SECTION 1
CHANGE AND ORDER EXIST
IN NATURE
CHAPTER 2
LIVING CELLS, SOCIETIES AND CIVILIZATIONS
CHAPTER 3
AN ISLAND CITY SOCIETY: VENICE
CHAPTER 4
DECLINE AND DEATH OF VENICE AS A SOCIETY
CHAPTER 5
CREATION OF LIVING SOCIETIES:
THE USA, RUSSIA, OTHERS
INTRODUCTION
Arnold Toynbee was
interested in EF's views on civilizations and their
societies when they met at Oxford. The result was that EF was granted a
senior research fellowship at the University of Chicago which was the
only
place AT said he knew where he thought EF could research as he wanted
to.
But it ended up with EF starting a study on the war of 1812. That was a
long
way from what EF had hoped for and was why he left the academic world
to
become a chartered accountant (equivalent of CPA in the US). Now, much
later in life EF can write what he likes, and that's what's coming up
in this
part of the web site...
WE INVENTED TIME:
CHANGE AND ORDER EXIST
IN NATURE
Here's a city - it
doesn't matter to us which one. We see from the
air the Parkway is crowded, mostly with people going home from
work. That's because it's 5 p.m. - what we call the time of day. But I
suggest to you there's no such thing as time. The period it takes the
earth to go round the sun we've divided into a year, months, days,
hours, even hundredths of a second if you're an Olympic skier or
nanoseconds if you're a scientist. But 'out there' what there is is
change, different rates of change, and interaction between changing
things to create more change. It's how successful a civilization is in
adapting to change that determines whether or not it survives.
Let's vary our focus a
bit. We're looking at the city as a whole now.
There are millions of people down there but we can't see any of
them. What we do see is traffic moving. We can see superhighways,
the side streets, the residential areas neatly laid out, tall buildings
near the centre, industrial areas and parks. It all looks very orderly.
This orderliness is
important to us. If your TV screen shows 'snow'
during a broadcast it's not chaos, a slight adjustment will bring
back the picture, because the signal was there all the time. I suggest
to you there's no such thing as chaos. Chaos is an order poorly
understood, and disorder is part way between one set of order we
can recognize, and another we can relate to. Water changes to ice to
snow to steam and so on. But it never changes to iron. Why not?
Because there's order, and that's why we can hope to understand
how civilizations work; civilizations are orderly entities.
Let's move on to look
down on another city. It doesn't seem very
different. The traffic patterns are much the same. It has tall
buildings near the centre, superhighways, residential areas neatly
laid out, and so on. Agricultural products and raw materials flow in
and technical services and manufactured goods flow out.
This second city is in
the next door region to the first city but it
doesn't allow signs with lettering the same size as signs in its own
language to be put up in the language of the other city. That's just
a minor example of the problems that have to be solved for a society
to survive and prosper.
Both these cities are in
the same country, or nation, which I've
called a society. It's when you have cities in a society that there's a
civilization. I suggest to you that without cities there is no
civilization.
Cities tend to do
business and exchange culture with one another.
The major cities need smaller satellite cities and towns and rural
areas in nearby regions to feed them. The major regional cities
interact to form a society. Canada is a society. It's one society
within a civilization. Western Civilization, we call it.
We are going to look at
living in civilizations. But that's not the only
way people on earth exist. Some are nomadic tribes-people. This
doesn't mean they're 'uncivilized.' Often their standards of moral
conduct, family cohesion, ability to survive, care for their
environment, complexity of language and so on are far greater than
that of many people living in cities. I would call them peripherals.
They are outside present civilization, but may well form part of
some future civilizations. Some have been part of arrested
civilizations, not having settled down to agriculture and trading
from a fixed location.
Today people mostly move
about in vehicles propelled by volatile
fuels using internal combustion engines. We use electric power to
drive most equipment in our homes and offices. That's our
technology.
Ancient Rome had horse
drawn vehicles. There were bumps on
their side roads to slow the chariots down, and posts in some roads
to keep chariots out and leave a safe way for pedestrians.
Downtown Rome once had a 70 ft. high building construction limit.
They used water power, animal power and slave power to drive
their mechanical equipment. They constructed aqueducts to carry
clean water supplies to their cities for public baths and private use,
and built coliseums for public entertainment activities. They made
excellent long lasting straight roads. If we go back still further to
ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, or ancient civilizations in
Central and South America, we find tall buildings of a different
kind from ours; stepped pyramids or ziggurats. So, each civilization
has a different technology.
Wherever there are
cities we have people specializing in doing
certain work: architects, carpenters, doctors, engineers, law
enforcement officers, lawyers, politicians, plumbers, priests,
soldiers, teachers, and so on. There are people in these trades or
professions whether it's ancient China, Greece or Rome, Egypt,
South America, or today. Whatever the form of government, these
trades and professions exist in every civilization we know of.
Societies within
civilizations are more like plants in a field, or trees
in a wood, than animals that can move about. A society is rooted in
the land it finds itself in, and it lives or dies by its success in
solving
its problems where it is rooted. But societies grow and try to spread
out, just as plants or trees do, and societies also colonize at a
distance, just as plants and trees send out seeds to propagate at a
distance. The Vikings reached England, Greenland, Iceland,
Ireland, Labrador, Newfoundland, North Africa, down the Russian
rivers as far as Kiev, and the U.S. east coast. Later, Portugal and
Spain expanded overseas and the Pope divided the New World
between them. Then England and France expanded overseas and
competed in India and North America. Here we have important
evidence that the nature of a society and a civilization includes the
capacity to expand.
You'll have noticed we
mentioned Portugal and Spain, England and
France, and today we could add Russia and the USA, all within our
civilization. We can go back to a previous civilization and notice
Athens and Sparta, Carthage and Rome, and so on. The point is
that they don't all spring up and expand at the same time like a
crop in a field. Societies tend to flourish one after another, or two
or
three at a time.
Today, looking around us
we can see that Portugal and Spain left
their imprint on all of South America, and part of North America is
Hispanic. But both Portugal and Spain shrank back to small
societies. And since then Britain and France have shrunk back
again. The societies we mentioned as being in a previous civilization
are all extinct and when the last society ended the civilization
passed away.
