Old school history. Long and exceedingly detailed, but full of eloquent passages.

There are many theories explaining the dominance of Europe from the eighteenth century onward. My own view is that seeds of Europe's eventual success were sown at the beginning of the second millennium when cities started rising from the ashes of the erstwhile Roman empire. Many of the cities became self-governing entities and political power in them passed to commercial classes. Venice is the most prominent example of a city-state that dominated north Italy, Adriatic and eastern Mediterranean for several centuries. Norwich tells the story of the city with relish and manages to hold the reader's interest for well over 600 pages.

The author places developments in the history of Venice in a larger context of history of Europe. The Venetian Republic had to deal with almost all the other major power centers of that epoch - Spain, France, Holy Roman Empire, Papacy, Sicily, Hungary and Constantinople - first under the Eastern Roman Empire and then under the Turks. It also had to deal with other Italian cities, the prominent ones being Milan, Verona, Padua, and Genoa. No army managed the cross the lagoon surrounding the city and occupy it in 800 years of the republic. Venice, on the other hand, used a mix of diplomacy and force of its excellent navy to assert itself. In telling the story of Venice the author tells us a lot about developments in the Empire, in France, in Spain, in the Papacy and in Constantinople.

Not really what I wanted or expected. There's no depth to it: it's just an enumeration of things that happened, without going into any details or gossip, and without any further explanation of why or how, beyond what one guy or another might have wanted. From one page to the next, Venice has become a merchant superpower, and there’s no accounting of how the city managed to achieve this. There’s no nitty gritty. It’s a history of the Doges. Which might be fine enough, but it was not what I wanted and it doesn’t satiate my appetite.

Best book I’ve read. Fascinating history of Venice and how it’s influenced the world. Gets into the right amount of detail about each period and how Venice plays off against all the other powers of EurAsia. Great flow.

I feel like a Venetian nationalist just from reading this lol. Wow! This is extremely detailed history one of my favorite historians. I wish Viscount Norwich put more heart into Absolute Monarchies like he did here

I only read this book because it was on (someone else's--a male Brit I suspect) bucket list of a 100 books to read. To me, it is a prime example of a boring history book filled only with battles and famous men.

Una obra monumental que se hace difícil de leer por su profundidad y extensión pero que sabe recompensar al lector tenaz con un glorioso fresco de la historia europea desde la caida de Roma hasta las campañas de Napoleón. Culto hasta rozar la pedantería (pero sin llegar a ella), la muy británica voz de Norwich con sus opiniones y sus juicios made in oxbridge nos guía desde la fundación de la República hasta su caída a manos de Bonaparte permitiendonos recorrer con conocimiento los históricos rincones de Venecia. La mejor guía de Viaje sin serlo y una lástima que no me la haya podido acabar hasta un mes de volver de Venecia.
No tiene Dragones pero no le tiene nada que envidiar a Fire & Blood de George R.R. Martin en intrigas, guerras y traiciones.
PAX TIBI MARCE EVANGELISTA MEUS

I have things to say about this book, but let me lead with my advice. Do not read this book. Instead, I suggest:

"The Venetian Empire" by Jan Morris
"Empires of the Sea" by Roger Crowley
"The Great Sea" by David Abulafia
"Venice Observed" by Mary McCarthy

In particular, the Morris book is beautifully written and sums up an enormous amount of history in relatively few pages while also providing an interesting travel itinerary. "Empires of the Sea" is about Cyprus, Malta, and Lepanto- one of the most dramatic and violent periods in the history of Venice and the broader Mediterranean. Crowley also wrote "Fortunate City." Either that one or Ackroyd's Venice book could be an alternate if you want a full history of the city.

As for Norwich's "History of Venice":


This is the most relentless chronological history book I can remember reading. Typical chapter titles are "21 - The Prophetic Doge [1413-1423]", "22 - Carmagnola [1423-1432]", and "23 - The Mainland Upheaval [1432-1455]". In the paperback, each page on the right-hand side has a subtitle: "Visit of the Byzantine Emperor" and "Sforza joins the fray" are two samples from chapter 23.

