A Brief History of the Future: A Brave and Controversial Look at the Twenty-First Century by Jacques Attali Page A
Authors: Jacques Attali
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narrow aristocracy and several thousand first-class strategists. Under their governance, the hundred thousand guild members, protected wage-earners with high earning power, keep the workshops moving. Below them toil the “proletariat of the sea” — some fifty thousand seafarers subject tothe laws of a remorseless labor market. And many others, insecure and evanescent — mercenaries and courtesans, the religious, artists, and physicians.
The city now equips itself with a fleet of three-hundred-ton merchant ships ( galere da mercato ), using both oar and sail power, sturdy and stoutly defended by mercenaries. It leases them to merchant cartels whose position is constantly challenged, for once again military necessity impinges on the demands of commerce.
Like Bruges and other cores to follow, Venice is not the center of technological innovation. The core does not invent — it hunts down, imitates, and implements the ideas of others. This will hold true for all its successors. Thus, at this same moment (while Genoa mints the first gold coin, the genovino, and Florence invents the check and the holding company), Venice is the first to gather them into a sophisticated system of stock exchanges, trading houses, banks, and insurance companies. Venice is also the first to have ships chartered by shareholding companies financed by a great number of small depositors.
The world becomes the locus of adventure for seafarers, discoverers, and explorers, civilizing by the sword in the service of Venice.
And then, around 1450, like the rest of Europe, the Serenissima runs short of money. To find it, like everyone else, it seeks ways of reaching the unknown lands described in legends evoking fabulous kingdoms where gold is to be found in unlimited quantities. Alas, the Venetian sailors return empty-handed.
Threatened neither by France, nor Spain, nor England, Venice now becomes a menace to itself.Maintaining its structures becomes increasingly costly, and its guilds become more and more rigid. Its galley cartels and its armies are neither big enough nor well enough equipped to defend its routes. The precious metals extracted from German mines are rarer and cost-lier. Smothered by Turkish pressure, this city of one hundred thousand people has become too rich and too intent on the good life, and is about to grow weary.
This sudden weakness brings down upon Venice enemies that its power had kept at bay. In 1453 the Turks, already masters of almost the whole of the old Empire of the East, take Byzantium — encircled for a half century — and challenge Venetian domination of the Adriatic. The Empire of the East perishes. A sign of the times: Greeks driven from Byzantium by the Turks seek asylum in Florence and not in Venice. The Serenissima has lived out its time.
Which city can now become the third core?
Florence cannot, because it is not a port. And the port it uses to ship its magnificent fabrics, Genoa, is not yet ready to pick up the torch from the Most Serene Republic. Bruges might return to power. The city is still powerful, attracting both artists and merchants. Jan van Eyck paints the first portrait of merchants in the history of painting — two Florentines settled in Bruges, the Arnolfini, thus signaling the entry into art history of the secular individual. But in 1482 the Flemish city’s splendor fades forever with the death of Marie of Burgundy, which puts an end to the Burgundian splendor on which Bruges depended.
At the same time, Ming China forbids its subjects to build oceangoing vessels or to leave the country. Theplanet’s leading power decides yet again to avert its eyes from abroad. In so doing it cuts itself off all over again — and the rupture will endure for a considerable length of time — from the mercantile order.
No port in France, England, or Russia yet possesses the means to take over from Venice. In those countries the rulers spend recklessly, building monuments and exhausting themselves in
The city now equips itself with a fleet of three-hundred-ton merchant ships ( galere da mercato ), using both oar and sail power, sturdy and stoutly defended by mercenaries. It leases them to merchant cartels whose position is constantly challenged, for once again military necessity impinges on the demands of commerce.
Like Bruges and other cores to follow, Venice is not the center of technological innovation. The core does not invent — it hunts down, imitates, and implements the ideas of others. This will hold true for all its successors. Thus, at this same moment (while Genoa mints the first gold coin, the genovino, and Florence invents the check and the holding company), Venice is the first to gather them into a sophisticated system of stock exchanges, trading houses, banks, and insurance companies. Venice is also the first to have ships chartered by shareholding companies financed by a great number of small depositors.
The world becomes the locus of adventure for seafarers, discoverers, and explorers, civilizing by the sword in the service of Venice.
And then, around 1450, like the rest of Europe, the Serenissima runs short of money. To find it, like everyone else, it seeks ways of reaching the unknown lands described in legends evoking fabulous kingdoms where gold is to be found in unlimited quantities. Alas, the Venetian sailors return empty-handed.
Threatened neither by France, nor Spain, nor England, Venice now becomes a menace to itself.Maintaining its structures becomes increasingly costly, and its guilds become more and more rigid. Its galley cartels and its armies are neither big enough nor well enough equipped to defend its routes. The precious metals extracted from German mines are rarer and cost-lier. Smothered by Turkish pressure, this city of one hundred thousand people has become too rich and too intent on the good life, and is about to grow weary.
This sudden weakness brings down upon Venice enemies that its power had kept at bay. In 1453 the Turks, already masters of almost the whole of the old Empire of the East, take Byzantium — encircled for a half century — and challenge Venetian domination of the Adriatic. The Empire of the East perishes. A sign of the times: Greeks driven from Byzantium by the Turks seek asylum in Florence and not in Venice. The Serenissima has lived out its time.
Which city can now become the third core?
Florence cannot, because it is not a port. And the port it uses to ship its magnificent fabrics, Genoa, is not yet ready to pick up the torch from the Most Serene Republic. Bruges might return to power. The city is still powerful, attracting both artists and merchants. Jan van Eyck paints the first portrait of merchants in the history of painting — two Florentines settled in Bruges, the Arnolfini, thus signaling the entry into art history of the secular individual. But in 1482 the Flemish city’s splendor fades forever with the death of Marie of Burgundy, which puts an end to the Burgundian splendor on which Bruges depended.
At the same time, Ming China forbids its subjects to build oceangoing vessels or to leave the country. Theplanet’s leading power decides yet again to avert its eyes from abroad. In so doing it cuts itself off all over again — and the rupture will endure for a considerable length of time — from the mercantile order.
No port in France, England, or Russia yet possesses the means to take over from Venice. In those countries the rulers spend recklessly, building monuments and exhausting themselves in
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