politics and constitution 79
defining the internal balance of power, could not effect changes in a sick
political body which had reached its terminal phase.
The figure of Andrea Tron, the paròn, or master, of Venetian politics
for nearly 30 years (from the mid-1750s to 1780), and his “party” have been
studied at length.75 Tron, together with a significant number of Venetian
patricians, considered it necessary to establish a new relationship with
Austria, even to the point of evaluating the possibility of transforming the
Republic into a satellite state of the Habsburg monarchy. The loss of Ven-
ice’s ancient liberty would have been compensated by the concession of
economic privileges which would have designed a new role for Venice on
the geo-political map of the Adriatic and the Italian hinterland. Internally,
the transformation of a republican constitution characterized by an exces-
sive number of magistracies, often in conflict between themselves, into an
administrative system organized by “ministries” and “offices” would have
allowed the integration of the best citizens—noble and non-noble alike.
Other political protagonists, in contrast, believed it necessary to main-
tain a Venetian presence in the Mediterranean sphere: control of Dalma-
tia, Albania, the Ionian islands Zante, Corfu, and Cephalonia constituted a
necessary piece of the republican identity. Paolo Boldù, whose long career
in the stato da mar saw him rise from minor posts to that most presti-
gious one of governor general of Dalmatia at the beginning of the 1780s,
emphasized Venice’s role as the protector of peoples inhabiting turbulent
borderlands: the “small bands” of men that populated the Bocche di Cat-
taro were thus an integral part of the Republic: they defended it and ought
to be defended in turn. Between the capital city and the small territories
of the stato da mar there existed strong analogies in both anthropological
and constitutional perspectives. Common traits likened the city-state (the
Republic par excellence) to the micro-republics scattered along the Medi-
terranean coastline: the virtues of sobriety, of solidarity among equals, and
the collective civil and religious rites that accompanied the fundamental
phases of political life—oaths, truces, military exercises. In this construc-
tion of an identity, the privileged interlocutors were the Porte and the new
power of Muscovy. Not Vienna, but Constantinople and St Petersburg.76
75 In addition to Tabacco, La crisi dell’aristocrazia, see Piero Del Negro, “Introduzione,”
in Storia di Venezia, vol. 8: (1998): L’ultima fase della Serenissima, ed. Piero Del Negro and
Paolo Preto, pp. 1–80.
76 For the debate over the government of the maritime dominions, see Filippo M. Pala-
dini, ‘Un caos che spaventa’. Poteri, territori e religioni di frontiera nella Dalmazia della tarda
età veneta (Venice, 2002); and Alfredo Viggiano, Lo specchio della Repubblica. Venezia e il
governo delle Isole Ionie nel Settecento (Verona, 1998).