The Rise and Fall of Venice

Venice was the impossible city that rose from mudflats to become a medieval superpower. Venice dominated Mediterranean trade through its vast navy, revolutionary shipyards, and strategic position between East and West. From the glass furnaces of Murano to the spice-laden ships crowding its ports, Dan is joined by historian and author Roger Crowley to explore how Venice became the commercial powerhouse of medieval Europe and why this extraordinary city-state was pushed into decline by the Ottomans, before finally falling to Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797. Roger's book is called 'City of Fortune'. Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore. We need your help! Let us know what you want from Dan Snow's History Hit by filling in our anonymous survey here: https://forms.gle/PvgayWLkWGjYT4St6 Dan Snow's History Hit is now available on YouTube! Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/@DSHHPodcast Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

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• 0:32Speaker 01

  Blood donation is now more inclusive. More LGBTQ+ individuals are able to donate blood with the American Red Cross due to FDA guidelines that eliminate eligibility questions based on sexual orientation. The Red Cross celebrates this historic change and welcomes those who may be newly eligible to donate blood. There's a place for everyone in the mission of the Red Cross, including you. The Red Cross is committed to achieving a blood donation process that treats all potential donors with equality and respect while maintaining the safety of the blood supply. Join us and help save lives. To learn more and make your appointment to donate blood, visit redcrossblood.org/lgbtq. That's redcrossblood.org/lgbtq.

• 1:21Dan Snow?

  It's a city floating on a silver disc. In a world where everything is converging, where skyscrapers, crowds, skylines, you can walk into the same coffee shop on six continents, this is a place apart. It's a place of magic and beauty. I have sailed a little boat into Venice and it just doesn't feel right. It feels like it shouldn't be allowed. But in you go. You sail from the Adriatic, just in, just sail in from the ocean, through the narrowest of entrances in the thin, low-lying barrier islands, past the Punta Sabioni lighthouse, you just keep going and there it is. There it is, Venice.

• 2:02Dan Snow?

  You can tie up your little boat in the marina by the San Giorgio Maggiore church, right opposite St. Mark's Square. It's actually the best kept secret. You pay a few pounds, few bucks, few euros, you can stay there overnight, you have the best view in the world. Or you keep cruising a little bit further on, you actually just sail into the Grand Canal itself, straight on up until you get to the Ponte della Academia. That's the first bridge across the canal as you come in from the east. And only then, you have to turn around. There you are surrounded by glamorous speedboats and Hollywood stars and all sorts of people, and you're in your little battered old sailing boat, you turn around and head out again. It's one of the greatest things I've ever done. You approach Venice as it should be approached, not by some hellish car, some nasty aluminium

• 2:47Dan Snow?

  box, driving over some horrible road bridge, no, but with the tickle of a southeasterly blowing you up the Adriatic and into the city. For this is a city of the sea. It was the beating heart of one of history's great maritime empires. Oh, and when it was so, at its height, medieval Venice would have been a sight to behold. Buildings springing from the surface of the water, the furnaces on the lagoon island of Murano, firing, glassmakers tinkering, coloured wares sparkling in front of their shop fronts, the hustle and bustle of the port, the groaning ships laden with spices and goods from all over the world, Venice the epicentre of Mediterranean trade.

• 3:30Dan Snow?

  It was always a city that shouldn't have been possible. In fact, it's one of the worst places in Europe in which to build a city, and it's testament to the desperation of those pioneers that they did so. In around 421, Venice was begun, it was built into the mudflats of a shallow lagoon, there was no farmland, no obvious natural resources to sustain them, and yet somehow, this became one of the richest and most powerful places in medieval Europe. And it was different as well, in an age of kings and emperors, Venice took an alternative route, it built a republic where a Doge ruled, but never alone, checked at every turn by councils and law, restricted in his ability to accept gifts from foreigners.

• 4:17Dan Snow?

  And from this unlikely foundation, Venice did something extraordinary. It became the great middleman. It became the trading hub. It sat between east and west. It channeled silks and spices and luxury goods from Asia and the Islamic world into Europe. And all of that depended on a formidable navy, one that was built in a vast state shipyard capable of turning out vessels on industrial scale. This was a modern maritime superpower. For centuries, it stood well near the centre of the world. But like all powers, it wanes eventually. Everything fades away, folks. Venice fell into decline. It was eventually strangled to death by Napoleon, who threatened to bombard the city with his gunships. Joining

• 4:59Dan Snow?

  me today on Dan Snow's History Hit to tell this incredible story of the rise and fall of Venice is the brilliant historian Roger Crowley. I've been a big fan of his books for years. He's the author of City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire. And he's going to help me explore one of the most extraordinary success stories of medieval history, not just of medieval history, in fact, of global history. Enjoy.