Some other societies
have only recently begun to expand: Germany,
Japan (an associate society to Western Civilization) and Russia. As
the process is still going on in our civilization and societies within
it
are still rising and attempting to expand and assert themselves,
apparently our Western Civilization has some way to go before it
becomes naturally extinct.
What are the limits of a
civilization? I think much broader than
we've generally thought. The ancient Egyptian, Greek,
Mesopotamian, Phoenician, and Roman existences I suggest we
include in one civilization. They fought, traded, recognized one
another's gods and goddesses, and their rulers intermarried. Let's
call it the Mediterranean Civilization.
All these ancient
societies and their civilization itself are long since
dead. So are other old civilizations in India, China, South America,
Central America. So if they're dead, how long did they live? And
why did they die?
We can only ask that
kind of question and expect an answer if we
look at societies and civilizations as living entities in themselves
and
forget about the individuals in them, just as we did when we looked
at a city from the air. Then we were not aware of individuals being
born and dying in the city though all that was going on as we
looked. In the same way we're not aware of many different kinds of
individual cells in our bodies coming into existence and later dying,
yet it goes on all the time within us. As long as we think of a society
as a collection of individuals with special individual leaders we
know of by name, we're not going to understand a society properly.
We have to acknowledge a society is a living entity. I suggest to you
that's just what it is.
LIVING CELLS, SOCIETIES
AND CIVILIZATIONS
Human beings create and
maintain societies and civilizations. What
are humans actually made of? Basically, according to our present
state of knowledge, cells. There are far more living cells in your one
body than there are people on this planet. There are about 60,000
miles in your circulatory system. The blood coursing through your
major veins and arteries is a continuous movement of cells,
something like the traffic in our cities, except that in the body,
traffic is all one way and so more efficient. You don't have half the
width of a vein with not much traffic and the other half clogged in a
rush hour. Our governments, large industries, schools, universities,
offices, banks and stock exchanges are centres of activity, as are the
major organs in our bodies: heart, liver, stomach, brain, lungs, and
so on. There are said to be one hundred thousand million atoms in a
single cell. Cells in us are like people in a society.
There are about 250
different kinds of cells in the human body.
When we look at an individual cell, although we need a microscope
to see it, we find it's not a simple thing. It's more like a factory.
Things pass in and out of its walls, some things are excluded, others
are not. Vast numbers of chemical reactions take place inside it with
lightning speed. There are various complicated parts and structures
inside the cell. Eukaryotic cells have organelles that live and
reproduce and multiply within them. The organelles perform
chemical work inside the cell and have their own double helix of
DNA inside them completely separate and containing different
information from the DNA in the cell nucleus. How does a cell
become a liver cell, or a stomach cell? We're told it knows where its
place is. It certainly knows what to do.
These billions of cells
cooperate within us to do their work. We
don't know exactly how or why they do this, but if they didn't work
together, if they went on strike, we'd quickly die. We've never met
any of these cells as individuals, we've never talked to them. We
live in worlds of different dimensions, but they are somehow us.
Each of your cells is a distinct individual with its own life within
you. And your cells live out their lives together inside you, forming
you.
A society doesn't have
much interest in individual people. It taxes
them, governs them, punishes them, educates them, transports
them, gives them recreational facilities, health care, and so on. But
people are faceless multitudes to the society. We are just the same
with the cells in our bodies. We feed them, take in air and water for
them, keep their habitat clean and so on, but we don't know them,
though they live and die and reproduce in us, even for
us. In a sense
they are us, but we're not conscious of them.
A cell seems to be
programmed by its DNA code, something 6 feet
long rolled up inside it. The DNA in the single cell apparently has
the code to reproduce the whole individual person, and an
individual civilized person has the ability to start the creation of a
whole society. But when we, as individuals, try to understand a
civilization it's rather like a single cell of the billions in our body
trying to understand how the whole human being operates.
. . . . . . . . . .
We shouldn't
overestimate our own knowledge in our day and age.
Our scientists say the sun is a nuclear furnace. They tell us the
universe began with a small very dense ball which exploded with a
big bang. Don't you think it's significant that the age that has
discovered nuclear power and invented the hydrogen bomb should
now interpret the universe in terms of that technology. When
technology advances again we'll be sure to have new explanations of
the solar system and the universe in terms of that technology. So
when we come to look at civilizations we have to be able to stand
outside all these ideas and thought patterns and see them for what
they are; products of their age.
If we want comparisons
with past societies and civilizations we have
to rely mostly on historians and archaeologists for our raw
material. That presents a problem. For example, it's been said that
if we had to rely on archaeology alone, we would never have known
there was a Norman conquest of England. But that event was a
monumental change in the course of the history of the English
society.
A further example: what
we are being told by some scholars (who
are themselves the product of our age) is that about 3,000 to 3,500
years ago Stone Age people in South America had implements that
were fancy stone clubs used for warfare and religious ceremonies.
That conforms with our general ideas about Stone Age people.
Since Darwin and Wallace the view of history has been that it is a
linear progression from Stone Age cave dwellers to the present.
What I'm suggesting (see my The Walls of Cyclops) is that people in
South America were using the same technical principles as we do
today in similar ore bodies, and that about 3,000 to 3,500 years ago
they were drilling for gold, silver and copper which was used for
ornaments, housewares, and so on. I believe I am on firm ground in
this case because as a chartered accountant one of my clients was a
manufacturer of deep rock drilling equipment.
This wasn't the only
Stone Age phenomenon. Look at Stonehenge,
first built even earlier. A generation ago conventional wisdom held
that Stonehenge was connected with the invading Beaker People.
Recently the prevailing view seems to be that probably there
weren't any invading Beaker People. We still don't know who the
people were who built Stonehenge, or what they used it for. What
we do know is that there were thousands of stone circles in Europe
in that Age, stretching from what is now Turkey to what is now
Scotland. There are astronomical alignments at Stonehenge, and we
don't know why. (see my The Mysterious Cursus). Stonehenge has
its great stone uprights weighing 45 tons shaped with what
architects today call entasis: the uprights have slightly convex
tapering to counteract the optical illusion of curving slightly inward
when seen from a distance. The tops were slightly 'dished' to carry
the 7 ton lintels and the lintels and uprights were further secured by
mortice and tenon joints.
