Venice and the Slavs: The Discovery of Dalmatia in the Age of Enlightenment

by Larry Wolff

This book studies the nature of Venetian rule over the Slavs of Dalmatia during the eighteenth century, focusing on the cultural elaboration of an ideology of empire that was based on a civilizing mission toward the Slavs. The book argues that the Enlightenment within the “Adriatic Empire” of Venice was deeply concerned with exploring the economic and social dimensions of backwardness in Dalmatia, in accordance with the evolving distinction between “Western Europe” and “Eastern Europe” across the continent. It further argues that the primitivism attributed to Dalmatians by the Venetian Enlightenment was fundamental to the European intellectual discovery of the Slavs. The book begins by discussing Venetian literary perspectives on Dalmatia, notably the drama of Carlo Goldoni and the memoirs of Carlo Gozzi. It then studies the work that brought the subject of Dalmatia to the attention of the European the travel account of the Paduan philosopher Alberto Fortis, which was translated from Italian into English, French, and German. The next two chapters focus on the Dalmatian inland mountain people called the Morlacchi, famous as “savages” throughout Europe in the eighteenth century. The Morlacchi are considered first as a concern of Venetian administration and then in relation to the problem of the “noble savage,” anthropologically studied and poetically celebrated. The book then describes the meeting of these administrative and philosophical discourses concerning Dalmatia during the final decades of the Venetian Republic. It concludes by assessing the legacy of the Venetian Enlightenment for later perspectives on Dalmatia and the South Slavs from Napoleonic Illyria to twentieth-century Yugoslavia.

Genres: History, Italy

422 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2002

Reviews

[Alison]

Larry Wolff is among the greatest anglophone historians specializing in the Enlightenment. His field-changing 1994 monograph, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, is still required reading for historians of modern Europe. In this 2001 monograph, he applies some of the same techniques to show the importance of Dalmatia (the Adriatic coast of Croatia today) to Venice’s understanding of itself and Venetians’ belief in their imperial destiny and their civilizing mission. Wolff focuses on the 18th century and provides a detailed exegesis of several key works, most importantly Alberto Fortis’s influential 1774 Viaggio in Dalmazia. It is important to know that this is not a book about what Dalmatia was ‘actually like’ in the 18th century – it is a book about the image created & maintained in Italophone literature (including drama, travelogues, political and economic writings) of Dalmatia and its residents, especially the infamous Morlacchi who resided in the mountainous inland region of the province, on the border with Bosnia.


Fortis, Viaggio in Dalmazia

[Jennifer Uhlich · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cannot speak to the overall accuracy, thoroughness, etc. as this was a new field of research for me. But I had to upgrade to Evernote Premium to get all my notes and page scans in, which should tell you something.

[Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are no other books like this. Wolff's focus is the 18th century, and the introduction does a fantastic job of laying the groundwork for what he claims, very plausibly, was the Venetian Republic's attempt to characterize Dalmatia, particularly the "Morlack" interior just over the mountains, as barbaric, savage, and in need of the civilizing influence of Venice itself. This was an imperial project then, and the Adriatic was understood as the dividing line between the civilized West and the barbarian East. The Morlacks themselves were probably Orthodox Slavs for the most part, Serbs, and the lasting effects of this project are still felt in the current day. H.G. Wells understood this project at the time, or at least felt its impact, and his imagined Morlocks of *The Time Machine*, the creatures who sneak up from the depths of the earth at night to consume the angelic but vapid Eloi, appear to be a late-nineteenth century echo of the Venetian 18th-century idea. I learned many things from this book, not least of which was the important place of Split (Venetian Spalato) as a trading point for the Venetians and the Ottoman Turks. The deal between the Ottomans and the Venetians to bring caravans overland from Constantinople, which where then met by Venetian galleys on the Adriatic, was apparently brokered by Serphadic Jewish merchants whose families had settled in Venice, Split, Dubrovnik and portions of the Ottoman Empire after their expulsion from Spain and Portugal at the end of the 15th century. A fascinating period with lots of important historical elements necessary for understanding the contemporary world.

[Carlos B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the eighteen century, the construction of empire in Dalmatia was both an administrative and a philosophical project.

The book focuses mainly on the question of identity, on how Venice saw Dalmatia and how this view changed during the XVIII century under the light of the Enlightenment,

The author provides a lot of details about how the Dalmatians were sawn in Venice and the debate that aroused in the public sphere when books about the region were published. One detail I really like is that Larry used mainly Venetian sources, he doesn't relied much on English or German authors, something that usually happens in this kind of books.

I liked the essay. In my opinion the author goes in to too much details and he tends to repite the same arguments. Maybe the book could have been shorter, or he could have spoken about the administrative and political institutions of Venetian-Dalmatia. In any case, it's great that this kind of books exist.

The multiplicity of attributions, beginning under the aegis of the Venetian Enlightenment and proceeding though the development of the nationalities question within the Habsburg monarchy, offers a caution against accepting any such labels as natural, essential, definitive, or inevitable identities.