• 5:29Dan Snow?

  Roger, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Thank you very much, Dan. I'm delighted to be with you.

• 5:35Dan Snow?

  If you were going to build a great, magnificent, powerful world city, would you necessarily think, look at that lagoon and think, oh, that's a great place to do it? Tell them about the geography of Venice.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Well, absolutely. You wouldn't think stuck at the top of the Adriatic with a cul-de-sac. But in fact, it wasn't a cul-de-sac. From the Bronze Age onwards, it's been a corridor, a trade corridor, connecting Central Europe with the Eastern Mediterranean and places beyond. But there were predecessors, actually, to Venice. There was Adria, which, a Greek town, which was a trade hub, gave the Adriatic its name. But it's now 15 miles up the Po, which has been silted up. It was then followed by a Roman city called Aquilae, which again had the same function of the transmission of goods to and from the Mediterranean into Central Europe.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  This is destroyed by Attila the Hun in 421, I think. So there's always been a role for a commercial hub at the top of the Adriatic. And this is the one which Venice is going to inherit. Venice is the only city in Italy that did not exist in Roman times. It's kind of self-invented after the collapse of the Roman Empire.

• 6:52Dan Snow?

  So that's the sort of the regional geography. What about the precise place where Venice is? Because there are nice fields and orchards around it and places where you can grow food. I mean, tell us where they established what would become the city of Venice?

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Well, this was a flight really from the collapse and the terror, the end of the Roman Empire and the Huns kind of ravaging through that part of the world. So it was really a desperate safety measure to put yourself in the lagoon offshore where you can't be attacked easily to start building these extraordinary fragile huts on stilts in the shallow water. And obviously, they've got nothing, you know, they've got no land. The only resources they've got really are fish and salt. And these are really the beginnings of their trade, selling fish and salt to people round about. So you could certainly say it's unpromising, but the only way forward for these people,

• 7:47Speaker 02

  once they had established themselves in one form or another, was going to be through trade. And the trade that they are going to develop over a period of time is going to be that which effectively controls the Adriatic. Obviously, they don't know this in the early stages. Venice is self-invented. It comes up with its own story about how it was created on March 25th, 421 AD, at noon. So it not only creates its own economy over a period of time, but it creates its own own story, because it has no story, it has no sense. And everything that it constructs is going to be really something that is either borrowed, begged, or stolen from somebody else over a period of time.

• 8:30Dan Snow?

  So isn't that amazing? So they head out to the marshes, the most marginal piece of land they can find, not even land really, and they build a settlement of huts on stilts, try and get away from the Hunnish cavalry and various other people. But it works. Does that geography protect it? Is it rather a clever move? I mean, take me through the firsts of decades and centuries of Venice's rise.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Well, obviously they're safe because unless you've got a maritime competitor, nobody can really get at you and nobody really bothers about you. The process of development for the Venetians is actually, as they expand down the coast of Italy, trading, they start to rub up against the eastern shores of the Adriatic, which is sort of Slavic. And if they wish to develop a trade, they're going to have to meddle with these people. There's a big parrot confederacy on the eastern shores of the Adriatic. So developing the ability to, in effect, wage war on a maritime level, to control the Adriatic

• 9:34Speaker 02

  is the essential step for them. And this will develop over a number of centuries. They come to call the Adriatic our house. And the moments of their existence, which are the most fragile for them, are going to be those times when they are bottled up in the Adriatic, and it does happen. So controlling the Adriatic is critical, absolutely critical, and really reducing it to a kind of neo-colony. And this is really what happens over the first few centuries. And eventually, they would have Corfu, which they called the door of our house. But geopolitically, controlling that Adriatic is everything to them. Without the Adriatic, they're dead, literally dead in the water.

• 10:19Dan Snow?

  They are. So Roger, is it a little bit, we think of some empires, an army spreading across wide open plains and conquering territory in big colour on the map. Is Venice a little bit more like the early English Empire? It's toeholes, it's sort of little forts and important promontories all the way down the Adriatic coast, it's islands like Corfu. So perhaps it begins as a warehouse for trade, then you have to provide a security force, then you might as well take over the city or the headland. Is that how this empire starts to expand down through what is now Croatia and into places like Greece?

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. I mean, you could take Venice as a prototype model of small state maritime empires, of which Britain was one and the Dutch are another. They hold very little territory, they're not a large population, they cannot colonize on a large scale. What they need are bases, strategic bases, a network which they expand out into the Mediterranean over a period of time, which will allow them to trade goods with people across the eastern Mediterranean. There are never very many Venetians in their empire. I mean, Crete is probably the most heavily actually colonized place.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  But this lightweight maritime network, and obviously this depends upon maritime force, your military and commercial carrying facility, is critical. So attending to the details of the sea, both in terms of the bases that you construct and your supreme ability at shipbuilding and sailing are critical. If you want to say one thing about the Venetians is that they're sailors.

