44 elisabeth crouzet-pavan
of the northern basin was actually scheduled. The threat of the Sile and
Piave rivers was eliminated; the freshwaters were separated from the salt
water. The northern lagoon was saved, but was greatly retracted.
The Effects of Human SettlementHow can one not see the stunning relevance of the elements just dis-
cussed? If we follow their organization, Venetian history would reflect
on its own scale the very history of the relationship of man to the envi-
ronment. It would mark in an exemplary way how learning to dominate
the natural elements was slow and difficult. But it would also show, since
Venice survived despite all obstacles, that the fight was victorious in the
end. But such a reading, precisely the one that the Venetians in the 15th or
16th century produced from their own history, declaring that the miracle
of Venice was also made possible by the actions of men, supported by
policies, and a constant struggle against death, is in fact strictly dependent
on the traditional Western view of a nature that existed to be subjected to
and controlled by mankind. Such an assumption explains an oft-forgotten
phenomenon that is nevertheless central: humans were a dominant eco-
logical agent in the lagoon basin.
The establishment of a city that was in the early 16th century one of
the largest centers of consumption and production in the West was not
without consequences for a vulnerable environment. First, because the
very dynamics of the construction of the city tended to upset the relation-
ship between the land and the water. Next, the life, the activity of this city,
because it was large and industrious, weighed heavily on the site. One
could not enumerate all of the effects of the growth of the conglomeration
in this environment, and, obviously, they are not all known. Venice traded
and produced; the network of canals, which at first served to promote
trade, were then assigned the function of processing urban waste. Waste
waters, waters polluted by tanneries and dyeing, rubble of construc-
tion, litter from the market, waste from the ovens used to bake lime and
bricks... everything went into the canals as elsewhere everything went
into the river. Without a doubt, the waters here were not stagnant; the
tide played a purifying role and evacuated the polluted water out of the
basin. But the silting up of the canals increased. Human excesses contrib-
uted to a change in the land-water relationship; the abundant production
of regulations on the protection of the air and the water and repeated
complaints from residents attest to the birth, starting in the late Middle