Some of the most massive
blocks of stone in ancient Egypt were
used to create the oldest structures; the Osirion, a beautiful
rectangular pool and courtyard dressed in stone and surrounded by
huge blocks of finished stone, and a building with massive blocks of
stone now said to have been a temple.
I would call this Age of
technical mastery in stone the Stone
Civilization. That particular civilization began with agriculture,
wood products, and stone implements and moved on to massive
stone block construction and use of copper for implements. We
know next to nothing about this civilization except for a few of its
architectural remains.
The Mediterranean
Civilization (discussed in chapter 1) began with
city states using stone and copper but moved to bricks and bronze,
and ended with empires using roads, aqueducts, fleets of wooden
ships, concrete and iron. We know quite a lot about this
civilization although some of it is poorly understood.
Our present Western
Civilization, which is still going on, began
with know-how in stone, iron, bricks and concrete, and so on, and
has moved through the Industrial Age to the Space Age with
electric, internal combustion and nuclear power. The other two
civilizations are dead.
We don't have many
examples of civilizations to work on. The very
beginning of civilizations seems to have been about 10,000 years
ago, unless some earlier ones were drowned at the end of the last ice
age. Many societies have come and gone, but very few civilizations.
There's been some accumulation of knowledge. We still use bricks,
and we use the running bond pattern for bricklaying, just as the
ancient Mesopotamians did about 5,000 years ago in a different
civilization. But a lot gets left behind and forgotten between
civilizations that have 'dark ages' or relatively uncivilized periods
between them, even though the intelligence of individuals may have
continued without interruption.
Has human intelligence
or moral sense improved during the last few
thousand years? Do we today really have more brains or morality
than Aristotle, Euclid, Pythagoras or Archimedes? Do we have
better laws than those of Hammurabi or the Ten Commandments?
Can we tell a better tale than Homer? I suggest to you that human
intelligence and morality haven't improved significantly since the
beginnings of civilizations.
. . . . . . . . . .
I think we have to
recognize 3 different things here: an age, a
technology, and a civilization. At more or less the same time,
civilizations around the world, in China, Europe, India, Central
and South America, for example, were using similar technology:
animal power, water power, people power, and stone or copper or
bronze. That's because societies are great imitators. No one can get
too far ahead for long.
We can see how the
technological change from the Industrial Age to
the present Space Age is affecting us as individual people and our
culture in our own time. I think there's a recognizable pattern here,
but as it's civilizations we're dealing with the span is very broad
and the cycle is very long. We have to reckon in thousands of years.
And since we've moved from the Industrial to the Space Age
without our civilization dying we know for a fact that a civilization
has more than one Age in its life cycle.
. . . . . . . . . .
Difficult as it is for
us to stand back and try to understand a
civilization this must be our next step. I suggest the best way to do
this is to start with one specimen from a civilization, a single
society.
I think the simplest type is what I would call an Island City Society.
There have been quite a few of them, including Tyre, and Tyre's
colony, Carthage, in the dead Mediterranean civilization. But that's
not our civilization and we don't know enough about those cities.
We don't even know when Tyre was founded. Then there are living
Island City Societies, such as Singapore and Hong Kong. They're
still quite young. Hong Kong started in 1841 AD, so it's only about
160 years old and incomplete. Hong Kong may come to an
unnatural end by having been absorbed into China in the late
1990s, or it may have the energy with its 6 million people to change
China itself with its billion plus people. It's too early to see how
the
change will develop.
Not all societies live
to die a natural death. Tyre was murdered by
Alexander the Great. It took him about seven months to do it.
Before he could capture the city he built a causeway to reach the
island and set up 2000 crosses within sight of the city walls, ready
for crucifying the nobler citizens. After the bloodbath when the city
fell he sold most of the survivors into slavery.
We need as our first
example an Island City Society that lived and
died in our own Western civilization. We need direct evidence we
can use as well as having to rely on what historians tell us. It's not
history we're after, but evidence for the life pattern of a society.
Then we can apply this pattern to the incomplete societies around
us today and have a better idea of how to prepare for the future. I
think there is such an Island City Society for us to look at: it began
as marsh and island flats, rose to be a world power, and then
declined into just a city, and is now gradually physically becoming
submerged as sea levels rise around the world. It's Venice, and next
we'll look at its life cycle.
We know exactly how
Venice began - with urban refugees after the
sack of Rome and its nearby northern satellite cities. Some of these
people fled to the 117 mud flat islands, sand banks, and lagoons
which later grew to be Venice. It was impossible to get at them
there and their possessions weren't worth looting anyway.
We know exactly when
Venice began, 421 AD on 25th of March. We
know exactly when Venice ceased to exist as an Island City State:
Napoleon, who said with a sense of history 'I shall be Attila for the
State of Venice', declared war on Venice on May 1, 1797. The
government collapsed and the ruler, the Doge, abdicated. Then,
without a fight, Napoleon stripped it of its wealth and it became just
another Italian city. So the life span of Venice as an Island City
Society was 1,376 years.
Just to test this life
span, we can take two other societies that we
know about; Rome itself was founded, so legend has it, in 753 BCE
(before Common or Christian era) and was sacked by the Visigoths
in 410 AD. Actually its power had become so vast it was sacked
more than once and it took 66 more years to finally destroy it. So
its life span was 1,229 years. Byzantium was intended as the eastern
Roman empire, but in fact became a separate state. Its capital was
founded in 326 AD by Constantine; that's why it was called
Constantinople. It was besieged and overwhelmed by the Turks and
sacked in 1453 AD. That time span is 1,127 years. This gives us
some idea of the scale of the life cycle of a society. All three were
killed off while rotting away in old age, just as elderly humans are
killed off, by influenza, for example.
Carthage was unlucky
enough to be a contemporary society with
Rome. It had 3 Punic wars with Rome, lasting 23 years, 17 years,
and the final war only 3 years. In the second, Hannibal marched his
army from Spain across the Pyrenees, crossed the Rhone river,
crossed through the Alps into Italy, apparently elephants included -
the living tanks of the day. He smashed every Roman army he met,
and then was let alone to move about in Italy until the
Carthaginians grew tired of voting troops and money to him, and
he left. He never did attack the city of Rome. Later, Scipio, a young
Roman general, defeated him near Carthage in 202 BCE. In 146
BCE the fleet of 500 ships was towed out to sea and sunk, the
citizens massacred or sold as slaves, the city was stripped, the
buildings torn down, the site ploughed up and a curse put on it.