• 12:02Dan Snow?

  And that's what we like about them on this podcast. So Roger, we won't melt everyone's brains with the political complexion of Europe in the 500 years after the sack of Rome. But we've got Byzantines, we've got Goths, we've got Germans, we've got everyone fighting it out in Italy, we've got Italian players as well. Does Venice just sort of slightly sit back and watch them all hacking each other to death and sit there safe in its lagoon, just growing rich off the trade and eventually establish its own independence?

• 12:34Speaker 02

  I think that's a reasonably good account of it. I mean, they haven't come and put boots on the ground because there aren't very many of them. And it's not until the 16th century that they start to have any territorial presence in Italy. So they pass this by on the whole. Their competitor are going to be other maritime powers and particularly Genoa, but the mayhem of Italy and everything that goes on there really is kind of not their business. They really do not want to get involved. And this makes them outlier of what's going on. And all kinds of interesting relationships with the biggest power player in Italy, which is the papacy, I suppose. The Venetians, you know, say, we're Venetians first, then Christians kind of thing.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  And they're in continuous trouble with the papacy for not doing X, Y and Z. And they will not brook interference from outsiders. Therefore, they look at the Pope's thought absolute spiritual authority and over Venice. And Venetians said, no, look, we're just not having this. So they're routinely is communicated for not doing something or other. And also, the other element of it, I tend to think of Venice in a way as being like a sort of corporate body. And your corporate logo is Saint Mark, really. And clustering around, unifying around this figure of Saint Mark is really important to the Venetians.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  They cannot afford to have internal disputes, factional disputes within the city. They haven't got a feudal system, so they have a nobility, but they haven't got a peasant class whom they can control. Everybody is a contributor in a way. And it's only occasionally, there was one Doge who tries to do a deal, a sort of coup with other powers, Marin Falero in the 1300s, who's executed. And they construct their political system very carefully to avoid any one

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Person getting control of this city. So the election for the Doge process, fifteen people would elect nine people who would elect seven people, elect eleven people who would elect the Doge. And the aim of this was to stop any one group filtering into a position where they get control of the lobby, which will elect the Doge. So it's a very complicated but very sophisticated process. The Doge is not allowed to accept any gifts from a foreign power greater than a pot of herbs. So this fear and this one episode with one Doge who went rogue

• 15:12Speaker 02

  was one of the reasons why they've got incredible political stability, which everybody supports.

• 15:21Dan Snow?

  And stability and continuity, right? So you might have a wonderful king or queen elsewhere, but then they die and their children are completely hopeless and will fight each other. Is this an advert for peaceful transmission of power and a government that is controlled, albeit by an oligarchy, but where there is a, you have to have an element of consent?

• 15:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. It is. It is an advert for, you don't get nepotism in this system. Generally, people who in the end will be elected tend to be people who have done great things in the Venetian Empire. They come with a good track record of being CEO, part of the Venetian Empire. But it certainly prevents any kind of nepotism or, and it's unruffled really throughout the centuries.

• 16:10Dan Snow?

  Interesting. So they've come up with a fascinating political solution that really suits them. They're invulnerable. So even your mighty kings, they can't march a big army across that lagoon. But the question, Roger, is what have they got to trade? Are these building ships that are very good at carrying other people's trade? They haven't kind of producing them themselves, right?

• 16:28Speaker 02

  No, I mean, there's absolutely nothing, they've got absolutely nothing which is of value to people. There are two elements to this, I think you're right. One is that they fine-tuned the whole business of shipbuilding, maritime technology and power with one part of it. The other is that they are essentially middlemen, and the middlemen need bases across the Mediterranean from which you operate. So, over a period of time, the Venetian Empire, I like the British Empire, if you think of the British Empire, you know, sort of Gibraltar, Malta, Aden, Suez, Bombay, these kind of little points. And then same with the Portuguese, they couldn't control much territory. But their aim was really to get control of key

• 17:13Speaker 02

  nodal trading points over the centuries, and these become very important to them. So Corfu is important, they get a couple of useful little bases on the south coast of the Peloponnese. The big one is going to be Crete. Crete is really their only full-blown colonial experience. A foothold in Constantinople, in the Black Sea, in the Sea of Azov. And these are tiny footprints, but they're controlled and generally these are very heavily fortified. These provide the opportunity to move goods across the Mediterranean. They study the whole technology, if you like, of buying and selling very carefully. Their merchants