The book is quite complete, but with 640 pages covering 1400+ years of one of the most interesting places in the world, it is necessarily just a survey. As such, it has potential as a reference. Reading about Casanova? Want to know what else was happening the year he was born? Flip the book open to "45 - The Eighteenth Century [1718-1789]" and start reading.

Much of the book is driven by the reigns of the various Doges. Many, if not most, chapters start with the election of a particular Doge, and I believe every Doge is at least named, though many chapters cover multiple Doges and a few Doges survive beyond a single chapter.

All this has a role. I read this book, having already read multiple histories of Venice, of Italy, of the Mediterranean, and topics that touch on Venice, partly to fill in the gaps, to have the context, to see how everything fits in chronologically. If that is what you want, this book probably deserves 5 stars.

However, this relentless chronology is wearing. I have an extremely high tolerance for dry, arcane historical details, dates, and names. But the sheer number of new names per page was overwhelming even for me. In such a broad survey, there is very little time to tell good stories or dig into personalities. Broader historical context is mostly assumed. The great families of western Europe, the Medicis, the Bourbons, the Borgias, are presented without introduction or context, and not just the well-known characters I list here. There are hundreds of names--cities, rivers, nations, kings, generals, writers, artists--with which Norwich assumes the reader is familiar. Again, to compress this much history into 640 pages this is probably the only possible approach.

Worse, it lacks almost all discussion of the Venetian Empire. Crete, Cyprus, Modone, and Corfu are rarely mentioned except when they are under attack. There is always the context of trade in Venice, yet very little discussion of what and why and the economics of the whole situation. In Crowley's "City of Fortune" (also excellent), he provides more about why Venice was important on the first page of the prologue than I found in all of Norwich's tome.

There is almost nothing about art or architecture, only slightly more about music. Galileo is mentioned primarily as an acquaintance of Sarpi (Sarpi is one of the very few characters who is at all developed).

That should do it. I could rant further. The book is not valueless as a research aide. The prose is good, though Morris has more great sentences in one chapter than Norwich produces in the entirety of this much longer book.

PS - My Casanova example points out yet another problem with this book. Chapter 45 covers 71 years in just 18 pages, while Chapter 22 covers 9 years in 13 pages. Of course some periods are more interesting, in some periods more happens. But after 500 pages, Norwich rushes this one to the end.

Dużo fascynujących stron, czyta się jakby to był serial, pełen intryg, spisków i wojen, bo taka była historia Wenecji i jej dożów. Plus wojny z papiestwem, jako jedyni przetrzymali kilka interdyktów, a radzili sobie z nimi w specyficzny wenecki sposób.

"udokumentowany jest przypadek wikariusza kapitulnego z Padwy, któremu nakazano oddać w ręce władz przysłane z Rzymu listy. Kapłan odmówił, twierdząc, że postąpi tak, jak natchnie go do tego Duch Święty, na co wenecki namiestnik odparł, iż Duch Święty natchnął już Radę Dziesięciu i poradził jej wieszać nieposłusznych księży. Wikariusz posłusznie oddał listy."

No i kto był nad jeziorem Garda niech się zaduma nad tym, że Wenecjanie przeciągnęli tam w zimie statki.

'Dwadzieścia pięć barek i sześć galer popłynęło w górę Adygi do Rovereto, skąd po sztucznej grobli 2 tysiące wołów wciągnęło je do górskiego jeziorka San Andrea (dziś znanego pod nazwą Lago di Loppio). Gdy statki przepłynęły jezioro, wciągnięto je jeszcze wyżej, po czym przeprowadzono bodaj najniebezpieczniejszy manewr w całym przedsięwzięciu – opuszczono je powoli po zboczu Monte Baldo do położonej na północnym brzegu Gardy wioski Torbole. Przebycie kilku kilometrów dzielących jezioro i Rovereto zajęło dwa tygodnie i kosztowało Republikę ponad 15 tysięcy dukatów.'

