90 michael knapton
15th to 16th centuries, expressed convergent, trenchant ideas about the
Republic’s failure to evolve from its city-state matrix towards robust, more
modern statehood by unifying Venice and the mainland—this also with a
view to the region’s profile in 19th-century Italian unification. Broad scope
and primary attention to the Venice-terraferma nexus also characterized
Beltrami’s pioneering, quantitative studies of early modern agricultural
and demographic history.7 Despite little immediate follow-up, research
during the 1970s on Italian late medieval and early modern state organi-
zation acquired new momentum and direction, and within this trend the
terraferma became increasingly important in Venetian historiography.
Relevant bibliography now counts several hundred titles, and this essay
summarizes some of the debates opened and results achieved. While often
confirming Berengo’s and Ventura’s far-sightedness, subsequent historiog-
raphy has incorporated a more composite vision of state development,
more inclined to recognize the role of institutions and bodies different
from Venetian authority, and a more nuanced vision of aristocracy. None-
theless, consensus has not swung fully towards Gaetano Cozzi’s partly
empathetic portrayal of the Venetian patrician state, including assimila-
tion of “Venetian-ness” in the terraferma and vice-versa, which attenuated
differences between them in many features of material and immaterial
culture.8
The vigor of mainland studies and the importance of the consequent
paradigm shift for Venetian history is testified by survey essays and by
the forthright inclusion of the dominions in an Italian synthesis on early
modern Venice; it has also helped erode historiographical commonplaces
about the Republic’s singularity, favoring comparison with a broader Ital-
ian and European context.9 Nonetheless, the dominions remain marginal
7 Marino Berengo, La società veneta alla fine del Settecento. Ricerche storiche (Florence,
1956); Angelo Ventura, Nobiltà e popolo nella società veneta del ’400 e ’500 (1964; Milan,
1993); and Daniele Beltrami, La penetrazione economica dei veneziani in terraferma. Forze
di lavoro e proprietà fondiaria nelle campagne venete dei secoli XVII e XVIII (Venice, 1961).
8 Gaetano Cozzi, Ambiente veneziano, ambiente veneto. Saggi su politica, società, cultura
nella Repubblica di Venezia in età moderna (Venice, 1997).
9 For surveys, see James Grubb, “When Myths Lose Power: Four Decades of Vene-
tian Historiography,” Journal of Modern History 58/1 (1986), 43–94; Cozzi and Knapton,
La Repubblica di Venezia; Michael Knapton, “ ‘Nobiltà e popolo’ e un trentennio di sto-
riografia veneta,” Nuova Rivista Storica 82/1 (1998), 167–92; Intorno allo stato degli studi
sulla terraferma veneta (Verona, 2000) (=Terra d’Este, 17 (2000)); Giuseppe Del Torre and
Alfredo Viggiano, eds., 1509–2009: L’ombra di Agnadello: Venezia e la terraferma (Venice,
2010) (=Ateneo Veneto, a. 197, 3a s., 9/1 (2010)), especially the contribution by Gian Maria
Varanini, “La Terraferma veneta nel Quattrocento e le tendenze recenti della storiogra-
fia,” pp. 13–63. Further systematic accounts are currently being published or prepared for