• 17:54Speaker 02

  are extremely well-informed, and what they do is they understand supply and demand. And supply and demand is, if you want people to come and buy from Venice, and this is what they did, they wanted to have very large trade fairs at regular intervals, you have to have just-in-time delivery. So they would send out galleys on different trading routes. Some would go to North Africa, some would go to Constantinople, the Black Sea. There would even be a Flanders route, which would see Venetian vessels in the Thames. And the aim was that these ships were timed to come back for the annual trade fair. And the annual trade fair brought in people from all over Europe. And this is where they bought and sold.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  And they taxed quite lightly. They didn't rip people off. They understood that a three and a half to five percent tax on all goods coming into the country. So they understand these various elements of wealth, just in time delivery, having the goods, stable currency, which was the Venetian ducat, which was the most reliable currency in the whole of the Mediterranean. Gold coins, three and a half grams of pure gold. If you clipped this coin, you'd be executed. And this was the dollar of its day. And it was recognised as far away as India as being a currency. The Indians thought that the picture of the Doge kneeling before Saint Mark was actually some kind of Hindu god, but leaving that one side.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  So that they've nailed down all the key elements here. Currency, just in time, having the goods, treating people reasonably. They have lodging houses for merchants coming from all over Europe for these fairs. And this is kind of like the souk of Europe. And they would sell anything if there was a market for it. Ground up mummies from the Valley of the Kings sold as a medicinal cure, you know?

• 19:49Dan Snow?

  And I suppose like the British Empire later, like at the Aden, like in Singapore, Hong Kong, you go there if you're a merchant because you're not going to get your warehouse nicked by a capricious monarch or his drunken son. There's the rule of law, there's insurance, there's brokerage. It's a good place to do business. And you think, well, let's just put our trade through Venice. Well, actually, chances are we'll get our goods on time and we're not going to get ripped off.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And they did have a Jewish community who were very important in the fiscal arrangement because they were youthful moneylenders. But certainly the fidelity of Venice, its deals, its currency was recognised across the whole of Europe.

• 20:29Dan Snow?

  So it's a republic, there's a sharing of power, unlike elsewhere. Does that stretch down to sort of normal citizens, men and women? Are they part of this project? Do they have any say or are they economically empowered?

• 20:44Speaker 02

  They probably wouldn't have any stake in the electing of the Doge. This would have been probably the wealthier commercial families. But they had a stake and anyone could have a stake, for example, in a commercial enterprise. If a galley is going to go to Alexandria to buy spices, even women could put a little bit of money into this venture. So everyone does have a stake here, actually. Obviously, there's a trickle down of wealth as well, but they're not a voiceless minority. Venice also provides a lot of employment,

• 21:27Speaker 02

  particularly in the Arsenal, which has a very large, very skilled labour force. These are the aristocrats of the working population, very skilled people, each of whom had their own specialisms in various parts of the whole fabrication of ships. Some guys are very good at making oars, some people cast cannons, you know, blah, blah, blah. And the Arsenal Nalotti, which are about, I think about 2,000, they even have pensions at the end of their working lives. Even if they were beyond work, they could just totter down there and do nothing. They would still be paid. So everybody, generally, they do have a stake. They also control immigration very carefully. Although there's this sort of Commonwealth of Slavs and people down the coast of Etrada,

• 22:12Speaker 02

  who are quite important for extraction of products, particularly timber. It's very difficult to become a citizen of Venice, you know, if you're not a born Venetian. So, you know, this is controlled as well. But generally, everybody buys into this project and the logo of Saint Mark is kind of in everybody's mind, the fidelity to this. And the great festivals of the year, like the Ascension Day Festival, where the Doge gets... Into the Golden Barge and goes out into the lagoon, into the Adriatic and drops a ring in the sea to say, we marry the sea. Everybody would have participated in that. And there was a great place of ceremonial, you know, all kinds of stuff going on around

• 22:55Speaker 02

  St Mark's Square. And everybody has a part in this. So I think we could say, there are occasional incidents, but very few incidences at which there's any sign of insurrection within the city. The genius with which they constructed this, really, I thought it was evolutionary, rather than somebody saying, right, let's have a little model of what the perfect state looks like, and then we can carry it out. And I think the base of this was because of the ecological insecurity of Venice, rising tides could wipe out your city, that everybody had to pitch in to barricade this city against the sea as much as anything

• 23:34Speaker 02

  else. So everybody has a stake in survival on this fragile ship, you could call it.

• 23:43Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's History at Folks, talking about Venice, don't go away.

• 23:50Dan Snow?

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• 24:32Dan Snow?

