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The ‘backbone’ of the Serenissima: Venice and the trade with the Holy Roman... 639

remarkably, the overall positive situation for the Venetian Republic in
this regard was strongly connected to the political actions of its elite.
It could be shown that the Venetian politicians acted between 1656
and 1682 – and well beyond – with determination to overcome the cri-
sis of its transalpine trading lanes. For this, the Republic negotiated
on the international level several times and with several partners,
principally the Habsburgs, but also Augsburg and other imperial cit-
ies. This was flanked by a benign politics of privileges to the German
merchant colony in Venice. The wishes of this group were heeded to
the detriment of merchants from the Alpine space, that is mostly from
Trento, but also Grisons or Tyrol. Put more abstractly: the Venetians
strengthened their foreign long-distance traders to the detriment of
their foreign regional traders. This was a conscious move against sub-
stantial resistance from within as well as from outside of the Republic.
As this gave the Germans within Venice some strong privileges even
vis-à-vis the native Venetians, such a policy needed to be maintained
for many years and pursued with determination. This the Venetian
state could do, even though the actors responsible for trade politics
regularly changed. Also, during the 18 century, the Venetian Repub-
th
lic retained such a political line of favouring its guests from Germany
against resistance and thus maintained these privileges until the end
of the Republic.
In a superficial analysis one could say that such a politics of leaving
the system after 1682 mostly unchanged for more than 100 years
shows conservatism or even inertia. Such an interpretation would fit
a classical interpretation of the politically paralysed Republic. As the
dominant belief was hitherto that the Venetians lost out in trade to-
wards Germany and were overtaken by Trieste, such an interpretation
would have seemed plausible. However, the fact that Venice retained
substantial northward trade and knew well that its German guests
were wealthy and successful must have served as a constant confir-
mation of the viability of such a commercial setting. Changing a frame-
work that had been created between 1656 and 1682, which was obvi-
ously successful in its goal of connecting Venice to the markets north
of the Alps via Tyrol, would have made no sense .
64
The Republic thus emerges here as a political entity that could
make far-reaching and complex decisions in a complicated field, and
push these through with determination. The board of the Cinque Savi
alla Mercanzia, especially, was a magistracy that wielded a lot of in-

64 There were some attempts in the 18 th century to change this system but the Cinque
Savi alla Mercanzia were able to defend the privileges of the German merchants, see M.
Ressel, Protestantische Händlernetze cit., pp. 333-367.

Mediterranea – ricerche storiche – Anno XIX – Dicembre 2022
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)