The Final Fall of Venice

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It feels like it shouldn't be allowed But in you go, you sail from the Adriatic just in, just sail in from the ocean, through the narrowest of entrances in the thin, low lying barrier islands, past the Punta Sabioni lighthouse, you just keep going and there it is. there it is Venice. You can tie up your little boat in the marina by the San Giorgio Maggioree church Right opposite Staint Mark's is Square, it's actually the best ke secret. You pay a few pounds, a few bucks, a few euros. You can stay there every night, you have the best view in the world. Or you keep cruising a little bit further on. you actually just sail into the grand canal itself, straight on up until you get to the Ponte dell Academia. That's the first bridge across canal as you come Only then you have to turn around. There you are surrounded by glamorous speedboats and Hollywood stars and all sorts of people and you're in your little battered old sailing boat, you turn aroundound and head out again. It's one of the greatest things I've ever done. You approach Venice as it should be approached, not by some hellish car, some nasty aluminium box driving over some horrible road bridge, No with the tickle of a south East La blowing you up the Adriatic and into the city. For this is a city of the sea. It was the beating heart of one of history's great maritime empires. Oh and when it was so at its height medval Venice would have been a sight to behold Buildings springing from the surface of the water. The furnaces on the lagoon island of Morano, firing, glass makers tinkering, coloud wares sparkling in front of their shop frronts. The hustle and bustle of the port, the groaning ships laden with spices and goods from all over the world, Venice the epicenter of Mediterranean trade It was always a city that shouldn't have been possible. In fact, it's one of the worst places in Europe in which to build a city and it's testament to the desperation of those pioneers that they did so. in around four hundred and twenty one That is It was begun. It was built into the mud flats of a shallow lagoon. There was no farmland Now obvious natural resources to sustain them in it somehow This became one of the richest and most powerful places in medieval Europe And it was different as well. In an age of kings and emperors, Venice took alternative route it built a republic where a doge ruled, but never alone checked at every turn by councils and law, restricted in his ability to accept Gifts from foreigners And from this unlikely foundation Bennet did something extraordinary. it became a great middleman. it became Trading hub It sat between East and west. It channeeled silks and spices and luxury goods from Asia and the Islamic world into Europe And all of that depended on a formidable Navy one that was built in a vast state shipyard capable of turning out vessels on an industrial scale This was a modern maritime super For centuries it stood Well, theyre the center of the world P like all powers, it wanes eventually Everything fades away, folks Venice fell into decline, it was eventually strangled to death by Napoleon who threatened to bombard the city with his gunships Joining me today on Dance Snow's History Hit. Tell this incredible story of the rise and fall of Venice is the brilliant historian Roger Crowley. I've been a big fan of his books for years. He's the author of City of Fortune, How Venice won and Lost a naval Empire And he's going to help me explore one of the most extraordinary success stories of medievalist not just of medieval history in fact, of global history Enjoy Roger, thanks so much for coming on the podcast Thank you very much, Dan, I'm delighted to be with you If you were going to build a great Magnificent powerful world city. Would you necessarily think, look at that lagoon and think, Ohh, that's a great place to do it. Tell me about the geography of Venice. Well, absolutely. you wouldn't think stuck at the top of the Adriatic with a cul deac In fact, it wasn't a call of fact Bronze Age onwards, it's been a corridor, a trade corridor connecting central Europe. with the Etern Mediterranean and places beyond But the were predecessors actually, to Venice, there was Adrif, which Greek town which was a trade hub Adratic its name, but it's now fifteen miles out the Pe, which has been filtered up It was then followed by a Roman city called Aquileia, which again had the same function of the transmission of goods to and from the Mediterranean into Central Europe This is destroyed by Tila the Hun in one, I think So there's always been a role for a commercial hub at the top of the Adriatic And this is the one which Venice is going to inherit Then this is the only city in Italy that did not exist in Roman times It's kind of self invented after the collapse of the Roman Empire So that's the sort of the regional geography. What about the precise place where Venice is? because There are nice fies and orchards around it and places where you can grow food. I mean, tellell us where they established what would become the city of Venice Well, this was a flight really from the collapse and the terror of the end of the Roman Empire and of the Huns kind of ravaging through that part of the world It was really a desperate safety measure to put yourself in the lagoon offshore where you can't be attacked evenly. to start building these extraordinary fragile huts on stilts in this shallow water And obviously they've got nothing. You know, they've got no land. The only