Said to have been founded about 653 BCE, it was put to death after
only 507 years.
Now let's look a little
closer at the life span of Venice. It began by
building up its site, it developed a local monopoly in salt, very
important in the days before refrigeration; our word salary comes
from the Latin word for salt as the Romans gave an allowance to
each soldier. The early Venetians learned boat building and ship
handling. The various lagoon populations joined together, the
people assembled to decide matters of state, and after 140 years the
12 main islands elected 12 tribunes. About another 130 years after
that they elected their first communal ruler, or Doge.
Venice survived the
ravages on the nearby mainland of the
Visigoths, the Huns, the Vandals, and then the Franks. When
Charlemagne led the Franks, in about 800 AD he executed 4,500
Saxons in one day. This at a time when populations around the
world were very small by our standards. In 1378 AD the
population of London is said to have been only about 46,000.
Charlemagne and his father before him tried to conquer Venice but
failed.
Byzantium gradually
conquered a fair part of the old western
Roman Empire. Venice began to act as its western maritime
outpost. It transported generals and supplies for Byzantium. When
Charlemagne finally made peace with Byzantium a Venetian
official was present and the existence of Venice was formally
acknowledged. In recognition of its services Byzantium gave Venice
trading privileges throughout its empire. It's said that Charlemagne
always wore a Venetian tunic. So, after about 400 years of life
Venice had developed maritime ability, was a trading state in
luxury goods between east and west and a unified well organized
society.
We don't know much about
those first 400 years of Venice, but we
know much more about the beginnings of Hong Kong. Both have
the characteristic growth pattern of an Island City Society so let's
turn to Hong Kong now. In the 1830s AD Hong Kong was a group
of 236 islands with a population of about 5,000, said to be mostly
stone cutters, fishermen, smugglers and pirates. British merchants
had been ordered out of Canton by the government of China.
Britain went to war with China over this and in the peace that
followed received a lease on Hong Kong; 90% of it expired in 1997.
The emperor is said to have laughed when the British wanted it. But
Hong Kong has one of the largest, finest natural harbours in
the world. Ocean going ships couldn't reach Canton, so Hong Kong
became its port, with the displaced British merchants. That was in
1841.
In the 1940s Hong Kong
survived being overrun by the Japanese. In
the 1990s the Chinese (formerly mainland) population was about
98% of the total population of about 6 million. It has shipbuilding,
low cost industrial technology and electronic 'high tec'. It is a free
port and so has become an international trading centre. Yet, like
Venice, it is incapable of supporting itself from its own territory.
Both Venice and Hong
Kong suffer from site over-population. In
the 1930s Venice had only 6,000 of 19,000 homes with any form of
sewage arrangement. Over the centuries the houses have collected
rainwater for drinking and flushed raw sewage out into the canals.
Goethe complained about the filth 200 years ago. A slight tide helps
wash most of it away into the Adriatic.
Before 1997 Hong Kong
had a Governor and Legislative Council.
That's not very different from the Doge and 12 Tribunes set up by
Venice. The main point seems to be that an international trading
centre needs only enough government to maintain order, and
basically to be left alone and not overtaxed. Hong Kong began by
being sheltered under the British Empire and Venice by being
sheltered under the Byzantine Empire. Hong Kong began as an
open door between the West and China. Venice built up its power
by trading in luxury goods between east and west, spices, silks, and
so on, and used an up-dated version of the Roman galleys. The
galleys had a crew of about 200 and each man was an entrepreneur
who could take goods stowed under his rowing bench and trade on
his own account. The galleys were fast, safer from pirates, and
avoided the tolls levied on overland caravans. Venice
was a ship
builder. Hong Kong is a ship builder.
We need to look outside
Venice now to better understand how and
why it prospered so well. Mohammed died in 632 AD when Venice
was about 200 years old. After Mohammed there came a
remarkable expansion among the converts to Islam: the Arabs and
the Turks. The Arabs spread the faith across north Africa. They
eventually crossed the straits of Gibraltar and entered Europe
through their attacks on Spain. The Turks began pushing towards
Europe from the eastern end and across the Dardanelles which
meant they met Byzantium head on. It took them about 1,000 years
but eventually they conquered the Balkans, Hungary, besieged
Vienna, capital of Austria, and declared war on Russia. That was as
far as they got in Europe. Bismarck, German Chancellor in the late
1800s could call Turkey the 'sick man of Europe', about 1,240 years
after the rise of Islam in Turkey.
The Seljuks - one branch
of the Turks - took Jerusalem in 1,071.
Before 1,100 the first Crusade was organized by the North Atlantic
and Central European powers to take it back. They needed
Venetian support as experts in the area. In exchange they gave
Venice trading rights in their own states and Venice helped them
take Askelon, Tyre and Acre. Venice received 1/4 of Acre, and a
street in every city of the kingdom of Jerusalem, with a bakery,
public bath, market, and church. The Venetians didn't have to pay
any taxes and their goods paid no duties. Venice sacked and
pillaged Rhodes where the best looking youths of both sexes were
sold as slaves and the plunder was described as the most fabulous
since creation. Venice, with its fleet of galleys, was also helping
Byzantium against the Turks and was rewarded with trading
privileges there.
About 750 years after
its beginnings, Venice, this city of 150,000,
was said to have a colony of 200,000 merchants and others in
Constantinople, capital of Byzantium. They were so rowdy and
arrogant that their goods were confiscated and their trading
privileges cancelled. But the Turks kept pressing on the Byzantines
who by 17 years later, needing the help of Venice, restored all
Venetian privileges with compensation.
Now we come to the real
turning point in the life cycle of Venice -
the 4th Crusade (1,202). Venice was not quite
800 years old at the
time. The Northern powers wanted Venice to transport them to the
Holy Land. They even collected at Venice. They had 4,500 horses,
9,000 knights, 20,000 foot soldiers and provisions for 1 year. Venice
put the price at 85,000 marks, cash in advance. My calculation is
that this would be about $103,445,000 today. The crusaders didn't
have cash, so Venice bargained with them to stop on the way to the
Holy Land and put down a local insurrection in the colony of
Venice on the Dalmatian coast, and this was done.
