City Of Fortune: How Venice Won And Lost A Naval Empire

VENICE was founded by refugees from the barbarian onslaughts that beset the dying Roman empire.

Today it is slowly sinking beneath the waters of the Adriatic. But in between, and for centuries, it was a major player on the European stage.

Historian Roger Crowley has previously written well-received books about both the Mediterranean and Constantinople; it was the Venetian-directed sacking of the latter that announced Venice’s mediaeval ascendancy, so this background leaves Crowley well placed to narrow his focus and produce a narrative history that is both readable and informative.

There is something terribly modern and corporate in the ruthless, profit-driven methods with which the rulers ran Venice’s empire, largely devoid even of the religious pretensions of their contemporaries.

Such lethal clear-sightedness, however chilling, makes for compelling reading.