the light was always shifting, the colours were always changing - reading braudel's out of italy

Completing Braudel's 'long external view' of the period preceding Italy's final long period of greatness, he looks at its relation to 'Western Europe.'

He's at pains to point out that Western Europe at this point should not be perceived as backward, but an up-and-coming economy, on which Italy could base profitable superiority. He speaks of the bipolarity of Europe at this point, with Flanders at the top and Italy at the bottom.

He then problematises this view, by pointing out that very far from being bipolar, you had significant items like the Flemish invention of oil painting, the invention of the modern footsoldier in the Swiss cantons, the Portuguese light trading caravel, and pre-eminent, France, with Gothic architecture, its Champagne fairs and universities.

I found his picture of power relations *confused* here - Italy emergent or exploiting, an aggregator of European technocratic skills, or an eventual dominator of them? I think this confusion is unlikely to be Braudel's, and is probably mine, or it did occur to me while reading how much the depiction of power relations in written history is based on prepositions, whose nuance may be peculiarly subject to translation. Even the internal dynamics of a metaphor may be prepositional and subject to the same translated distortion. The grammar of history may at times merge quite closely with the grammar of language.

Braudel makes a big thing of French encirclement... actually there's a good example of what I was just talking about when he starts talking about encirclement. Of Italian emergence from being 'only a face in the crowd in the newly diversified Europe':

It was not a question purely of of intellectual or eminence or cultural prowess. Underlying Italian predominance, there very soon stood revealed economic sources of superiority.

What do the dynamics of that sentence tell us about Braudel's perception of historical process. It's not... clear? 'Underlying but very soon revealed' is a complex mechanic.

Hennnnnnyway. Encirclement. Braudel makes a big thing about Italy being able to encircle France via its maritime routes, first Genoa, and then Venice, with long haul trade, the so-called 'di largo respiro' via Aigues-Mortes, Valencia, Seville, Cape Finisterre, then non-stop (ie at no French ports) to Southampton, London and Bruges, for cloth, tin and lead.

I was confused why this encirclement mattered, really, given that Braudel also makes a big thing of Italian mercantile dominance of the beating heart of Western Europe - the great Champagne and Geneva fairs. But I think it was because of the social, political and financial disruption of the 100 Years War, or 100 Years of dynastic spats and conflicts and general disruption.

Regardless, I do find something highly romantic about the italian establishment of the maritime trade routes: woollen cloth from Burgundy (ie Flanders and the Netherlands, tin and lead from England, transacting with spices, pepper, sugar, perfumes and silk from the Middle and Far East. The galleys connecting Levantine trade with Baltic shipping and goods via the Hanseatic ports.

Braudel decides to finish his view of the relation of Italy to these three superpowers, with an image rather than a commentary, of the galeres da mercato system of Venice.

These were state built galleys (though which only used their oars into and out of port, under sail the rest of the time) auctioned out to the highest bidder, who would then sell its space to other merchants who had cargo to move.

By 1450 the system was fully in operation:

• Romanian galleys that went to La Tana and Trebizond
• The Aigues-Mortes galleys heading to Flanders
• The Syrian and Alexandrine galleys
• The Barbary Galleys, plying the north African coast, and eventually including Egypt as they did so.

one interesting new definition of greatness to add to the complex and shifting notion at the heart of this book. Braudel considers Venice exemplary of Italy's greatness, as at its centre was 'prosperity built up to the detriment of others'.

I should tear myself away from this thread and read the books. But right now all I can do is say, Go Fizzles!

(Also, I'll soon be back in the sea of W.E.B. Du Bois.)