Why Venice ...

Why was Venice so stable?

  • No feudal system ever in place

    Votes: 23 32.9%
  • Geographical separation from mainland

    Votes: 23 32.9%
  • Richness from trading

    Votes: 40 57.1%
  • Sheer luck

    Votes: 20 28.6%

  • Total voters
    70
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.

I have since read Rise of the Merchant Empires, which largely cites geographical position.
 
It is interesting to consider, because they seem to have had a different world view than some; one which favored the interests of the city over those of the individual families, so no one family could usurp power? Is that because of what someone else was asking, about their Constitution? Or, was the world view caused by something else? Becasue, one not only has to consider why there were no conquest from without, but also why it didn't decay from within faster, like the Roman Empire, the Byzantines, etc.
 
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.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
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.
 
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.

Iceland was fairly stable for, oh, say 200 years, to about 1100, but things were deteriorating and by 13th century the Somalia comparison may be apt. Iceland was taken over in 1262.

EDIT: also, calling it a 'government' is an overstatement by any modern definition of government. The AlÞing met once a year - but its purpose was to adjudicate disputes more than to 'make laws' or 'rule'.
 
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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.
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.

And didn't it also make it much more easy for them to be intermediaries between German merchants and Muslim/Byzantine ones? Going through Venice from Germany to the Mediteranean seems to be the shortest route.

Venice was the only large city state on Italy's eastern coast so here too, in establishing a monopoly in the Adriatic, geography seems to have helped her a lot.
 
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