resources they've got really are fish and salt. And these are really the beginnings of their trade, selling fish and salt to people roundab. So you could certainly say it's unpromising But the only way forward for these people once they' establish themselves in one form or another was going to be through trade And the trade that they are going to develop over a period of time is going to be effectively controls the Adriatic. Obviously they don't know this in the early stes. The Venice is self invented. It comes up with its own story about how it was created on March twenty fifth of four twenty one AD at noon So it not only creates its own economy over a period of time, but it creates its own own story because it has no story, it has no saints Everything that it constructs is going to be really something that is either borrowed, begged, or stolen. from somebody else over a period of time Isn't that amazing? They head out to the marshes, the most marginal piece of land they can find, not even land really, and they build a settlement of on stilts, try and get away from the hunish cavalry and various other people But it works. Does that geography protect it? Is it rather a clever move? I mean, take me through the firsts of decades and centuries and of Venice's rise Well, obviously they're safe Because unless you've got a maritime competitor, nobody can really get at you and nobody really bothers about you process of development for the Venetians is actually as they expand down the coast of Italy trading they start to rub up against the Etern shores of the Adratic, which is sort of Slavic And if they wish to develop a trade, they're going to have to meddle with these people. They're a big pirate Confederacy on the eastern shores of the Adriatic So developing the ability to in fact, wage war on a maritime level to control the Adriatic is the essential step for them and this will develop over a number of centuries. They come to call the adriatic. A house The moments of their existence which are the most fragile for them are going to be Those times when they are bottled up in the addriatic and it does h So controlling the addriatic is critical absolutely critical and really reducing it to a kind of neo colony And this is really what happens over the first few centuries. And eventually they would have Cfu, which they called the door of our house Geopolitically controlling that addriatic is everything to them Without the Adriatic, they're literally dead in the water Yeah So Roger, a little bit we think of some empires an army spreading across wide open plains and conquering territory in big color on the map Is Venice a little bit more like the early English emmpire? It's tow holes. It's sort of little forts and important promontories all the way down the Adriatic coast. It's islands like Corfu Perhaps it begins as a warehouse for trade, then you have to provide a security force, then you might as well take over the city or the headland. Is that how this empire starts to expand down through what is now Croatia and into places like Greece Yes, absolutely. I mean, you could take Venice as a prototype model of small state maritime empires of which Britain was one and the Dutch or another They hold very little territory They're not a large population They cannot colonize on a large scale What they need are bases strategic bases, a network which expand out into the Mediterranean over a period of time. which will allow them to trade goods with people across the Eastern Mediterranean. There are never very many Venetians in their empire. I mean is probably the most heavily actually colonized place this lightweight maritime network And obviously, it depends upon maritime force, your military and commercial carrying facility is critical. So attending to the details of the sea, both in terms of the bases that you construct and your premeability at shipbuilding and sailing critical, if you want to say one thing about the Venetians is are they're sailors. And that's what we like about them on this podcast. So Richard, we won't melt everyone's brains with the political collection of Europe In the five hundred years, after the sack of Rome. But we've got Byzantines, we've got Goths, we've got Germans. we've got everyone fighting it out in Italy. We've got Italian players as well Does Venice just sort of slightly sit back and watch them all hacking each other to death and sit there safe in its lagoon just growing rich off the trade and eventually establish its own independence I think that's a reasonably good account of it. I mean they haven't C can't put boooks on the ground booos. there aren't very many of them, and it's not until the sixteenth century that they start to have any territorial presence in Italy Pass this by on the wholeo competitor are going to be other maritime powers and particularly Genoa The mayhem of Italy and everything that goes on there really is kind of not their business. They really do not want to get involved And this makes them outlier of what's going on and all kinds of interesting relationships with the biggest power player in Italy, which is the Papacy, I suppose Venetians, you know, say we Venetians first then then Christians kind of thing And they're in continuous trouble with the papery for not doing X, Y and Z. And they will not brook interference from outsiders Therefore, they look at the Pope thought absolute spiritual authority and over Venice and Venician said no look, we're just not having this So they're routinely excommunicated for not doing something or other. And also