8 eric r. dursteler
by addressing systematically what he perceived as Daru’s most egregious
errors of interpretation and documentation.17
Ugo foscolo’s Storia di Venezia was also strongly influenced by Daru,
though, in contrast to other writers who were intent on deconstructing
and critiquing the book, foscolo hewed quite closely to many aspects of
Daru’s vision of venice. for example, like Daru, he attributes the Republic’s
decline to external forces, including the Ottoman expansion and the dis-
covery of America. By focusing on external forces, foscolo underlines the
continuing viability of the venetian government, arguing that it only col-
lapsed in the unique and unprecedented maelstrom of the french Revolu-
tion, which upended its otherwise solid foundations. foscolo’s originality
lies in his placement of venice into the broader narrative of Italian his-
tory: he sees the Republic’s social and political structures not as excep-
tional but, rather, as fitting firmly within the context of the history of the
peninsula. As such, foscolo represents an early example of the move to
incorporate venice into the Italian fold, as part of the project to manufac-
ture an Italian national history.18
The intersection of a growing nationalist agenda and Daru’s misrepre-
sentations were also the impetus behind the century’s most comprehensive
history of venice, Samuele Romanin’s acclaimed ten-volume Storia docu-
mentata di Venezia, published between 1853 and 1861. Widely acclaimed
at its publication and reprinted numerous times, it has been described as
“the most fortunate history of venice.”19 In many ways, Romanin was an
unlikely candidate to rescue his adopted city’s historical reputation. A Jew
born in Trieste, he only moved to venice in 1821, where he worked initially
on an Italian translation of Hammer-Purgstall’s monumental history of
the Ottoman empire.20 The heady events of 1848 were accompanied by a
revival of interest in venetian history and marked the beginning of a new
stage in Romanin’s career. One of the first acts of the new government was
to encourage the teaching of the venetian past inserted into the broader
flow of Italian history. In response, Romanin began a popular course on
venetian history at the Ateneo veneto, was given unfettered access to the
17 Massimo Canella, “Appunti e spunti sulla storiografia veneziana dell’800,” Archivo
veneto 106 (1976), 81–82; Povolo, “The Creation of venetian Historiography,” p. 498; Infelise,
“venezia e il suo passato,” pp. 970, 972.
18 Del vento, “foscolo, Daru et le mythe de la ‘venise démocratique,’ ” pp. 55–58; John
Lindon, “foscolo, Daru e la Storia di venezia,” Revue des études italiennes 27 (1981), 8–39.
19 Infelise, “venezia e il suo passato,” pp. 975–76.
20 Gino Benzoni, “Dal rimpianto alla ricostruzione geografica,” in Gino Benzoni and
Gaetano Cozzi, eds., Venezia e l’Austria (venice, 1999), pp. 365–66.