Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Weaving together cultural history and critical imperial studies, Anastasia Stouraiti shows how war and territorial expansion shaped seventeenth-century Venetian culture and society. Using an extensive array of sources, Stouraiti tests conventional assumptions about republicanism, commercial peace and cross-cultural exchange and offers a new approach to the study of the Republic of Venice. By bringing the history of communication in dialogue with empire-building and colonial conquest in the Mediterranean, this book provides an original interpretation of the politics of knowledge in wartime Venice. Stouraiti demonstrates 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. Exploring the militarisation of the public sphere and the orientalist discourse associated with it, Stouraiti exposes the surprising connections between bellicose foreign policies and domestic power politics in a state celebrated as the most serene republic of merchants.
Synopsis
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 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.