the other element of it I tend to think of Venice in a way as being like a a sort of corporate body and your corporate logo is the mark really. And clustering around, unifying around this figure of Mark is really important to the Venetians They cannot afford to have internal Bees factional disputes within the city. They haven't got a feudal system. so they have a nobility, but they haven't got a peasant class whom they can control. Everybody is a contributor in a way. And it's only occasionally there's one doge who tries to do a deal a sort of coup with other powers, Marine Falero in the thirteen hundreds. who was executed and They construct their political system very carefully to avoid any one person getting control of this city. So the election for the Doge process Fifteen people would elect nine people who would elect seven people elect eleven people who would elect the Doge. and the aim of this was to stop any one group filtering into a position where they get control of the lobby which will elect the doge. So it's a very complicated but very sophisticated process. The Doge is not allowed to accept any gifts from a foreign power, greater than a pot of herbs This fear and this one episode with one do who went Rue. was one of the reasons why they've got incredible political stability which everybody supports And stability and continuity, right? So you might have a wonderful king Oh queen elsewhere, but then they die and their children are completely hopeless and they will fight each other. Is is an advert for peaceful transmission of power and government that is controlled albeit by an oligarchy, but where there is a you have to have an element of consent Yeah, absolutely. it is. It is an advert You don't get nepotism in this system Generally, people who in the end will be elected tend to be people who have done great things in the Venetian empire They come with a good track record of being CEO part of the Venetian Empire But it certainly prevents any kind of nepotism And it' unruffled really throughout the centuries Interesting. So they've come up with a a fascinating political solution that really suits them. They're invulnerable to even your mighty kings. They can't march a big army across that lagoon Q question, Roger is, what have they got to trade? Are these building ships that are very good at carrying other people's trade? They're kind of producing them themselves, right No, I mean, there's absolutely nothing. They've got absolutely nothing which is valuue to people. There are two elements of this, I think you're right. One is that they fine tune the whole business of shipbuilding maritime teechnology and power with one part of it The other is that they are essentially middle men and the middlemen need bases across the Mediterranean from which you operate. So over a period of time, the Venetian Empire, I likek the British Empire. if you think of the British Epire, you know, thoughtort of brought her Malta, Aiden S is bay, these kind of little points. and then the same with the Portuguese, they couldn't control much territory But their aim was really to control of key nodle trading points over the centuries and these become very important to them So Corfu is important. They get a couple of useful little bases on the south coast of the Peloponnese The big one is going to be Creep Crete is really their only full blown colonial experience a foothold in Constantinople, in the Black Sea in the Sea of Azof. And these are tiny footprints, but they're controlled and generally for very heavily fortified Th provide the opportunity to move goods across the Mediterranean They study the whole technology, if you like, of buying and selling very careosfly The merchants are extremely well informed What they do is they understand supply and demand and supply and demand is if you want people to come and buy from Venice and this is what they did. they wanted to have very large trade fas at regular intervals, you have to have just in time delivery. So they would send out galleies on different trading routes. someome would go to North Africa, some would go to Constantinople, the Black Sea ough it would even be a Flanders route, which would see Venetian vessels in the Thames And the aim was that these ships were timed to come back for the annual trade fair And the annual trrade Fare brought in people from all over Europe And this is where they bought and sold And u they tax Quite lightly, they didn't rip people off. They understood that a three and a half to five percent tax on all goods coming into the country. So they understand these various elements of wealth, just in time delivery, having the goods stable currency which was the the nation Ducker. which was the most releliable currency in the whole of the Mediterranean. Gold coins, three and a half grams of pure gold If you clipped this coin, you'd be executed. And this was the dollar of its day and it was recognized as far away as India as being a currency. The Indians thought that the picture of the doge kneeling before St. Mark was actually some kind of Hindu god leaving that to one side. So that they've nail done all the key elements here, currency, just in time having the goods treating people reasonably. They have lodging houses for merchants coming from all over Europe for these fares. This is kind of like the soak of Europe And they would sell anything. if there were the market for it Grround up mummies from the Valley of the Kings sold as them medicinal cure You know? And I suppose like the British Empire later, like Aiden Like in Singapore