Changes

|title=The Spirit of Venice: From Marco Polo to Casanova

|sort=Spirit of Venice: From Marco Polo to Casanova, The

|publisher=Pimlico

|date=May 2013

|summary=A history of the first great economic and naval power of the modern western world, with the emphasis on its major personalities.

}}

There are several ways of telling the history of the republic of Venice, which is generally regarded as the first great economic and naval power of the western world. Strathern has chosen to do so largely through the lives of various famous (and also infamous) people from Marco Polo in the late thirteenth century to what he calls its destruction, 'both political and symbolic', at the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797. On the whole, the major events such as its wars are covered fairly briefly. An exception, fittingly enough, is made in the case of a chapter on the war which began its decline in the fifteenth century, when it tried to hold Thessalonica against the Ottomans, and sent ships to help defend Constantinople against the Turkish army but found itself heavily defeated in the subsequent lengthy war, as a result of which it lost most of its possessions.

If the subject interests you then you might also enjoy [[Venice: Pure City by Peter Ackroyd]]

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