quick glance at Weber's classic Peasants into Frenchman.The treatment of eighteenth-century Venice shows no knowledge of or serious engagement with Tron (a reformer who effectively outdid Pombal and Joseph II in his assault on religious orders), Emo (an admiral whose fleet impressed Goethe and whose victories showed that, while the young American Republic had to pay protection money to north African pirates, the Venetian Republic could still pack a military punch), or with the economy of the city, which the work of Georgelin in the 1970s demonstrated was far from moribund. The treatment of the period of Austrian domination is completely overshadowed by a hackneyed account of Byron (a story better told elsewhere in legion books, and I would hazard largely derived in Madden's book from John Julius Norwich's not especially good Paradise of Cities), and a few half-truths about the development of the railway link with Milan. The entire engagement with the period shows an almost wilful ignorance of a now substantial literature on both the first and second Austrian dominations. Madden's account of 1848 is thin and misleading, and I suspect also derived principally from a single book, Jonathan Keates's Siege of Venice. (Significantly, in the suggestions for further reading, Madden cites Paul Ginsborg's still outstanding Daniele Manin and the Venetian Revolution, but if he has read this classic, there is little sign that he has either understood or digested its contents.) The acquisition of Venice in 1866 - a problematic episode that reveals much about the distinctive nature of the city and its inhabitants - is dismissed in a couple of sentences. If a reader has any interest in Venice after, say, Lepanto, they really should not trust this book at all.Thomas Madden once wrote the following of Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven"Ridley Scott has repeatedly said that this movie is 'not a documentary' but a 'story based on history.' The problem is that the story is poor and the history is worse."The treatment of the more recent centuries in Venice. A New History makes me inclined to pass a similar judgment. There is a brilliant story (history) to be told of Venice from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries in an accessible form. Madden has the talents (he is a good medievalist, and no one can deny that he can certainly turn a phrase) to have pulled this off. However, if this is the best he can do, he has been lazy both intellectually and in his research, doing little more than recycling old myths, half truths and clichés, and showing an almost wanton disregard for a growing secondary literature.

Excellent read. I should have read it before I visited Venice. But I did read it prior to my next visit.