Hong Kong. You go there for a momotent because you're not going to get your warehouse nicked by a capricious monarch or his drunken son There's the rule of law, there's insurance, there's brokerage. It's a good place to do business and you think, well, let's just put our trade through Venice. Well actually chances are we'll get our goods on time and we're not going to get ripped off Absolutely. And they did have a Jewish community who were very important in the fiscal arrangement because they were usethful money lenders But certainly the fidelity of Venice, its deals, its currency was recognized across the whole of Europe So it's a republic. There's a sharing of power unlike elsewhere does that stretched down to normal citizens, men and women? Are they part of this project, do they have any say or and are they economically empowered wouldn't have any say in the electing of the Doge. This would have been probablyrobably the wealthier commercial families but they had a stake And anyone could have a stake For example, in a commercial enterprise If a Gally is going to go to Alexandria to buy spices, even women could put a little bit of money into this venture So everyone does have a stake here, actually Obviously there's a trickle down of wealth as well But they're not a voiceless minority then it's also provides a lot of employment partarticularly in the arrsenal. which has a very large, very skilled labor force. These are the aristocrats of the of the working population, very skilled people Each of them had their own specialisms in various parts of the whole fabrication of ships. Some guys are very good at making ws, some people canons, you know, blah blah, blah. And they are in Nili, which are about, I think about two thousand They even had pensions at the end of their working lives, even if they were beyond work, they could just totter down there and do nothing. they would still be paid. So everybody generally They do have a stake also control immigration very carefully, although there's this sort of commonwealth of Slavs and people down the coast of Ari who are quite important for extraction of products, particularly timber. It's very difficult to become a citizen of Venice You know, if you're not a born Venetian So you know, this is controlled as well. But generally everybody Everybody buys into this project. The logo of St. Mark is kind of in everybody's mind, the fidelity to this And the great festivals of the year like the Ascension Day Festival when the doge gets into the Glden barge and goes out into the lagoon, into the Adriatic and drops a ring in the sea say we marry the sea. Ebody would have participated in that And there was a great place of ceremonial and you know, all kinds of stuff going on around a mark square and everybody has a part in this So I think we could say there are occasional incidents, but very few incidances at which there's any sign of insurrection within the city. The genius with which they constructed this really I thought it was evolutionary rather than somebody saying, right, let's have a little model of what the perfect state looks like and then we can carry it out And I think the base of this was because of the ecological insecurity of Venice, rising tides wipe out your city that everybody had to pitch in barricade the city against the sea as much as anything else So everybody has a stake in survival on this fragile ship, you could call it Listen, D dance knows history folks, Tom about Venice don't go away Summmer' here and that means travel season is in full swing, road trips, last minute flights, quick weekend getaways, or anything else that feels like an escape And sure Travel can be a little chaotic plans change, things go off track But that's what makes it memorable When you're out there making the most of it, it help to have somewhere reliable waiting for you That's why Best Western hotels and resorts is such a solid option. It's cozy, convenient, and exactly what you need after a full day of exploring, wandering or just figuring it out as you go This summer get one thousand bonus points and a chance to win two hundred fifty thousand bonus points. So wherever you're headed, make your stay part of the journey and make it count with this limited time offer Life's a trip. Make the most of it at bestestwestern. com No additional purchase necessary for sweeps, seeee bonus Point in season Sweep rules for details and visit Bestwestern. com for complete terms and conditions What started the Civil War? What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere? And did the Vikings ever reach America I'm Don Weildm And on American History hit, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made America We'll visit the battlefields and debate floors where the nation was formed, meet the characters who have altered it with their touch, and count the votes that have changed the direction of our laws and leadership Find American History Hit twice a week every week, wherever you get your podcasts. American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit You mentioned the arsenal there. The arsenal is where they build these ships. As you say, they build oars and cannon and everything The arsenal always presents me with a bit of a problem because when we say the indndustrial Revolution began in Britain And the first factories are in Britain, us Brits get very excited about that in the eighteenth century. The arsenal looks a lot like an industrial process, doesn't it? Way before that. Tell me a bit more about that and how they build these