Books: Venice - Pure City By Peter Ackroyd

 

(Drivebycuriosity) - Venice belongs to the most fascinating places of the world. Today the city is just an enchanting outdoor museum, but "La Serenissima" was once a global power. Peter Ackroyd describes in "Venice - Pure City" how the mediterranean place evolved over the times (amazon). The book is written like a biography, a pleasure to read and highly informative. Ackroyd informs the reader in an entertaining way about Venice´s economy, architecture, art, cuisine, fashion, social life, her struggle with enemies & competitors, and much more.

The author did not write chronological. He moves back and forth in time and each of the 37 chapters of the book (432 pages) focuses on a special topic. I learned that Venice was once a partner of Byzantium, the second capital of the Roman empire, but it became a rival and eventually overtook the regional leadership as Byzantium`s power declined. Venice benefited from a strong fleet of merchandise ships and a navy which bullied competitors like Genua out of the lucrative trade routs. Therefore Venice could control there extremely profitable trade with spice. Arabic ships brought cinnamon, nutmegs, pepper, cardamon & other spices from India & Southeast Asia to the Arabian coast from where the goods got transported by camel caravans to mediterranean harbors. Merchants from Venice bought the spices there and sold them to the rest of Europe with an enormous surcharge.

Apparently Venice had an industrial advantage over her competitors. At tbe beginning of the twelfth century they began to build the wharf "The Arsenal", which was continually being extended and expanded until it became the greatest shipbuilding concern in the world. According to Ackroyd this wharf was the engine of trade. "It was the foundation of the naval might. It was a token of the supremacy of industrial enterprise. The Arsenal was the first factory established on the assembly line of modern industry, and thus the harbinger of the factory system of later centuries".

Venice wasn`t only a military & commercial power, the city also was a center for printing, even though the technique was invented by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany. Ackroyd explains that "printing linked the various strata of the literate classes of Europe together; otherwise there would have been no such general response to the teachings of Luther. The publications of maps helped to create a new international trading economy. The commercialisation of knowledge, as a consequence of Renaissance humanism, indirectly led to religious reformation and the industrial revolution".

Venice was a kind of democracy with an elected leadership. The doge was the most senior member of the government and the symbolic representative of the Venetian State. He was selected for life, but he was surrounded by restrictions and regulations. The doge could not open his own mail; he could not receive foreign visitors in private. He could not discuss matters of policy without consulting his councillors. He could not leave the city without permission. Many of the doges were in an advanced age, some even their nineties. Ackroyd explained: "A government of young men - we make take as example the medieval English monarchy - creates a culture of impassioned fervour, of sudden violence and intense rivalry".

I had enjoyed Ackroyds similar book "London - A Biography" (driveby ) and liked this history as well. Both books are highly recommended.