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• 25:44Speaker 01

  Blood donation is now more inclusive. More LGBTQ+ individuals are able to donate blood with the American Red Cross due to FDA guidelines that eliminate eligibility questions based on sexual orientation. The Red Cross celebrates this historic change and welcomes those who may be newly eligible to donate blood. There's a place for everyone in the mission of the Red Cross, including you. The Red Cross is committed to achieving a blood donation process that treats all potential donors with equality and respect while maintaining the safety of the blood supply. Join us and help save lives. To learn more and make your appointment to donate blood, visit redcrossblood.org/lgbtq. That's redcrossblood.org/lgbtq.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, host of Echoes of History, the podcast that plunges you into the ranks of the Knights Templar across ancient Egypt and behind the barricades of history's great revolutions to explore the worlds recreated in Assassin's Creed. In our new series, Chasing Shadows, we're in feudal Japan alongside samurai warlords and shinobi spies. Whether you're gearing up for Assassin's Creed: Shadows or captivated by Japan's rich history, this podcast, brought to you by Ubisoft and History Hit, is a must-listen. Chasing Shadows is out now on the Echoes of History podcast.

• 27:17Dan Snow?

  You mentioned the arsenal there. The arsenal is where they build these ships. As you say, they build oars and cannon and everything. The arsenal always presents me with a bit of a problem because when we say the Industrial Revolution began in Britain and the first factories are in Britain, us Brits get very excited about that in the 18th century. The arsenal looks a lot like an industrial process, doesn't it? Way before that. Tell me a bit more about that and how they build these ships.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, Dan. I mean, it's sort of like a prototype version of Henry Ford's assembly. They worked out all the features of shipbuilding and they divided them into specialisms. So you have guys who make oars, you have guys who make ropes, you have a rope walk where they just make ropes, and these are colour-coded according to their use. Quality control is everything because the Venetians, they've fine-tuned this down to the basics, really, that a snapped rope can lead to a shipwreck and the loss of a whole ship full of valuable goods. So what they did was they assembled

• 28:23Speaker 02

  all the parts of these ships. They have two types of ships, effectively, the war galley, which is kind of fast rowing boat with sails, and then the merchant galley, which had, was a bigger ship, was the bulk carrier of goods, which also had oars for manoeuvring, but was basically a sailing ship. That was a ship which actually brought in the goods. The war galleys protect the Venetian fleets, but they've broken this all down into bits. So when it came to war, what they tend to do is to dry store all the parts that you needed, like the hulls, the oars and so on. And when it came to a war, they would put all these together incredibly quickly. And the party piece, when Henry III, I think of France, in front of him, the arsenal

• 29:06Speaker 02

  of Lodi constructed a galley in front of him in the course of a meal. And they were driven nuts when they tried to ally with the Spanish during the time of the Ottoman War. The Spanish took forever to get their ships together because they didn't have enough rope or they didn't have the right sort of masts. And they micromanaged this down to the level of forestry into individual trees. So you need some trees which are ideal for masts, you need other trees which will provide the curved skeleton of the hull. You know, they really micromanaged this. They evolved over a longish period of time. It was, you know, it just blew people away when they saw it. The one thing they didn't get quite right for a while was that actually making gunpowder

• 29:51Speaker 02

  in this place wasn't exactly brilliant. And they had a couple of disastrous explosions. And in the end, they decided, well, I think we'd better take gunpowder manufacture off into Murano or Borana, one of the little islands in the lagoon. They haven't got it quite right, but in the end, people have never seen anything like this. It's protected by a huge wall, which was manned day and night by watchmen, because obviously this could be a prime target. The watchman had to give the call to the next watchman, and if they failed to do it, they'd be removed. The Lion of Venice has on it an open book saying, peace to you, Mark. The Venetian arsenal has the Lion of Venice over its gate, but the book is shut. This is, we're ready for war.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  But there's three things really going on here. One is the Rialto, where the merchandise is sold. This is the great souk. One is the Doge's Palace, the centre of administration, and one is the arsenal. And they're almost within shouting distance of each other, about 300 yards away from each other. So this is a very unified basis and example of how these bits work together.

• 31:02Dan Snow?

  Tell me about the Fourth Crusade. So 13th century, got one of the many crusades heading to the Holy Land, as the Europeans described it, to try and revive Christian fortunes there. And Venice gets very, very involved.