Next, Venice wasn't too
pleased with Byzantium for cutting off its
trading privileges, even temporarily. The Crusaders had with them
the son of the former Byzantine emperor who had been deposed
and blinded. The Crusaders and Venice now agreed to sack
Constantinople, a Christian capital. Venice took fabulous spoils as
well as architects, craftsmen, artists, and secured Byzantine
overseas possessions - the Cyclades, the Sporades, the islands and
eastern shore of the Adriatic, the shores of the Propontis and the
Euxine and the littoral of Thessaly, and Venice bought Crete.
Venice now controlled
the Adriatic, the Ionian Islands, the
archipelago, the sea of Marmora and the Black sea, the trade route
between Constantinople and western Europe and was established in
the sea ports of Syria. Of the 12 electors who set up the new
emperor of Byzantium 6 were controlled by Venice. Venice was
now a world power.
Here's part of the
Doge's "State of the Nation" address when
Venice was at the height of its power, just over 1,000 years from its
beginning:
"My Lords,... In my time
4 millions of debts have been paid off, and
there are other 6 millions owing, which debt was incurred for the
wars of Padua, Vicenza, and Verona; we have paid every 6 months
2 instalments of the debts, and have paid all my officers and
regiments. This our city now sends out in the way of business to
different parts of the world 10 million ducats' worth yearly by ships
and galleys, and the profit is not less than 2 million ducats a year.
In this city there are 3,000 vessels of one to 200 'enfore' (measure of
capacity) with 17,000 seamen; there are 300 larger ships with 8,000
sailors. Every year there go to sea 45 galleys with 11,000 sailors, and
there are 3,000 ship's carpenters and 3,000 caulkers. There are
3,000 weavers of silk and 16,000 weavers of cotton cloth; the houses
are estimated to be worth 7,050,000 ducats. The rents are 500,000
ducats. There are 1,000 noblemen whose income is from 700 to
4,000 ducats. If you go on in this manner you will increase from
good to better, and you will be the masters of wealth and
Christendom; everyone will fear you. But beware, as you would be
of fire, of taking what belongs to others and of waging unjust war,
for God cannot endure those errors in princes. Everyone knows
that the war with the Turks has made you brave and experienced of
the sea, you have 6 generals fit to fight any great army, and for
each of these you have sea captains... officers... and rowers enough
to man 100 galleys; and in these years you have shown distinctly
that the world considers you the leaders of Christianity. You have
many doctors of diverse sciences, and especially lawyers wherefore
numerous foreigners come here for judgement of their differences
and abide by your verdicts. Your mint coins every year a million
ducats of gold and 200,000 of silver... Therefore be wise in
governing such a State and be careful to watch it and see that it is
not diminished by negligence..."
By my calculations,
translating the Doge's information into modern
statistics, Venice had a GNP (gross national product) of over $26
billion and controlled a population of probably over 20 million,
which is greater than the present population of Australia, or
Austria, or Bolivia, Cambodia, Chile, Ecuador, Hungary, Iraq...
and so on.
The Venetians whose
income was 4,000 ducats yearly would have
more than $10 million annually today.
Incidentally, Marco
Polo, a Venetian, left in 1271 and travelled
overland to China where he spent 17 years including service with
Kublai Khan, before returning to Venice. He was impressed with
China's wealth and power. The wealthy Venetians response to his
stories was "Oh, really?" "Yeah?" "You don't say" ...
At this stage we're
just looking at some of the more important
information about the life cycle of Venice as an Island City Society.
When we've followed it to its end, - which we'll do in the next
chapter - we can deduce a pattern and begin to apply it to others to
see if there's a resemblance. Then we can better understand where
we're at today which is something history doesn't tell us.
CHAPTER
4
DECLINE AND DEATH OF VENICE AS A SOCIETY
We left Venice at about
800 years old, when it had just become a
world power, which it was by 1220 AD. As early as the 1200s
double entry bookkeeping, the basis of modern accounting systems,
was brought into use at the Rialto, the Venetian commercial centre
and clearing house. It may be that the ancient Romans knew the
principle of the system, Suitonius writing in about 110 AD mentions
'the debit side of the ledger', but the Venetians brought it into
modern practical business and so provided themselves with
accurate and efficient record keeping.
For about 800 years this
city of 150,000 had a virtual monopoly of
the luxury trade from east to west. But Venice in its rise to power
had bitten off the hand that fed it: Byzantium. It cannibalized that
society just as Rome had done earlier with Carthage and other
societies, including Egypt. By weakening Byzantium, Venice
inherited its problem: expansion of the Turks.
Venice, on the east side
of Italy, also faced the bitter rivalry of
Genoa on Italy's west side. Venice and Genoa fought intermittently
for about 150 years, with first one side winning, and then the other.
They fought several sea battles. Finally Venice won a 3 year war.
From then on Genoa ceased to be a significant naval power.
Even before the final
victory over Genoa, Venice was fighting
Hungary over the Dalmatian coast. And while that intermittent
fighting was going on, Venice began fighting inland in northern
Italy. One by one it took over the smaller towns in its area: Verona,
Vicenza, Fruili, Brescia, Bergamo, Ravenna, Crema, Treviglio, the
Polesimo, and so on. This drew the attention of France and Spain
who had been trying to partition up Italy between them.
In 1509 the League of
Cambrai had France, Spain, the Holy Roman
Empire, the Pope and even Henry 8th of England
together against
Venice which lost the war and all its mainland possessions. But
Venetian diplomacy helped the victors to quarrel and within a year
or two Venice had most of it back, but it cost 5 million ducats. Some
have argued this started the decline of Venice, now about
1,100 years old. But most of the Italian 'terrafirma' was glad to
have back the enlightened rule of Venice, which held much of it
until the time of Napoleon.
