80 alfredo viggiano
In many respects, one could argue that discussions of the mito and anti-
mito of Venice, which from the fall of the Republic and throughout the 19th
century helped distinguish an enduring historiographical debate, found
new life in the historical studies of the second half of the 20th century.
Such a debate, even when it produced significant results, really served to
hinder research through a sterile collection of evidence pro and contra.77
Fields of investigation of great interest to historians studying the 15th-
and 16th-century Venetian state—the structures and procedures of state
offices and bureaucracies, relations among civil and ecclesiastical institu-
tions, the languages and cultures of politics—were neglected, save a few
exceptions by those working on the later 18th century. The end of the
Republic aroused interest more as literary myth, almost an archetype of
the idea of decadence, and its long shadow obstructed more specific and
circumscribed studies. The scene was occupied almost entirely by nobles,
their families, and their forms of self-representation, thus sterilizing both
the historiographical debate and new research. In recent years, however,
studies of Venetian political history in the 18th century have cautiously
turned to the world of political technicians and functionaries, forms of
recruitment and the models of their professional formation. Engineers
and experts, cartographers and judges, fiscal lawyers and accountants of
both the central magistracies and those operating in the dominii: only
now do subjects such as these appear with a certain frequency in essays
and monographs on the subject of Venice.78
The study of this above-mentioned class of “civil servants,” long consid-
ered the passive underlings of an unproductive political aristocracy, will
permit a more articulate evaluation of the Republic’s politics in the late
18th century. Let us consider, for example, policy regarding forests, a cru-
cial matter from both an ecological and economic point of view;79 or the
plans for an agrarian census that occupied the Senate in the last decade of
republican history;80 or even the formation of a corps of military engineers
77 Paolo Preto, “L’illuminismo veneto,” in Storia della cultura veneta, vol. 1 (1976): Dalle
origini al Trecento, pp. 1–45.
78 See, for example, Stefano Barbacetto, “La più gelosa della pubbliche regalie”. I “beni
communali” della Repubblica di Venezia (secc. XVI–XVIII) (Venice, 2008), pp. 98–100; and
Andrea Zannini, Il sistema di revisione contabile della Serenissima, Istituzioni, personale,
procedure (secc. XVI–XVIII) (Venice, 1994), pp. 142–49.
79 Karl Appuhn, A Forest on the Sea. Environmental Expertise in Renaissance Venice (Bal-
timore, 2009), pp. 260–72.
80 Alfredo Viggiano, “Estimates and Cadastres in Eighteenth-Century Venice,” Jarbuch
fur Europaische Wervaltung Geschichte ( JEV) 13 (2001), 92–100.