• 31:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is an extraordinary tale of mission creep. Crusaders turn up in Venice because they know this is the place for ships. And they strike a deal to take 35,000 crusaders to the Holy Land, 85,000 marks, which is an awful lot of money. Venice agrees to the deal. It involves a year's work and half the male population of Venice in the construction of ships. This actually is kind of a founding moment, actually, in the development of Venetian shipbuilding. The problem is that the guys who came along, did the deal, assumed that 35,000 crusaders would all come to Venice. But they don't, they come from other places.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  And when it comes to departure, they can't pay. They haven't got the 85,000 marks. And so from the beginning, the crusaders in trouble. The Venetians are extremely worried. They've stopped all trade for a year to build these ships. And as they set out down the Adriatic, you start to get all kinds of mission creep goes on. Firstly, there's, we decide that we need to duff up some Christians in a place called Zarath on the, on the shores of the Adriatic. They go on and it becomes, it's quite difficult to explain, but I think in the background of this, everybody knows that Constantinople is a red apple, one of those

• 32:40Speaker 02

  most desirable wealthy places in the world. And they kind of find a pretender to the throne of the, the Emperor of Constantinople. And for reasons which are pretty obscure, I think, to many people, they deviate and decide that there's been an injustice for the pretender, and we need to replace the present emperor with this emperor. So they end up sacking Constantinople. This is an extraordinary feat of mission creep.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  Accuses the Venetians, probably quite reasonably, of being dogs returning to their own vomit. And Constantinople is sacked. I mean, it's not only the Venetians. There are various other factions involved who are kind of interested in this. But out of this for Venice comes an awful lot of things that they want. Venice doesn't want land. A lot of the Byzantine Empire is divided up into lots of various little baronies in Greece and so on. Venice doesn't want, it wants bases. So what it gets out of it are very useful pieces of strategic harboring.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  On the south coast of Greece, Negroponte, which is the Long Island, Evia, the islands of the Aegean, and most important of all, Crete. So this provides the Venetians with a complete trading web for trading, like the Genoese. They also get a foothold in Constantinople. This is valuable, not only for trading in Constantinople, but then they can start trading up the Black Sea and into the Sea of Azov. So they now, on this basis, have that complete little network of small state maritime hubs, which we talked about earlier. And so from the Venetian point of view, this is a critical turning point in their fortunes.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  They're now connected everywhere. They can trade with Muslims in Alexandria, they can trade with the people in the Black Sea. They can control the sea in many ways. They can control the Eastern Mediterranean.

• 34:44Dan Snow?

  Extraordinary that Constantinople has held out against Muslims, against, quote unquote, barbarian forces coming down from Central Europe. And then it falls to this Venetian crusader force in the 13th century. It's extraordinary moment. And the Venetians don't just get islands, they get a bit of loot as well, don't they? They get some nice statues, which Pep will be familiar with.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Oh, they do. They get the bric-a-brac that is on the front of St Mark's. There are the four horses which came from the Hippodrome. There are various little statues of emperors. There are people on the tops of columns. All sorts of pieces, interesting pieces of marble crop up, icons. Yeah, they took the good stuff.

• 35:24Dan Snow?

  They took the good stuff back to Venice. Amazing. What about regional rivalries? We've got Genoa, you've mentioned. They go after each other, don't they, the 13th and 14th centuries? And then you get the coming of the Ottomans. The Venetians, they're often at war, aren't they?

• 35:41Speaker 02

  They are. Genoa is the main rival in the Mediterranean, the same kind of maritime base. The Genoese are very different to the Venetians. They're great individualists, actually. Their political system is a basket case with various noble factions taking over, and it's very unstable. But they're very innovative, actually, the Genoese. Things like gold currency, stern rudders, maritime insurance, public clocks, these are things invented by the Genoese. So they're very interesting. It comes to a head, the fighting across the eastern Mediterranean between the Venetians and the Genoese, particularly in Cyprus. Wherever the two meet, somebody summed up the difference between the Venetians

• 36:26Speaker 02

  and the Genoese, unfavorable to most, and said, "The Genoese are like donkeys. When you hit them, they all scatter. The Venetians are like pigs. When you hit them, they all cluster together." The two. But Venice's near-death experience happens at the end of the 14th century, when the Genoese establish themselves just down the coast from Venice, and effectively barricade the Venetians into their own lagoon. They're also in league with the Hungarians as well. The War of Chioia. And it's almost the end of Venice, because they're slowly being starved to death. In the last minute, they managed to turn the tables on the Genoese in Chioia. But the lesson there is really, if you can't control

• 37:10Speaker 02

  the Adriatic, you are dead in the water. And this was as close as they got, really, before the end of the Venetian Republic, with Napoleon pitching out a few hundred years later. But these two, the Venetians and the Genoese, I mean, they both traded in Alexandria. But the Genoese, when they were being ripped off, they got very angry and carried out some military enterprises. The Venetians were much more subtle. They used diplomacy. They worked round them. They found solutions. And so in the long run, they kind of win out over this commercial contest.

• 37:48Dan Snow?

  More Venice coming up after this.

