City of Fortune
How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire
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- 12,99 €
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- 12,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
A magisterial work of gripping history, City of Fortune tells the story of the Venetian ascent from lagoon dwellers to the greatest power in the Mediterranean - an epic five hundred year voyage that encompassed crusade and trade, plague, sea battles and colonial adventure.
In Venice, the path to empire unfolded in a series of extraordinary contests - the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, the fight to the finish with Genoa and a desperate defence against the Turks. Under the lion banner of St Mark, she created an empire of ports and naval bases which funnelled the goods of the world through its wharfs. In the process the city became the richest place on earth - a brilliant mosaic fashioned from what it bought, traded, borrowed and stole.
Based on first hand accounts of trade and warfare, seafaring and piracy and the places where Venetians sailed and died, City of Fortune is narrative history at its finest. Beginning on Ascension Day in the year 1000 and ending with an explosion off the coast of Greece - and the calamitous news that the Portuguese had pioneered a sea route to India - it will fascinate anyone who loves Venice and the Mediterranean world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
From a few isolated islands in Italy during the Middle Ages, Venice grew to the world's greatest sea power, a position it held for 500 years. British historian Crowley (Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World) points out that, lacking land for agriculture, and well-positioned for sailing at the head of the Adriatic Sea, Venetians concentrated on trading. Preoccupied with commerce, they ignored the violent religious disputes of the era, but had no objection to violence in pursuit of profit. By 1000 C.E. Venice was thriving thanks to trading privileges with Constantinople, the wealthy capital of the Byzantine Empire. Despite this favoritism, Venice took rapacious advantage of the Empire's decline, prospering despite innumerable bloody conflicts with its equally "pushy, pragmatic, and ruthless" rival, Genoa, and the advancing Ottoman Turks. Readers searching for cultural insights should read John Julius Norwich or Fernand Braudel; Crowley has written a rousing, traditional account that emphasizes politics, war, and great men, ending in 1500, when the voyages of discovery shifted the balance of power to Western Europe. B&w illus.; maps.