ships Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, Dan. I mean, it's sort of like a prototype version of Henry Ford assembly. They worked out all the features of chip buildilding And they divided them into specialisms So you have guys who make oars, you have guys who make ropes. you have a rope walk where they just make ropes And these are color coded according to their use Quality control is everything because Venetans they've fine tuned this down to the basics really that a snap rope can lead to a shipwreck and the loss of a whole ship full of valuable goods So what they did was they assembled all the parts of these ships. They have two types of ships, effectively the war Galley, which is kind of fast ring boat with sails, and then the merchant Galley which had bigger chip was the bulk carrier of goods which also had oars for manoeuvering, but was basically a sailing ship. That was a ship which actually brought in the goods The war Gall is prrotect the Venetian But they broken this all down into bits. So when it came to water, what it didn to do was to dry store all the parts that you needed, like the hulls, the os and so on And when it came to a war, they would put all these together incredibly quickly and party piece when Henry the Third, I think a front. In front of him, the Asenenovi constructed a galley in front of him in the course of a meal. and they were driven nuts when they tried to ally with the Spanish during the time of the Ottoman War The Spanish took forever to get their ships togethervered because they didn't have enough road mill, they didn't have The right orord of mask They micromage this down to the level of forestry into individual trees. So you need some trees which are ideal for mass, you need other trees which will provide the curved skeleton of the hull You know, they've really micromaged this that evolved over a longish period of time. It was, you know, it just blew people away when they saw it. one thing they didn't get quite right for a while, was that actually Making gunpowder in this place wasn't exactly brilliant. and they had a couple of disastrous explosions. And in the end they decided,h, well, I think we better take gunpowder manufacture off into Mirano Biranao, one of the little islands in the lagoon. They haven't got it quite right. But in the end, people have never seen anything like this. It's protected by a huge wall which was manned day and night by Watchmen. becausecause obviously this could be a prime target The watchman had to give the call to the next watchman, and if they failed to do it, they'd be removed. The lion of Venice has on it, an open book saying peeace to you, Mark The Venetian Arsenal have the lion of Venice. over its gate, but the book is shut. This is we're ready for war. But there's three things really going on here. One is the realalta, where the merchandise is sold. This is the great sk One is the Dog's Palace, the centre of administration. and one is the arsenal Yeah they're almost within shouting distance of each other about three hundred yards away from each other. So this is a very unified basis and example of how these bits work together Tell me about the fourourth Crusade. So the thirteenth century, got one of the many crusades heading to the Holy land, as the Europeans described it to try and revive Christian fortunes there And Venice gets very, very involved Yeah, this is an extraordinary Tle of mission creep. Crusaders turn off in Venice because they know this is a place for ships. and They strike a deal to take thirty five thousand crusaders to the Holy land eighty five thousand marks, which have an awful lot of money Venice agrees to the deal It involves a year's work and half the male population of Venice in the construction of ships This actually is kind of a founding moment actually in the development of Venetian. building The probleblem is that the guys who came along did the deal, assume that thirty five thousand crusaders would all come to Venice, but they don't, they come from other places When it comes to departure They can't Hey They haven't gotten the eighty five thousand marks. And so from the beginning The crusade is in trouble The Venetians are extxtremely worried, they've stopped all trade for a year to build these ships And as they set out down the Adratic, you start to get all kinds of mission creep goes on. Firstly, there's We decide that we need to duff out some Christian thin place called Zara on the On the shoulders of the Adriatic. They go on and it becomes it's quite difficult to explain, but I think in the background of this, everybody knows that Constantinople is a red apple, one of the those most desirable wealthy places in the world. and they kind of signed a prettender to the throne of the The emperor of Constantinople and For reasons which are pretty still obscured, I think to many people. They deviate and decide that there's been an injustice for the prettender and we need to replace the present emperor with this emperor So they end up sacking Constantinople. This is an extraordinary fate of meting group Pope accuses the Venetian probably quite recently of being dogs returning to their own vomit And Constantinople is sacked. I mean, it's not only the Venetans, there are various other factions involved who are kind of interested in this Out of this for Venice comes an awful lot of things that they want Venice doesn't want land A lot of the Byzantine empire is divided up into lots to various little baronies in greef and so on Venice doesn't want, it wants bases. so what it gets out of