• 37:57Speaker 01

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• 38:43Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, host of Echoes of History, the podcast that plunges you into the ranks of the Knights Templar across ancient Egypt and behind the barricades of history's great revolutions to explore the worlds recreated in Assassin's Creed. In our new series, Chasing Shadows, we're in feudal Japan alongside samurai warlords and shinobi spies. Whether you're gearing up for Assassin's Creed Shadows or captivated by Japan's rich history, this podcast, brought to you by Ubisoft and History Hit, is a must-listen. Chasing Shadows is out now on the Echoes of History podcast.

• 39:29Dan Snow?

  Another great rival emerges in the Eastern Mediterranean, particularly the Ottoman Expansion. You get these extraordinary battles taking place between the Ottomans and the Venetians, these Venetian fortresses that have been built on these islands that you've mentioned. Is 1453 the important turning point there? Constantinople falls to the forces of Islam, the Turks, and they keep pushing on from there.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  It definitely is, Dan, yeah. At this point, the Ottomans, who are not a maritime force, but they're very good at co-opting people. And the lands that they conquer, Greece particularly, they develop navies from this point on. And we start to see the Ottomans kind of pushing into the Mediterranean. The Venetians, who are fastidious, study the Ottomans in enormous detail as to how to deal with this. They're very good at diplomacy, but it's difficult dealing with the Sultan. Venetians said, dealing with the Sultan is like juggling a glass ball. You know, it's easy to drop. But then diplomats to their fingertips, they trained up people to speak Ottoman Turkish to try and soften up the Sultan.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  They provided gifts, but the Ottomans advance and advance into the Mediterranean. And we're going to see the Venetian colonies or empire slowly dismantle bit by bit. We're going to see Evia, which is on the east coast of Greece, taken. That was an important base. We're going to see them scoop up the islands. The big one comes is going to be Crete. Crete is the only place that the Venetians actually occupied on a colonial basis and where they actually settled. Crete was the hinge of their maritime empire. It was the base for voyages to Alexandria.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  And when the Ottomans come for this at the start of the 17th century, this is a critical moment. The siege of Heraklion turned out to be the longest siege, I think, in world history, 21 years. But the Ottomans get it. And at that point, we start to see the collapse of the Venetians' ability to trade. They're being slowly, slowly bottled up. And this is the point really at which, because they have nothing else apart from trade, it's becoming more difficult. And despite their diplomatic juggling game with the Ottomans, they cannot win this.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  And it's getting to the, it does get to the point where Ottomans are on the coast of the Adriatic, are almost within distance of Venice. And this is the sort of the existential moment for Venice, really, where It's becoming harder and harder for them to manage an empire. At this point, they start to, there's a quite famous painting of the Lion of Saint Mark. And Saint Mark's Lion, for the first time, has his, although he's got bodies in the sea, his paws are on the land. And at that point, they're starting to expand modestly into territory in Italy as well.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  So at this point, we're going to see the start of the long decline of Venice.

• 42:51Dan Snow?

  And I suppose you give a sense that the Ottomans encroaching, the Ottoman Empire becomes so big and indeed starts to occupy lots of bits of Eastern Europe. So trade, if you want to trade with Eastern Europe, you can start to go through that Ottoman Empire, I suppose. The Ottomans can start to corner that trade by creating that one vast, reasonably homogenous empire. But it's also the poor old Venetians getting it from the other direction as well, some Europeans, because you're obviously a huge expert in the Indian Ocean. But let's quickly just rehearse the fact that one of the most unholy and fascinating alliances, I think, in history is the fact that the Portuguese erupt into the Indian Ocean and start bypassing that trade route that traditionally goes across the Indian Ocean into what we now call Middle East, North East Africa, from Alexandria and then to Europe.

• 43:36Dan Snow?

  The Portuguese can take it all the way around in their own hulls. And so you get the Venetians kind of aligning themselves with Muslim nations, trying to get the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean. Fascinating.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the signal moment was, the spice trade was very important to the Venetians via the mamlocks in Egypt. That when the Portuguese get to Malacca, a Portuguese writer said, he who has Malacca has his hands on the throat of Venice. And there's almost a day in Venice when they hear that the Portuguese have got into the Indian Ocean. And there are bank crashes, actually, because they realise that this is really an existential threat to the wholesale of the kinds of luxury goods, the silks, the perfumes, the gold, the spices is now under threat. And indeed, you can start in a way to see the Mediterranean itself becoming

• 44:32Speaker 02

  Almost a backwater for a much larger pan-global game that's going to develop. And certainly, I think, the moment when the Portuguese make it in the Indian Ocean is a very, very important turning point. And as you say, they're looking for support from the Ottomans at this point to do something in the Indian Ocean, which they do make some attempt at. This is a moment, I think, when the decline of Venice is registered, you can almost register it to the day when they got the news that the Portuguese were there.