Probably Venice could
have remained a much larger player in
Europe had it been able to take over all the major Renaissance
cities in northern Italy: Florence, Genoa, Mantua, Milan, Padua
and Pisa. But intermittently Venice was fighting the Turks in the
east at the same time. It's said that Venice attacked the Italian
mainland because the small states there were charging excessive
tolls and levies on Venetian imports going to Germany and
northern Europe. But Venice was also running out of room on its
islands, it constantly needed more lumber for shipbuilding, as it
suffered losses in war and wooden ships only last a few years
anyway. The wealthy citizens needed room to relax on shore and set
up larger industries there with less water and sanitation problems.
After the Turks had
finished off Byzantium by capturing
Constantinople, Venice traded with them such as by importing
Turkish rugs, and made treaties with the Turks when it could. But
even before 1500 Venice found it necessary to cede Albania and
Lemnos to the Turks and pay a tribute of 100,000 ducats for the
retention of trading privileges. At the end of the next war with the
Turks it had to offer 6,000 ducats for Malvasia and 300,000 as
indemnity for the war. This was rejected and the Venetians had to
give up some Dalmatian ports as well. Eventually Crete, which
Venice had held for 450 years, was captured by the Turks after a 24
year war in which the heroic Venetian commander was captured,
flayed alive, his skin stuffed and put on display in the Turkish
capital. By 1718, within 100 years of the end, all major overseas
possessions were lost.
In the early days the
council met every day of the week including
Sundays and every holiday except 2 in the year. In summer they sat
from 8 to 12 and in winter from noon to sunset. Some of the older
nobles had hardly missed a day in 30 or 40 years of service. Then
the "Golden Book" of the noble families was closed. An ingrowing
aristocracy resulted.
Between about 1200 and
1700 when Venice was between 800 and
1300 years old, Venice fought about 50 wars. Many of the best men
were gradually killed off, Venice resorted to mercenaries, (as
Carthage had done); massive debts piled up to finance the wars.
Then titles were offered for sale - 100,000 ducats would buy one -
official positions were for sale, and Venice became exhausted
militarily and in spirit.
Venice did adapt when it
could. It even partially recovered the spice
trade threatened by Portugal after discovery of the Cape route to
the East Indies. There was a further blow to Venice in the sailing
ship revolution. Ocean going round-hulled merchant ships with
guns and gunpowder could more or less defend themselves with a
small crew while 200 man galleys were expensive to crew and not
suited to ocean-going trade.
At its peak the Venetian
state-owned ship-building yard, the
Arsenal, employed 16,000 men and by assembly line methods could
build a ship a day. They gave a practical demonstration for Henry
3rd of France who visited Venice in 1574 and saw
a galley put
together in a few hours.
As the local supplies of
lumber were used up, the Venetian
merchants were prepared to ship goods in foreign vessels or have
ships built on the Dalmatian coast, or at Ragusa, which became a
colonial competitor. But the Venetian government put duties and
tariffs on foreign shipping, so that considerable trade shifted to
Leghorn and Ragusa, to the disadvantage of Venetian
entrepreneurs.
Now that its eastern
monopoly was declining, Venetian ingenuity
turned to industry, It developed a fine quality woollen trade, and
the highest quality glass, mirrors, and lacquered furniture. Even
today we have Venetian blinds as quality adjustable shades for
windows (but not made in Venice). The English and the Dutch were
more experienced ocean going navigators - they lived next to oceans
and had adapted to them in their development. They sailed right
through the Mediterranean to trade with Turkey. England took
40% of the Aleppo trade and left Venice only 25%. Worse, English
and Flemish manufacturers were taking their cheap imitations of
Venetian quality goods to the eastern Mediterranean. (Britain had
the same complaint about Germany in the late 1800s and North
America about the Pacific Rim States in the late 1900s).
When Venice was about
1000 years old its arts began to flourish.
Genoa produced Columbus, Florence produced Boccacio, Dante,
Machiavelli, the Medicis, Michelangelo, and Leonardo. From Pisa
came Galileo. Venice produced Bellini, Cabot (a naturalized
Venetian), Canaletto, El Greco, Gabrieli, Marco Polo, Monteverdi
(concert master there), Spinetus (who invented the spinet),
Tintoretto, and Vivaldi. Except for Marco Polo, who was earlier, all
this took place when Venice was between 1000 and 1300 years old,
During the final 150
years everything fell apart; but the reasons for
it lay mostly in the 140 years or so before that, so let's look at that
period first - from about 1505 to 1645 if you like historical dates.
In 1505 Venice was
almost 1100 years old. Its colonies were
competing with it, producing more cheaply than it could. Soon after
its defeat by the League of Cambrai in 1509, a new experience in its
lifetime, it joined the Pope, Spain, and Henry 8th's England against
France which was invading Italy. Then 13 years later Venice joined
the Pope, France, Florence, and Milan against the Holy Roman
Empire.
Venice had been warring
against the Turks on and off all this time
and was instrumental in defeating Turkish sea power at Lepanto in
1571. But the Turks took Cyprus from Venice. All these wars were
very costly to Venice. And during this period there was European
inflation. But while English builders' wages went up 25%, the
Venetian increase was 100%. Volunteer oarsmen were being
replaced by convicts. France switched its importing from Venice to
its own Marseilles, and the English traded direct with the near east
or through Leghorn.
We can see why: Venetian
taxes were too high, labour costs were
too high, workers were becoming inefficient, there were high city
wages for services, sites were expensive, there were frustrating guild
(labour union) restrictions. The government tried to curb wage
increases but found it impossible. Let's take an example. Around
1600 AD Venetian cloth was of the highest quality. An average
'piece' cost 79 ducats. The average components were:
Government taxes 33
ducats (42%)
Labour costs . . . . 34
ducats (43%)
Merchant's share . 12
ducats (15%)
Total . . . . . . . . .
. . 79
From that 12 ducats or
15% the merchant had to provide for the
raw material cost (probably at least 10%); overhead (probably
about 10% today); a return on capital to investors (which should be
at least 5%); a reserve for replacements and improvements (say
5%) and then 'profits' or wages of the merchant, (which should be
at least 5%). You can see that the money isn't there, and the
product was already over-priced in the world market. The taxes
were high because the wars were killing Venice. Venice was now in
a world class league without a monopoly any more to support it.
