politics and constitution 81
which was to renew the tools that enabled a more complete knowledge
and control of the territory.81 New actors bearing technical know-how
confronted and conversed with the protagonists of the French and Aus-
trian administrative reforms. It was no coincidence that the decisions and
provisions aimed at bypassing the dualisms that had long characterized
Venetian history would come out of the offices of magistracies such as
the Revisori e Regolatori alle Pubbliche Entrate, the Consultori in Iure—
where the figure of Pietro Franceschi stood out particularly in the last
decade of the Republic—and the Deputati alla Provvisione del Denaro, and
at the hand of the technicians who constituted their backbone.82 From
the detailed study of the daily practice of these magistracies, only appar-
ently of secondary importance, it is possible to grasp, even if partially, the
attempt to move beyond traditional paternalism through interventions
that affected the fundamental economic, fiscal, and administrative struc-
tures of the relationship between capital and subject provinces.
Continuing in this direction, one might even reconsider the relation-
ship between political culture and the politics of culture,83 suspended
between transformation (in the more technical and specialist sense of the
formation of experts and expertise) of the functions of the older magistra-
cies and the permanence of and modifications in representing the myth
of Venice.
After the peace of Passarowitz (1718), the Venetian role in international
politics appears increasingly marginal. Piero del Negro has noted, how-
ever, that beginning in the 1720s, and beneath the veil of an apparent
stasis, there can be identified the first emergence of new political reali-
ties that would manifest themselves clearly only after mid-century: the
establishment of blocs of power in parties or factions with coherent inter-
ests in foreign policy and other important questions, from the control of
the public debt and ecclesiastical and jurisdictional policy to the man-
agement of the postal service and the concession of the salt and, above
all, tobacco contracts. This attention had shed new light on the figures of
Marco Foscarini, Andrea Tron, and many others, and, when these lines of
research will have been thoroughly investigated, we shall be in a better
81 Calogero Farinella, L’Accademia repubblicana. La società dei Quaranta e Anton Mario
Lorgna (Milan, 1994), pp. 30–54;
82 Ivana Pederzani, Venezia e lo “Stado de terraferma.” Il governo delle comunità nel ter-
ritorio bergamasco (Milan, 1992), pp. 8–11.
83 On this, see Tim C. W. Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old
Regime Europe, 1660–1789 (Oxford, 2002).