• 45:04Dan Snow?

  But Venice holds out, and in the end, it's that man who reorders Europe in its virtually its entirety. It's Napoleon Bonaparte who delivers the final blow. Just quickly take us right the way through to the end, because Venice has still been largely invulnerable. So you can take away its trade, but it's still there. It's no one's conquered it, but then what happens?

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Well, as I say, it gets involved in the politics of Italy and has land holdings in Italy. You can see it morphing. I mean, it's still trading within the Mediterranean, but it's become still a commercial and financial hub. And quite quickly, it's becoming a tourist resort, actually, by the 17th century. You know, people want to come here. They want to see it. They want to spend their money here. So it's a long, slow decline. They still hold on to the Adriatic. The Adriatic is somewhere they plunder for all kinds of resources, for shipbuilding, for stone, and so on, and trading within that perimeter.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  And the one place that the Ottomans tried several times to take but never take is Corfu. So they've still got an entrance into the Mediterranean. They're still trading. But increasingly, it's becoming a cultural phenomenon in Europe. And obviously, by the time we get to the 18th century, it's a place of the grand tour, with the Venetians still doing very well out of people coming. It helps to have as many saints in your city as possible. They're very good at stealing saints from people. Having still in Saint Mark, they've got a bit of Saint Nicholas. And these are very good because the faithful will come to your city to be involved.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  So it's a long, slow decline into gentility, you could say. And when Napoleon comes and trundles off with the four horses, it is the end. But you could see down the coast in a lot of the places that had been Venetian colonies, great sadness. And one of those places, they had great ceremony and they burnt the Venetian flag and wept because it had been there forever and was part of their cultural mélange of Adriatic cultural life. So it's a long, slow collapse.

• 47:17Dan Snow?

  You know, Roger, as you've been talking, there's so much wonderful stuff in this history. There's thought provoking moments for those of us in the world today, but also it's a wonderful bit of history because it's the world's most popular tourist destination. Everyone loves Venice.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  It is extraordinary, isn't it, actually? I mean, I think the only time to go is February. Venice invented the package tour, actually, of taking people to the Holy Land, all included on a Venetian ship, dreadful food, awful conditions in the dorm, but they've really only got themselves to blame for defecating tourism in all kinds of ways. And they traded on that.

• 47:58Dan Snow?

  We've made lots of modern parallels in this, but it does seem very like a kind of Singapore, Hong Kong today. I mean, Singapore, a better example, I suppose, very small, but with an enormous economic and commercial clout.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  I think that's right. I had a conversation with some political people in Singapore about looking for the parallels between Singapore and Venice and what were the lessons they could learn from its growth, but also from its decline. Small population, no natural resources, highly educated, but living in a complicated political world. So those small state kinds of entities are places who look to Venice as a model. And I think you're right, Dan. I think it's an absolutely valuable kind of analogy for such places as Singapore.

• 48:56Dan Snow?

  Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We're so used to talking about mighty land empires with huge armed forces and it's fun to talk about a different, a different model of empire, a different model of polity. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  Thank you very much, Dan. It was really interesting.

• 49:14Dan Snow?

  Thank you so much to Roger Crowley for coming on the pod. We're going to have him back in the summer later this year to actually sort of pick up the story really and look at how the rise of Portugal and Spain as the next great maritime powers would help to throw Venice into the shade. The story of how Spain and Portugal's race to get to the spice islands of Indonesia in the 16th century changed the world. And you know, the best way of making sure you don't miss that, and that is hit follow in your podcast player. Do that right now. And you're also going to want to focus this summer, it's all going to pop off on Dan Snow's history, as the older millennials say. We're going to be looking at the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. We're going to talk to Mary Beard. We're going to be explaining everything you need to know about the Odyssey, just to get you in the mood for the big movie.

• 49:58Dan Snow?

  And we're going to be heading to the jungles of Belize to discover ancient Maya temples. We've got everything you need for a mega summer of listening. So hit follow now. See you next time.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Blood donation is now more inclusive. More LGBTQ plus individuals are able to donate blood with the American Red Cross due to FDA guidelines that eliminate eligibility questions based on sexual orientation. The Red Cross celebrates this historic change and welcomes those who may be newly eligible to donate blood. There's a place for everyone in the mission of the Red Cross, including you. The Red Cross is committed to achieving a blood donation process that treats all potential donors with equality and respect while maintaining the safety of the blood supply. Join us and help save lives. To learn more and make your appointment to donate blood, visit redcrossblood.org/lgbtq. That's redcrossblood.org/lgbtq.

• 51:06Dan Snow?

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