Now let's look at the
last 140 to 150 years when Venice was over
1200 years old. Everything began unravelling. First, a 24 year war
to the death to defend Crete against the Turks. The cost far
exceeded the 5 million ducats annually in taxation. Every Venetian
had to give up 3/4 of his family plate to be melted down. The taxes
rose higher than ever. The government debt rose to 80 million
ducats and required annual interest payments of 2.5 million ducats.
No wonder that the cloth
tenderers' guild had 22 masters and 12
unemployed, and the tanners with 63 in the guild had 35
unemployed (before 1700 AD). There were less than 2000 beggars in
the 1500s AD but over 20,000 in the late 1600s. Many skilled
workers moved to other parts of Europe.
Public morals
disintegrated. An abbess and a nun fought with
daggers over a lover. A woman put up her daughter's virginity as a
lottery prize. Someone prepared a book listing over 11,600 call girls.
Casinos sprang up everywhere.
The Arsenal, which once
employed over 16,000 now had about
1,500 men. 70,000 pieces of lumber intended for shipbuilding
disappeared annually, used by workers to heat their homes. Many
workers had other jobs and only turned up for payday. Apprentices
in the guilds paid for their certificates instead of working for them.
Government offices were for sale.
The army cost as much as
ever but was corrupt. Corfu should have
been defended by 1 company of Venetians and 2 of Albanians. In
fact there were only a couple of Venetian officers who drew the pay
for the lot. Colonial defences were decayed. Guns were rusted up or
without ammunition. Battlements were overgrown with bushes and
trees.
The cost of the 19 day
election campaign for the Doge was about
70,000 lire around 1700 AD and about 400,000 lire just before the
end. Within 20 years of the end the Doge had said "We have no
forces, on land or sea. We have no alliances. We live by luck, by
chance." It was a pathetic ending, in 1797. Just after an ultimatum
from Napoleon about a new form of government was read in the
Great Council, there was a discharge of musketry outside. In panic
the members voted 513 yeas, 30 nays, and 5 blanks. Then, having
signed themselves out of office, they went home.
But the musket shots
weren't the French troops after all. They were
the parting salute of the Slavonic troops, the mercenary palace
guard, leaving because the French minister had said they 'irritated'
him and so the Venetian government had ordered them to leave.
Then Napoleon, without a fight, began the systematic looting of the
treasures of Venice. The crown jewels were removed, precious
metals melted down, the finest art catalogued and shipped to the
Louvre in Paris. So ended Venice, the Island City Society which
lasted from the sack of the Roman Empire to the looting of Venice
by Napoleon, 1376 years.
The peninsula of Italy
was a patchwork of small states at the time.
But soon afterwards Cavour and Garibaldi were among the leaders
of the 'risorgimento' or resurrection of the Italian spirit of the
Renaissance and even of ancient Rome, leading to the unification of
Italy. By 1861 King Victor Emmanuel 2nd, king of
Sardinia, was
able to proclaim himself king of Italy and in 1866 Venetia was
finally wrested from the Austrians for Italy. In less than 90 years
after its end as a distinct Society, Venice was swallowed up with its
competitors into a new, much larger entity, a Nation State.
TOP OF PAGE
CHAPTER 5
CREATION OF LIVING SOCIETIES:
THE USA, RUSSIA, OTHERS
Remembering that our example of Venice was just one type of
society, an Island City Society, which had a simplistic beginning,
now we're ready to test the theory on some of the societies that are
important to us in our present Western Civilization: alphabetically,
Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States of
America.
First, we have to know
when they started. This is where a lot of
people have given up. It all looks like an endless stream of history to
them. But if I'm right in saying societies are living entities and have
life cycles then there has to be a start. So, what are we looking for?
I think it's:
1. A precise location.
We've seen that societies don't move around,
they're rooted. They take their chances where they began, like trees.
So they should have begun where they are today.
2. The name should be
the same. It's true Venice was briefly called
Rivo Alto at the beginning but it soon became Venice and kept that
name. So the earliest use of the present name will be of help to us.
3. We want continuity.
If a society dies out early on, then that's not
a full life and we're talking about life cycles. If it ceases, like
Gilbert's colony in Newfoundland, or the lost colony of Roanoke in
Virginia, then we have to look for a different start.
Later on we'll look for
the characteristic phases: formative,
ascendancy, expansion with cannibalism, dominance, decay, and
termination or death. Right now we'll concentrate on starts. Let's
take the easy ones first.
CANADA
The name Canada came
from the Huron-Iroquois language kanata
(settlement) as told to and used by Jacques Cartier in 1535. By 1550
it was already being shown on European maps as the name for part
of present eastern Canada.
We know when Canada
started as our present Canada, because we
know from looking at Venice that it has to be started by people
from another society within a civilization. The first permanent
settlement of that kind was in 1604 when Acadia was founded.
THE USA
The name America came
from a German map maker who read the
popular accounts of the travels of Florentine merchant Amerigo
Vespucci and named the territory after him in 1507.
The US generally regards
its beginning as the 1607 settlement in
Virginia. But Spain's American empire began with Cortez in
Mexico from 1520, De Soto along the Mississippi from 1539,
Coronado beyond the Rio Grande and Menendez who founded the
first European settlement in North America, in Florida in 1565.
Then came the French with forts along the Ohio river, La Salle on
the Mississippi to the gulf of Mexico, calling it Louisiana, founding
New Orleans at the mouth of the river. As late as 1701 La Salle
founded Detroit for France. There were also Dutch and Swedish
colonies. So here we have complications. What is the true beginning
of the US? I think we have to give recognition to the various
influences, particularly the Spanish, as the US took New Mexico,
Texas, and California from Mexico. So do we take 1520 as the start
of what eventually became part of the US, or 1565, as the first
European permanent settlement, or the first permanent English
settlement, in Virginia in 1607, as the area that motivated the
existence of the society that is the US?
From our point of view,
dealing with societies with long life spans,
we don't care much which date is used. We're looking at change in
status of the territory which was to become the US. We could just
as well say 1520, as 1607, because we're not trying to be historians
here, we're after something different. But the US, unlike Mexico, is
fundamentally English speaking, although Spanish is increasingly a
second language, so let's say it started in 1607.
. . . . . . . . . .
If we had slight
problems finding the start of the US, where do we
begin with Britain, France, Germany, and Russia? It may not be as
hopeless as you might think. Let's take Britain next.
