Scheda Pubblicazione

Dettaglio

• Autore/i
  Caimmi, R.
• Titolo pubblicazione
  Spedizioni navali della Repubblica di Venezia alla fine del Settecento
• Casa editrice
  Itinera Progetti
• Luogo pubblicazione
  Bassano del Grappa
• Abstract
  The book deals with the military and diplomatic naval expeditions carried out by the Republic of Venice’s fleet in the last decades of the 18th century to protect the Serenissima’s maritime trade routes that, at that time, were threatened by the corsairs of the Islamic Barbarian Regencies of North Africa. Being aware of the fact that, by then, te little North African powers were only formally subject to the Ottoman Empire, Venice signed treaties with the Regencies of Algiers (1763), Tunis, Tripoli (1764) and the Reign of Morocco (1765), and accepted to pay tributes to the Regencies to safeguard its merchant traffic. This choice, already made by other European countries, was not the decisive solution: as a matter of fact those little reigns broke the signed agreements periodically to exploit the state of danger they created and renegotiate more profitable conditions. Therefore the Venetian Senate ordered to put diplomatic and military pressures on the regencies many times. The threat of naval bombardment, or its execution, sealed or replaced the outcomes of diplomatic talks in order to safeguard the vital interests of the Serenissima, in case of need. Such a naval policy aimed at steadfastly defending Venice’s remaining areas of sovereignty in the Mediterranean Sea and, most of all, the significant trade flows that kept on feeding the Serenissima in the second half of the 18th century. Based on Venetian, Florentine and Tunisian archival sources, this military history book focuses also on political and diplomatic matters. Moreover, the volume contains an in-depth study of the Venetian sailing fleet at the end of the 18th century, the shipboard discipline, and the Venetian Navy’s rules on the procedure for the repression of crimes and the imposition of punishements. Walter Panciera, professor of Modern history at Padua University, wrote the accurate foreword. The iconography consists of original drawings of the Venetian vessels of the second half of the 18th century, and colour pictures of Venetian officers, sailors, and soldiers made by Bruno Mugnai. Some parts of the Venetian-Tunisian treaty of 1792 are also reproduced.