War, Communication, and the Politics of Culture in Early Modern Venice
War, Communication, and the Politics of Culture in Early Modern Venice
Weaving together cultural history and critical imperial studies, this book shows how war and colonial expansion shaped seventeenth-century Venetian culture and society. Anastasia Stouraiti tests conventional assumptions about republicanism, commercial peace and cross-cultural exchange and offers a novel approach to the study of the Republic of Venice. Her extensive research brings the history of communication in dialogue with conquest and empire-building in the Mediterranean to provide an original interpretation of the politics of knowledge in wartime Venice. The book argues that the Venetian-Ottoman War of the Morea (1684-1699) was mediated through a diverse range of cultural mechanisms of patrician elite domination that orchestrated the production of popular consent. It sheds new light on the militarisation of the Venetian public sphere and exposes the connections between bellicose foreign policies and domestic power politics in a state celebrated as the most serene republic of merchants.
- Presents an alternative reading of the history of Venice, focused on the imperial nature of Venetian colonialism
- Uses a rich and diverse range of sources – textual, visual, and material – that expand our knowledge and understanding of Venetian culture and society
- Brings together a wide range of national historiographies, including Italian, Greek, French, and Anglo-American scholarship, and methodological and theoretical perspectives
Reviews & endorsements
‘… Stouraiti’s superbly well-researched book … is a model of interdisciplinary work in the humanities.’ Edward Muir, Journal of Interdisciplinary History
‘… a well structured, often elegantly written book. … It is cogently argued and makes an important contribution not only to Venetian historiography but also to the rich fields of early modern communication and information history, the history of the book, military history, the history of science, art history, and cartographic history. It makes a compelling argument for the significance of the War of the Morea in understanding the history of the last century of the Venetian Republic, and it vividly recreates the media ecology of the day to show the ways in which culture, military expansion, and domestic politics intersected in this final paroxysm of Venetian imperial ambition.’ Eric Dursteler, Journal of Modern Greek Studies
Product details
February 2025Paperback
9781108971355
307 pages
229 × 152 × 17 mm
0.448kg
Available
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Table of Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Chronology
- Introduction
- 1. War, Information, and Popular Consent in Seventeenth-Century Venice
- 2. Making History: Official and Popular War Historiographies
- 3. Printed Images and the Visual Culture of the News
- 4. Documentary Poetics and the Literary Public Sphere
- 5. Reclaiming Ancient Greece: Plunder and the Imperial Regime of Antiquities
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index.