it are very useful pieces of strategic. Harbing On the south coast of Greece, Negro Pontte, which is a long Island Evia The islands of the Aegean And most important of all, Crete So this provides donations with a complete Trading Web trading like the Genuese, they also get a foothold in Constantinople This is valuable, not only for trading content Nwor, but then they can start trading up the Black Sea and into the Sa of Azov. So they now on this basis have that complete little network of small state maritime we talked about earlier And so from the Venetian point of view, this is a critical turning point in their fortunes. They're now connected everywhere. They can trade with the Muslims Alexandria, they can trade with the people in the Black Sea. They can control the sea in many ways. they can control the Etern Mediterranean. extxtraordinary that the Constantopople has held out against Muslims against quote, unquote, Barian forces coming down from central Europe, and then it falls to this Venetian crusader force in the thirteenth century. It's extraordinary moment. And the Venetians don't just get islanders. They get a bit a loot as well, don't they? They get some nice statues which p people will be familiar with. Oh, they do. They get the brickab brac that is on the front of St Mark's, there are the four horses which came from the hippodrome. there are various little statues of emperors. There are people on the tops of columns All sorts of pieces of interesting pieces of marble. icons Yeah, they took the good stuff They took the good stuff back to Ven it's amazing about regional rivalries? We've got Genue, you've mentioned They go after each other, don't they? The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries And then you get the coming of the Ottomans. The Venetians they're often at war, aren't they They are Genoa is the main rival in the Mediterranean, the same kind of maritime base. The Genoese are very different to the Venetians. They're great individualists actually Their political system is a basket case with various noble factions taking over it's very unstable They're very innovative actually, the Genoes. things like gold currency, stern rudders, maritime insurance clocks these are things invented by the Genoese So they're very interesting It comes to a the fighting across theast Mediterranean between the Venetians and the Generus, particularly in Cyprus Wherever the two meet, somebody summed up the difference between the Venetians and the Genoese Unfavorable to Mes and said, The Genes are like donkeys. When you hit them, they all scatter Venetans are like pigs. When you hit them, they all cluster together the two, but Venice's near death experience happens At the end of the fourteenth century, when the Genoese established themselves just down the coast from Venice. and effectively barricade The Venetians into their own lagoon. they're also in league with the Hungarians as well The warar of Kiodia And it's almost the end of Venice because they're slowly being starved to death. In the last minute they managed to turn the tables on the Genois and Kyodjia. The lesson there is really If you can't control the Adriatic, you are dead in the water. And this was as close as they got, really before the end of theomian Republic with Napoleon pitching up a few hundred years later But these two the Venetians and the Jenoese, I mean, they both trade in Alexandria. The Genoese, when they were being ripped off, they got very angry and carried out some military enterprises The Venetians were much more subtle. They used diplomacy, they worked around them, they found solutions And so in the long run, they kind of win out over this commercial contest. More Venice coming up after this What started the Civil War ended the conflict in Vietnam Who was Paul Revere And did the Vikings ever reach America Don W Weilddan And on American History hit, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made America. We'll visit the battlefields and debate floors where the nation was formed, meet the characters who have altered it with their touch, and count the votes that have changed the direction of our laws and leadership Find American History Hit twice a week every week, wherever you get your podcasts American History Head, a podcast from History Head Another great rival emerges in the Etern Meditrane, particularly the Ottoman expansion. You get these extraordinary battles taking place between the Ottomans and the Venetians, theseese Venetian fortresses that have been built on these islandors that you've mentioned Is fourteen fifty three the important turning point there Constantinople falls. to the force of Islam, the Turks And they keep pushing on from there It definitely is done yeah. at this point, the Ottomans who are not a maritime force But they're very good at co opting people and say Land that they conquer Greece particularly. They develop navies from this point on And we start to see the Ottomans kind of pushing into the Mediterranean The Venetians who are fastidious. study the Ottomans in enormous detail as to how to deal with this. They're very good at diplomacy. It's difficult dealing with the sultan. Ven youian said, dealing with the sultan is like juggling a glass ball. you know, it's easy to drop but them Diplomats, their fingertips, they trained up people to speak Ottoman, Turkish to try and soften up themself and they's provided gifts that The Ottomans advance and advance into the Mediterranean and we're going to see The the nation colonies or emmpire slowly dismantle bit by