Redpill me on the Venetians. What is it that made them so great?

It has a cool flag .

File: Zu4we.jpg (36KB, 382x500px) Image search: [Google]

36KB, 382x500px

>>1183599
They're just douchebags really

They aren't retarded enough to give throne to dude who randomly won the right to rule in the lottery of his birth.

>>1183599
They had a monopoly on salt, a city that couldn't be invaded by land, and a top tier navy thanks to their healthy supply of Dalmatian lumber and experienced sailor tradition. They were also cunning opportunists that stole a patron saint, stole an empire, and were so good at diplomacy they managed to bluff all of Europe into thinking they were still relevant and powerful hundreds of years after they had become a military non entity.

>>1183637
Would the Roman Empire have survived without the Venetians subjugating it? Or was the schism between the Romans and the West pretty much solidified at that point, and it was only a matter of time?

>>1183766
Rome would have fallen to the Turks maybe a century later than they did.

>>1183766
The BYZANTINE shelf life was already expiring, and if anything the Venetian conquest and creation of the short-lived Latin Empire probably helped extend BYZANTINE survival longer than was necessary.

>>1183599
Sea jews

>>1183766
The Roman Empire was never subjugated by Venice. It was destroyed by barbarians in 476.

>>1183797
Why do you insist on using a pejorative name that they didn't use themselves, and was invented posthumously?

>necessary
Do you have some bias?

>>1183867
>pejorative
In what way?
>bias
The fact that you think "Byzantine" is pejorative, if anything, shows that you have the bias here.

>>1183887
Byzantine has come to mean devious, cunning, etc. It was also the name of the city before Constantinople, but it's bizarre to name their whole empire after it. Did they even ever refer to Constantinople as Byzantium?

I am not an expert so please correct me if I'm wrong.

>>1183914
Byzantine didn't acquire any negative connotations until well into the 20th century, but the Eastern Roman Empire had been called Byzantine in the West for centuries before that. And the negative aspect is only in reference to the complex and cunning intrigue typical of the court of Constantinople, so it's apt.

"Constantinopolitan" doesn't roll off the tongue nearly as well as Byzantine does, in any case.

>>1183955
Okay, I was under the impression that 'Byzantine' was coined to denigrate the Orthodox church, but it sounds like that isn't the case.

Still, I like calling them Romans because I understand that is the word they used to describe themselves. This might just be my bias, but I think most westerners feel sympathetic towards 'Romans', but don't care or know about the Byzantines. And then there are people like >>1183832 who overvalue the decentralization of the Western Empire, and ignore the Eastern Empire completely.

>>1183998
I've never heard of it being used to denigrate Orthodoxy, maybe it is in some circles. But then again it's difficult to even find the "devious" meaning of the word in official dictionaries.

Anyway I was just memeing in my first post when I caps'd the word. I thought you might be one of the many raging byzaboos on this board, but you turned out to be a chill guy.

>>1183955
The term Byzantine as a reference to the Eastern Empire was coined by Western monks as a way to differentiate between the HRE and the Eastern Empire. Previously they had just been generically referred to as Greeks, though people in the East and the people of Constantinople themselves referred to the Eastern Empire as the Romans.

File: Happy merchant of venice.png (26KB, 685x608px) Image search: [Google]

26KB, 685x608px

>>1183599
It's those double trade routes

>>1183599
cultural diversity

>>1183998
"Byzantine" is sometimes used to impugn their validity as a continuation of the Roman Empire, and no, they certainly didn't use the term themselves, they called themselves Romans, and in fact the Greeks continued to until they gained independence. "Byzantine" just comes from "Byzantium", which is the area Constantinople was built upon, and Byzantine Empire is not generally considered a pejorative, but sometimes the term "Eastern Romans" or "Eastern Roman Empire" is used, as it gives a more proper impression.

>>1183599

They made the byzans fall and letting the ottoman in

File: licinio.jpg (65KB, 400x290px) Image search: [Google]

65KB, 400x290px

Tittays

>>1183820
/thread

File: hqdefault.jpg (17KB, 480x360px) Image search: [Google]

17KB, 480x360px

Blasphemy

>>1183599
>serene
>Venetian
>republic

Why are maritime/merchant powers so based? Carthage, Venice, the Netherlands

>>1183637
Pretty much this until they got exposed by austria

>>1186196
Because by classical reckoning they're weak (not much territory, not much population, small army, etc.), so they look like underdogs yet constantly rek their bigger opposition. In fact there's usually little of the underdog about them, because they're generally rich as all fucks and their small territory is generally very densely inhabited. Also control of the sea used to mean far greater freedom of movement back then, and it means ownership of 70% of the world's territory nowadays, so it's always more advantageous than owning undeveloped land.

>>1183599
They were basically the professional con artists of Europe, they did it well until the French Revolution where they got exposed as weak. They also got fucked by the Ottomans taking all their shit and bad alliances if I'm not mistaken

>>1186876
The ottomans actually performed remarkably badly against the venetians. It took them seven wars (one of which they even lost) and hundreds of thousands of men to take over a few islands and basically never manage to threaten the venetian core land in spite of literally managing to push to the heart of the HRE and Hungary, both much larger and land based polities.

>>1186196
Fucking with Iberian people