Plausibility Check: Surviving Venetian Republic?

An Idea came to my mind today, I want to bounce it off the rest of you guys to see what you think.

Could the Venetian Republic have survived the catastrophic events of 1797 which brought an end to it in OTL?

Here's what I was thinking, during the lead up to the French invasion British figures in Venice manage to get his attention and he begins to warm to the idea of joining the fight against France. However it quickly becomes apparent that Venice is in no shape or form to fight such a conflict and would surely lose. The Doge, Ludovico Manin opts to try and remain neutral. However a plan is developed in case of invasion in which the Doge and other officials would flee the islands and move to Corfu where the Republic could continue in Exile and potentially be propped up by the British.

When the French do decide to invade, the Doge reluctantly activates the plan and thus Venice is evacuated on the eve of invasion with the Venetian navy managing to slip by the French at night. Venice is promptly invaded and sacked with considerable loss of life and property damage/looting. However the Doge and some of the Venetian government manage to escape to Corfu where they meet up with a British squadron to establish the Republic of Venice in Exile. Though the Treaty of Campo Formio officially divides Venetian territory between Austria and France, the Venetian Republic along with RN forces manage to defeat the French in the Ionian and Adriatic seas and maintain the independence of the Venetian Republic on the Ionian Islands and various outposts.

In the meantime the Doge takes advantage of the new situation to enact sweeping reforms in order to stabilize his new position. Religious Freedom is an obvious choice, and I think some electoral reform wouldn't be too far out of the question.

First off, is this at least somewhat plausible? Anyone with more knowledge care to comment?

Secondly here are some ideas I've had about where I see this going...

-The city of Venice proper would probably be handed back to the Republic. As it would have been looted and damaged far more than OTL I don't see why Austria would choose to hang on to it. Thoughts? I could see it happening in 1798 with the War of the 2nd Coalition in order to cozy up to Britain...

-Could the Venetian Republic rebuild itself in the aftermath of such a situation? Certainly not to the height of it's power, but at least to a level which would allow it to remain a functioning state for the next 50-100 years? Certainly TTL's events of 1797/1798 would go a long way towards clearing out some of the rot that had set in, but I do wonder if there was anything left to salvage of the Republic at that point. Rebuilding the Venetian commercial empire is going to take a lot of work and I'm not sure exactly how they're going to do it. Thoughts?

One idea I had was the reborn Venetian Republic partnering with the Ottomans to repair/rebuild the canal linking the Nile River with the Red Sea and thus opening up a shorter route to the Indian Ocean. This coupled with the adoption of new designs for ships might allow Venetian merchants to once again become a viable commercial power...Thoughts?
 
IMO the doge might be able to make a deal with Britain so at the congress of Vienna Venice and the hinterland including Treviso be given to Venice while AH takes the dalmatian isles and the rest of Venice aside from the ionian territories and Venice proper. What do you think?
 

Vitruvius

Donor
I'm a little skeptical that the Serenissima could survive as a government in exile. Consider that Venice is not a monarchy and the Doge is not a King. It was an oligarchic Republic. The powers of the Doge were balanced by the role of the Great Council, the Council of Ten and other organs of government. It would be hard to effectively evacuate them all to Corfu. There is no real mechanism for granting the Doge emergency powers so it would be impossible for him to do much without the rest of the Venetian government. So reforms in exile are not likely. At best he would be a figurehead in exile but Venetians aren't likely to rally around him symbolically in the same way the Portuguese court retained legitimacy in Brazil.

As an oligarchic Republic the Patriciate had an active role in governing so unless the entire population is evacuated the Republic can't really function in exile. It's too rooted to the civics of Venice the city. And as for the Ionian islands most of the Venetian possessions were like modern day colonies were a Venetian elite ruled over a poor indigenous population for commercial advantage of the Venetian state.

Furthermore Manin isn't likely to live much longer than he did OTL (he was 77 years old by 1797). But it would be very hard to elect a new Doge in exile. The process was extremely convoluted involving a series of ballots to elect councils or electors to elect a slate of candidates to elect another group of electors and so on until someone was finally elected Doge. And of course all candidates are limited to members of the Venetian Patriciate as defined by those listed in the Libro d'Oro. And many of the traditional ceremonies surrounding the election of the Doge are bound to Venice, like the marriage to the sea. So when Manin dies in exile there is no one to follow him.

Realistically for the Republic to be resuscitated reforms need to be started much earlier than the eve of the French invasion. Manin's decision to pursue unarmed neutrality was bad enough but the Republic was still moribund and even with a more active policy or diplomatic alliances its unlikely much can be done to retrieve the situation.

A better scenario might be to see Andrea Memmo elected Doge in Manin's place. Memmo was a reformer who sought to save the Republic from an ossified political system. For one he wanted electoral reforms because many of the old families in the Libro d'Oro had become quite poor while younger but wealthy and powerful families were excluded from power. So his reforms weren't radical or 'republican' in the jacobin sense of the word but because they still invisioned a fundamentally oligarchic Republic. Instead they sought to save the traditional but inflexible institutions of the Venetian Republic by adapting them to a modern reality. Whether he could have accomplished much is unclear but I have to believe it would have been better than Manin. Unfortunately Memmo was not a powerful or particularly wealthy man and the reformist element in Venice was weak and divided so his election is difficult.

In other ways though the election of Manin is an important marker, in that he was Friulian. It was said that the election of a Friulian would mark the end of the Republic and indeed it did. But it also marked the potential of a transition of the state from a city/civic to national identity. Just as the Roman Empire transition from a City with an Empire to an Empire with a City the Venetian Republic really needed to integrate the terra firma into the body politic. For the Republic to survive as more than just the Lagoon those areas have to be put on equal footing and the government of the Republic broadened beyond the civic life of the city itself. The time when the City of Venice could dominate the Mediterranean is long past. This was a dynamic already at work but seriously upset by the French conquest. If it could have been accelerated not only could it have strengthened the Republic but it could have provided a strong foundation for reestablishing an independent state after the war.
 
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