BRITAIN
We know that just before
the Roman society died, Roman legions
started moving out of Britain, and the last of them left by 409 AD.
After they left, the Roman colonial society in Britain collapsed and
died. So we know there has to be a fresh start, a new society has to
come into existence after that. But the Romans hadn't even left
before the Picts, Irish, and Saxons were already invading Britain.
Then came the Angles, and Jutes. Three small kingdoms took
shape, Northumbria, in the north, Mercia in the west, and Wessex
in the south and east. Offa, king of Mercia, built a 'dyke' to keep
out the Welsh, and subdued just about everyone else, except the
Danes and Vikings who were starting to come in. But the first king
to call himself King of the English was Egbert of Wessex in 802.
Both Mercia and Northumbria did homage to him. Several other
kings followed Egbert, then came Alfred 'the Great'.
Britain was really
founded as an independent society during the
reign of Alfred (871 - 900 AD). He was a successful warrior,
organized a navy, re-organized the army, was an educated man
himself, invited scholars to his court, founded schools, churches and
monasteries, patronized merchants and explorers, and was a great
law-giver.
Alfred's successor
Edmund the Elder was acknowledged as king or
as overlord over the whole island. Athelstan (925 - 940) became lord
of the whole of Britain:
"Rex Anglorum curegulus
totius Britanniae"
If we look forward a few
years we find the Danes took over half the
country, and later, one of them, Canute, became king of England.
Then Harold Hardrada of Norway attacked and was defeated by
Harold king of England in the north in 1066, a few weeks before
William of Normandy landed in the south. Harold marched his
army south and chose to meet William's forces without delay. He
was killed and his army defeated at Hastings on the south coast.
So England, which later
grew to be Britain, started somewhere in
there. Do we take 802 or 871 as our starting date? The title came
into existence with Egbert, but the reality began to take shape with
Alfred. I suggest in this case we take 871 as our starting date.
FRANCE
Being in the continental
land mass of Europe, how do we define the
location of the society that is France? Natural frontiers and
language differences are of some help. Parts of it front on to the
Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Channel. To the south west
past the Pyrenees the Spaniards speak a different language, as do
the Italians to the south east. The Alps separate Switzerland from
France, but about 20% in Switzerland speak French. Language and
the Rhine river separate France from Germany, but Alsace and
Lorraine, presently French, have both languages and have been
fought over for a thousand years. The Dutch in the north east have
a different language, but about a third of Belgians, also north east,
speak French.
The corpse of the Roman
society was barely cold when Clovis, king
of a group of Franks - a Germanic people - settled in part of what is
now France. Between 486 and 507 the Franks pushed the Visigoths
back into Spain, took over Burgundy, and defeated the Alemanni.
(Allemagne is French for Germany today). But the Frankish
kingdom broke up when Clovis died. Charles Martel (the Hammer)
in the 700s pulled the east and west kingdoms together as Austrasia
and his grandson Charlemagne (the Great) in about 800 AD united
it all again and more, as Austrasia. But it was as much or more
Germany as France. France was only 2 regions of 5 or more.
There's no France recognizable yet, and I think we need to have
some semblance of the right territory to start with.
I suggest we begin with
the treaty of Verdun in 843 between
Charles the Bald who was the first king of Western France, and his
brother, later called Louis the German. They agreed to have as
their inheritances what later became France and Germany
respectively. There wasn't much progress beyond that until the time
of Hugh Capet. His kingdom was the Ile de France area and his
capital was Paris, a central position in the future France. When the
Capets came to power in 987 France was about the size of 2 French
Departments today. But by the end of that dynasty France was the
size of 59 modern French Departments (there are about 95 today). There
was a common justice and coinage, and the Pope was at
Avignon. France had a pre-eminent position in Europe. That was in
1328. I think we can recognize that as phases 1 and 2, the formative
and ascendancy phases for France, 843 - 1328 = 485 years.
GERMANY
Now that we're getting
the idea of how to do this, let's tackle our
most difficult case so far - Germany.
First, the name,
Germany, is no help to us; it comes from the Latin
Germanus, of Roman times.
The territory lacks
natural frontiers: on the east, next to Poland, on
part of the west with France, and the Low Countries, and to the
north with Denmark. As to language, Austria to the south is
German speaking, as is most of Switzerland.
Our starting point,
though, is not too difficult. We can begin with
Louis the German, in 843, the other side of the treaty of Verdun.
It's in the development of its later existence as a society that
problems arise.
There's the problem of
the continuous entity called the Holy Roman
Empire. It was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor Empire, but existed
as a phantasmagoria for close to a thousand years. This began with
Otto 'the Great', a Saxon, who was chosen "German' king in 936.
In 962 he was crowned by the Pope as Holy Roman Emperor.
Frederick Barbarossa (1152 - 1190) called the 'empire' located in
'Germany' and 'Italy' by this name. To him it was a universal
empire established directly by God and equal in rank with the
Church. He was crowned emperor in 1155. This title went with
Germany until 1254, then came a break and after that it gradually
became more an honorary title with little power. It ended when
Napoleon captured Vienna in 1805 and defeated the Austrians and
Russians at Austerlitz in 1806. So we have two starting dates, the
concept, in 936, with Otto; and the recognition, 962, when the Pope
needed Otto's help. If we take the earlier date, 936, we have 936 -
1806, = 870 years. I would say it was never really a society, more a
papal reward for good service. If we are to recognize it as a society,
then it seems to me it has to be an Austrian rather than a German
society. It distracted Germanic kings from their own territory into
wars in northern Italy and dealings with the popes at Rome. But we
have our date for the start of Germany - 843 AD.
RUSSIA
Russia is further
removed from the Roman Empire than the other
societies we've discussed, so we're not looking for a start that has to
be after the death of the Rome society. Where did the word
'Russia" come from? The 'Russ' were asked by the local population
to come to Novgorod to put an end to local in-fighting. As a result,
the first 'Prince' of Novgorod was a 'Russ' in 862.
Who were these 'Russ'?
In 945 there was a treaty with Byzantium.
It had 3 Slav signatures and 50 Norse signatures. The Russ were
Norsemen. And so we can say that Russia began in 862.