City of fortune
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.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
5mentions
5people
2013–2026years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- A few decades later, Venice brilliantly exploited the Fourth Crusade’s debt (and the fact that they built all the Crusade’s ships) to proceed on a debt-collection/revenge tour along the Adriatic, sacking Zara, getting the entire Crusade excommunicated, and ultimately diverting the entire force to Constantinople where they sacked the city in 1204 and replaced the government with the Latin Empire.
I found City of Fortune by Roger Crowley to be a very entertaining read, the full story of the Crusade is absurd. Venice completely dedicated its entire economy to producing the Crusade’s ships for years to make this happen.
- Book tip:
I really enjoyed reading "City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas", which taught me that the main thing Venice had going for it was controlling much of the Silk Road trade until Vasco da Gama doomed it in 1498.
- I recently returned from a trip to Venice. I highly recommend visiting in late November/December as the atmosphere is very different from the more crowded times of year. Locals will tell you it's busy all year round now, but low season still has a lot of appeal.
Before visiting I ready City of Fortune [1] for a high level overview of Venetian history and it is a truly enthralling read that covers most of Venice's timeline. I also came across several articles by Ioanna Iordanou.
I would be interested in better understanding what life was like in Venice from 1800 to the present day, but I haven't found much contemporary research on the Venetian economy and society in that time, including the run up to the Fall of the Republic of Venice.
1: https://www.amazon.com/City-Fortune-Venice-Ruled-Seas/dp/081...
- "- Err, we have no money. - Sigh. ok. Go and attack our rivals over there."
Strictly speaking, this is not what happened, and a gross oversimplification. The Byzantines were not exactly rivals of the Venetians. The whole thing was quite bizarre in fact, Roger Crowley has a pretty good story of the events leading up to this in "City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire" if I'm not mistaken.
- I just finished reading City of Fortune (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400068207/ref=pe_180000_31...), and this is closer to the truth - the rise of the Ottomans, the fact that Christian Europe couldn't get its act together after the debacle that was the 4th Crusade, etc etc - at one point, Venice was almost single-handedly fighting the Ottomans.
