Foreign rule? Transnational, national, and local perspectives on Venice and Venetia within the ‘multinational’ empire

Abstract

The history of the Habsburg Empire in the post-Napoleonic era is frequently approached from the perspective of its various component nationalities. These were traditionally portrayed in the historiography as engaged in more-or-less open struggle with control from Vienna. This article argues that the over-privileging of such national categories can distort the picture. By looking at a number of case studies – the naming of Lombardy-Venetia, the Biblioteca italiana, the Panteon veneto – the relationship between Venice (and its Terraferma) and Habsburg rule during the second Austrian domination is examined. It will be argued that it is more profitable to see Venetian identities (municipal, local, Italian, and as part of a wider transnational European culture) as capable of working for as well as against the empire, and that Habsburg policy was as often concerned with managing potential local rivalries (notably between Lombards and Venetians) as with controlling a perceived Italian threat. It is also suggested that, while cultivation of local identity was often used to reinforce the national, the Austrian authorities were also happy to annex both to further imperial interests.

Frankfurt am Meer: The “Illiberal” Liberalism of the German Confederation and Its Aspirations over the Habsburg Adriatic in 1848

“…As Will Hanley (2017, 28) put it with regard to late nineteenth-century Alexandria, a context that in many respects resembled that of Trieste and the other port cities of the eastern Mediterranean, “the cardinal sin of histories of fin-de-siècle cosmopolitanism is pleasure in the anachronistic use of present-day categories, especially those of modular and indelible nationality.” Pier Paolo Dorsi (1996, 116–117), for example, wrote that “between the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Trieste was the pole of attraction mainly of the Italian people of the Adriatic, more than for peoples that were more removed in culture and traditions,” arguing teleologically that there existed a relatively homogenous Italian culture “from Friuli to Apulia.” Yet in the Austrian Littoral, a regional shared sense of belonging existed irrespective of present-day national categorizations and intertwined with Mitteleuropa and the eastern Adriatic (Laven and Baycroft 2008). As David Laven (2014), Dominique Kirchner Reill (2012), and Konstantina Zanou (2018) have shown, to speak of an Italian culture in the mid-nineteenth-century Adriatic (and even in later decades) is anachronistic, notwithstanding the fact that nationalist and municipalist political figures of Trieste identified with the Italian “nation,” albeit for different purposes.…”

“…Yet in the Austrian Littoral, a regional shared sense of belonging existed irrespective of present-day national categorizations and intertwined with Mitteleuropa and the eastern Adriatic (Laven and Baycroft 2008). As David Laven (2014), Dominique Kirchner Reill (2012), and Konstantina Zanou (2018 have shown, to speak of an Italian culture in the midnineteenth-century Adriatic (and even in later decades) is anachronistic, notwithstanding the fact that nationalist and municipalist political figures of Trieste identified with the Italian "nation," albeit for different purposes.…”

Ideals for Sale: ‘Ideal Portraits’ and the Display of National Identity in the Nineteenth‐Century Austrian Empire

“…Local cultural endeavours had their well-established place within the framework of the Empire, and were encouraged by Emperor Francis, himself an Italophile. 20 To Venetian artists, the Empire offered the possibility of connecting to its transnational networks. 21 The contemporary art world was mostly focused on individual cities, thanks not only to the exhibitions of the fine art academies in cities like Vienna and Venice, but also to the civic Art Associations (Kunstvereine) that organized annual exhibitions in, for example, Prague (Bohemia, 1822), Milan (1829), Vienna (1830), or Pest (Hungary, 1840).…”

Elite Nationalism and the Crumbling of Multi-Ethnic Coexistence: Habsburg Dalmatia and the Language Question in the Wake of Italian Unification

“…And as Siniša Malešević (2019) aptly argued, even Serbian nationalism has been widely understood in these terms, with the classic trope of Serbia as the Piedmont of the Balkans, which in turn shows the persistence of national narratives rooted in the idea that national unification was inevitable. Italian nation building has been widely interpreted not as a nationalist enterpriseapart from few works in the English-speaking world, which have disentangled some of the myths underlying the phenomenon of Italian unification, among which the idea that Austrian rule in Italy was "foreign" (see Laven 1997Laven , 2014Maritan 2022aMaritan , 2022bRiall 1994Riall , 2007.…”