Wonderful. Norwich wears his heart on his sleeve in his affections for his subject, but this remains a very balanced narrative. A great big history book, there's a skilful balance of pace and detail to add colour. Here is Michelangelo leading an armed force, here is Vivaldi teaching music at an orphanage, here is a new ship design revolutionising naval warfare. Thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening.

Une histoire politique, diplomatique et militaire de Venise. Les aspects sociaux et économiques sont à peine abordés. Néanmoins, une bonne mise en bouche.

I am relieved I finally finished this book. The main text is 639 pages of small print. Almost all of the history was new to me, so it took me a long time to digest the material, leading me to read it in small bites.

This is not sort of book I normally enjoy. The prose is excellent, but it is a very old-fashioned history text, full of treaties, battles, and successions of powerful men. Norwich emphasizes that Venice was a major economic power, but he does not put that in context. How much of European trade went through Venice? What goods did they trade? How did those good affect the local culture? At the end of the book, he mentions that many of the residents are artisans, but he does not say what they made. Not even a paragraph is devoted to the glass makers of Murano.

He mentions several times times that Venice participated heavily in the slave trade, and I wish he had written a couple paragraphs about how the European slave trade worked. Who were these slaves? How many were there? Who had them? What happened to their children? How important was slavery to the European economy? What did the slaves do? I was surprised when he mentioned Doge Pietro Mocenigo's concubines; I had no idea that concubines were common in the late 1400s.

The books has a very Christian focus. Norwich says " [and] half of Europe condemned to some 500 years of Muslim rule" on page 143. He doesn't explain why this was a problem. Was it the constant warring? Or is it that he thought Muslim rule was inherently worse than Christian rule? Outside of Venice, Christian rule sounded pretty bad, and he didn't give any reasons why Muslim rule would be worse.

Lastly, his comments on Venetian Jews on pages 272-3 drove me up the wall. They read as a series of excuses: "At this time, too, Venice felt herself obliged to take her first far-reaching measures against her Jewish population. These were in no sense intended as any form of racial or religious persecution, nor did the victims look upon them as such." Bullshit. This, a following paragraph of further bloviating excuses and "alternate facts," and a reference to another racist law on page 606 are the entire discussion of Jews in Venice. So much frustration. And I have no idea what life was like for Venetian women.

And yet, this book has changed the way I view history and the world. I now understand that if you don't know the history of Venice, you cannot understand the history of Europe, the Mediterranean, or the Ottoman Empire. And Norwich resituated Venice in my world view. Venice is in Italy, not far from the Tyrol, but I now think of Venice as a city coming from the Byzantine (rather than Latin) tradition. It was never feudal, so it had an entirely different social structure from the rest of Europe.

Norwich also does an excellent job explaining how the environment shaped Venice. We normally think of defences as steep crags, tall walls, or deep water. Venice's lagoon had none of those things, but it was difficult to traverse unless you knew the lagoon well. I had no idea.

Venice is the world's longest-lasting republic; it lasted 1100 years. My home republic is a little wobbly, and I read this book, in part, to learn how the Republic of Venice lasted so long. Tommaso Mocenigo's deathbed speech, and the subsequent election of Foscari, has stayed with me. It feels so like current events, and that pains me.

I feel like part of the success of the Republic was due to how careful the city was to prevent concentrating power in too few hands. They were so careful to keep even the appearance of corruption out of government. I finished this book with great respect for the Venetian republic. If I had to live in medieval or Renaissance Europe, I would have chosen to live in Venice. According to Norwich, Venice was the only Catholic nation to never burn a heretic. In this era of fake news, I was moved by the contrast between French propaganda about Venetian government, and the reality. The French were convinced that (like Paris) Venice would be full of political prisoners, and that there were lots of people imprisoned as miscarriages of justice. There wasn't a single political prisoner when they took over the Republic. There were very few prisoners of any other sort of variety, either.

While I am relieved to be done carrying this huge book around with me, I will read Norwich again. I plan on reading his two histories of Sicily, which will probably reorder my understanding of the world, again.