I'm dabbling into necromancy and resurrecting an old thread of mine. The topic is still interesting for me, and no real consensus was reached 3 years ago, even if some interesting points were made.
I'm dabbling into necromancy and resurrecting an old thread of mine. The topic is still interesting for me, and no real consensus was reached 3 years ago, even if some interesting points were made.
A thought.
How stable was Iceland's government? It seems to me that, as another constitutionally complex island state, it offers a useful comparison.
Sort of.
Somalia is stable compared to historical Iceland. Iceland was never conquered, it asked to be annexed by Norway, to get rid of the continued political chaos and family feuds.
Yes but didn't geography help them acquaire those Byzantine influences? They were never occupied by Western 'barbarians' because the positioning of the city made it unconquerable without a large fleet, which the Westerns generally lacked untill the Renaissance. Because of this they did not enter into the French sphere of influence (for example) as Genoa did.I'm reading Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice now, and the first part is about Venice. It's a good read. The author places Venice's rise on the fact that it cozied up to the Byzantines rather than the 'barbarians' of the mainland, and because it made itself the only viable port in the Adriatic and was thus able to capture most of the trade going between the silver of Bohemia and Germany and the major east Med. spice ports such as Alexandria and Constantinople.
So I voted for not having a feudal system and the richness of trade.