bit. We're going to see Evia, which is on the east coast of Greece taken. That was an important base We're going to see them scoop up the islands. The big one comes is going to be Crete. Crete is the only place that the Venetians actually occupied. on a colonial basis and where they actually settled was the hinge of there of their maritime empire. It was the base Voyages to Alexandraa And when the Ottomans come for this at the start of the seventeenth century, this is a critical moment the siege of Heracleon It turned out to be the longest siege, I think, in world history, twenty one years but the Ottomans get it. and at that point we start to see the collapse of the Venetans' ability to trade They're being slowly, slowly bottled up And this is the point really at which because they have Nothing elf apart from trade, it iss becoming more difficult And despite their diplomatic juggling game with the Ottomans. They cannot win this. and it's getting to the it does get to the point where Ottomans are on the coast of the Adriatic are almost within distance of Venice And this is the sort of the existential moment for Venice really where coming H harder and harder for them to manage an empire At this point they start to the quite a famous painting of The Lion of St Mark and Smart Lion for the first time has his Wellthough he's got bodies in sea, his paws are on the land. and at that point They're starting to expand modestly into territory in Italy as well So at this point, we're going to see the start of the long decline of Venice And I suppose that you give a sense thoughre the Ottomans encroaching The Ottoman Empire becomes so big and indeed starts to occupy lots of bits of Eastern Europe. So trade, if you want to trade with Etern Europe, you can start to go through that Autumn empire, I suppose. The Ottomans can start to corner that trade by creating that one vast reasonably homogenous empire, but it's also the poor Venetians are getting it from the other direction as well, some Europeans because you're obviously a huge expert in Indian Ocean. but let's quickly just rehearse the fact that One of the bo unholy and fascinating alliances, I think in history is the fact that the Portuguese erupt into the Indian Ocean. and start bypassing that trade route that traditionally goes across the Indian Ocean into what we now call Middle East, Northeast Africa from Alexandria and then to Europe, the Portuguese can take it all the way around in their own holes. And so you get the Venetians kind of allying themselves with Muslim nations trying to get the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean. Fascinating. Yeah. I mean, the signal moment was the spice trade was very important to the Venetians via the Mamlos in Egypt When the Portuguese get to Malaca Portuguese writer said, He who has Malacca has his hands on the throat of Venice And there's almost a day in Venice when they hear that the Portuguese forgotten to the Indiancean. and There are bank crashes actually, because they realize that this is really an existential threat to the wholesale of the kinds of luxury goods the silks, the perfumes, the gold the bes. if no under threat and indeed you can start in a way to see the Mediterranean itself becoming almost a back water for a much larger global game that's going to develop And certainly I think the moment when the Portuguese make it in the Indian Ocean is a very, very important turning point. And as you say, they're looking for support from the Ottomans at this point to do something in the Indian Ocean, which they do make some attempt at This is a moment, I think when the decline of Venice is registered. You can almost register it to the day when they got the news that the Portuguese were there. But Venice holds out in the end It's that man who reorders Europe in it' in virtually its entirety. It's Napoleon Bonaparte who delivers the final blow. justust quickly take us right the way through to the end because Denice has still been largely invulnerable to You can take away its trade, but it's still there. No one's conquered it. but then what happens Well, as I say, gets involved in the politics of Italy. and have land holdings in Italy You can see it morphing. I mean it's still trading within the Mediterranean. It's become still a commercial and financial hub And quite quickly it's becoming a tourist resort actually by the seventeenth century. you know, people want to come here They want to see it. They want to spend their money here. So it's a long, slow decline They still hold on to the Adriatic. The Adriatic is somehere they plunder for all kinds of resources for shipbuilding, for stone and so on and trading within that perimeter And the one place that the Ottomans try several times to take but never take is Corfu So they've still got an entrance into the Mediterrane and they're still trading Increasingly, it's becoming outro a phenomenon in Europe. and obviously by the time we get to the eighteenth century it's the place of the Grand Tour. with the Venetians still doing very well out of people coming It helped to have as many saints in your city as possible. They're very good at stealing saints from people. Having stir in St. Mark, they've got a bit of Stt Nicholas and these are very good because the faithful will come to your city to be involved So it's a long slow decline. into gentility, you could say And when Napoleon comes and trundles off with the four horses, it is the end But you could see down the coast in a lot of the places that have been Venetian colonies Great suddenness