The setting sun over Venice, shimmering on the rippling water, is an intoxicating sight that has remained unchanged for millennia — though the sight of tourists taking turns to pose for photographs is a modern addition. The islands, boats and waterways that periodically swell with the tide embody the romance, warmth and fragility of Venice today. It is easy to overlook its long history of wealth and power.
Today, Venice is merely a small city in northeastern Italy. In Death in Venice, his celebrated 1912 novella exploring homosexual desire, German novelist Thomas Mann described the city on the water as a “flattering and suspect beauty — this city, half fairy tale and half tourist trap”.
Before him, countless writers, including the Romantic poets Shelley and Byron, had idealised Venice, even portraying it as a heaven on earth. The American writer Mark Twain crossed the ocean in 1867 on an extended journey in search of this heaven on earth, only to be bitterly disappointed by his visit. He vented his frustrations in his 1869 travelogue The Innocents Abroad, seemingly intent on debunking for American readers the “falsehoods” spread by literary figures.
Under the blazing sun, Twain observed, Venice was not only dilapidated, filthy and untidy everywhere, but its murky canals also stank. Moreover, its famous gondolas had to be painted black under government regulations. To Twain, they looked like floating hearses. The gondoliers, in particular, were all dressed like beggars. Rather than romantically singing verses, they displayed a greedy appetite for tips.
However, to be fair, Twain also offered a more balanced view of Venice: “In the glare of day, there is little poetry about Venice, but under the charitable moon her stained palaces are white again, their battered sculptures are hidden in shadows, and the old city seems crowned once more with the grandeur that was hers five hundred years ago.”
Today, the stench has largely dissipated, but the dilapidation cannot be concealed. Only in the moonlit tranquility of St Mark's Square does the city still radiate the centuries-old grandeur that Twain sensed.
The Republic of Venice lasted 1,100 years, the longest in human history, excluding the microstate of San Marino. In 1797, on the eve of the 19th century, it reached a fateful crossroads. With French and Austrian armies threatening the republic's mainland territories, its longstanding diplomatic neutrality became untenable. It could neither align itself with either side nor afford to go to war against both powers.
After fierce debate, the Great Council of Venice voted to end the republic. French troops entered the city with ease. Having lost control of its own destiny, the city-state spent most of the following decades under Austrian rule.
Only after the Third Italian War of Independence did Venice escape this humiliation. In a referendum on 21–22 October 1866, more than 640,000 votes, representing almost 100% support, endorsed joining the newly established Kingdom of Italy. A historical plaque recording this result still hangs high inside the Doge's Palace in Venice.
Was the Venetian council's decision to relinquish a thousand-year-old inheritance wise or spineless? The question remains hotly debated in accounts of the republic's fall.
One could argue that the advocates of compromise, represented by the last doge, Ludovico Manin, understood both their own position and their adversary's. The republic had been weak for too long, and its opponent was Napoleon Bonaparte, a French general not yet 28 who had won battle after battle. Giving up resistance could spare its people and territory from slaughter and devastation.
However, the anguish and indignation left by those who opposed surrender were not without reason. The many vast paintings in the Doge's Palace show that Venice had once been a military power armed to the teeth. Yet apart from scattered clashes with French troops in a few mainland cities, the central government never mounted a comprehensive defence capable of protecting the country. It did not even have the resolve to put up a fight.
Venice's rise began around the fall of the Western Roman Empire, when inhabitants of northeastern Italy gradually sought refuge on islands in the lagoon, using the sea as a barrier against warfare on the mainland. After a long period of development, residents elected their first doge in the late seventh century, inaugurating republican rule.
In the early ninth century, the political centre moved to the Rialto islands, forming the core of modern Venice. Located at the crossroads of Western Europe and the Byzantine Empire, Venice gradually established itself as a hub for trade between the eastern and western shores of the Mediterranean. Byzantine emperors granted Venetian merchants extensive trading privileges and customs exemptions, further driving the city's commercial expansion.
The Venetians of that era were enormously ambitious. They built a vast arsenal and a highly organised shipbuilding system that became one of Europe's largest industrial complexes before the Industrial Revolution, and developed their own commercial and military systems as well. At one point, their sphere of influence extended from the southern foothills of the Alps to the Aegean Sea.
A republic ought to draw strength from inclusiveness, but generations of prosperity and power had bred a protectionist mindset among the Venetians. The “closure of the Great Council” in the early 14th century marked a historical turning point. Membership gradually became the preserve of hereditary nobles, making it difficult for the emerging merchant class to enter the centre of power.
Later, the nobility also imposed restrictions to monopolise the most lucrative fleet-based trade, curtailing the open contractual arrangements that had once driven the republic's prosperity and strength. Opportunities for upward social mobility predictably dwindled. Adventurous merchants gave way to an exclusive aristocracy, commercial and political opportunities became concentrated among vested interests, and the political system grew increasingly conservative and closed.
The tide of history swept on. The flourishing of the Renaissance and the advent of the Age of Exploration fuelled the rise of wealth-seeking mercantilism and an expanding trading environment. More and more countries opened new sea routes that bypassed Venice, while more city-states joined the competition for trade.
Yet the Venetian republic's response became rigid and sluggish. To make matters worse, the Ottoman Empire defeated Byzantium, cutting off Venice's trading advantage in the eastern Mediterranean.
The monopoly held by vested interests on political power in Venice left the republic unable to respond swiftly to sweeping changes in the international landscape. Venice's geographical advantage as a trading hub rapidly disappeared. In an age when power and military might held sway, the Venetians had only their glorious history to fall back on, and so they lost ground as others advanced.
The Republic of Venice made a great contribution to human history by pioneering the model of a state whose identity rested on centuries of republican government. Yet it could not cope with a world in upheaval, and the state ultimately met its end amidst the gentle rocking of gondolas.
In the end, it does not matter how strongly historians disagree over how much blame institutional rigidity bears for its demise. When we look at today's murky global landscape, we will find that there are many lessons worth pondering within the historic fall of Venice.
(The writer is a senior commentator at Lianhe Zaobao.)
