The Modern Anglo-Dutch Empire

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so­called “Catholic Counter­Reformation” was the Venetian
Cardinal Gasparo Contarini.
At the heart of this Venetian counteroffensive was the
use of terror. Sheer barbaric terror. With the initiation of
the Spanish Inquisition in 1478, under the direction of Tomás
de Torquemada, Europe was drenched in bloodshed, setting
off the Wars of Religion which did not end until 1648. Waves
of mass killings, persecution, and inflamed passions engulfed
Europe, the victim of which was the humanist ideals of the
Renaissance. 12
The ensuing decades of partisan religious
warfare, creating almost a continent­wide psychosis, were a
hammer, aimed at shattering the development of sovereign
nation­state commonwealths. 13
Torquemada's Inquisitors
The end of the Old Regime
Ultimately, this Venetian strategy didn’t work. By the early 16 th century the geopolitical crisis
facing Venice was an inescapable reality. The war of the League of Cambrai, from 1509 to 1513, when
foreign troops had entered the Venetian Lagoon, had exposed the military vulnerability of Venice's
defenses. In addition, by mid­century, Venice was threatened with the loss of not only her colonies,
but her entire access to trade with the east, at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Despite the Venetian­
Hapsburg­Papal victory at the 1571 Battle of Lepanto, Venice lost Cyprus and other colonies, and was
forced to sign a humiliating treaty with the Turks in 1573. Economically, Venice began to hemorrhage.
Between 1560 and 1600, the size of the Venetian merchant marine shrank by one half. In 1560 a
banking crisis struck, lasting into the 1580s. This was a total collapse, such that by 1584 every
private banking house in Venice had closed.
At the same time, the explosion of trans­oceanic travel had created an entirely new strategic
reality. Small but significant numbers of Europeans began to emigrate, particularly to the Western
Hemisphere, hoping to escape the old world oligarchical matrix. Venice was in no position to meet this
challenge of the New World, to undertake the task of imposing a global maritime empire.
Perhaps, if Venice had stuck to its reactionary methods, it could have found a way to overcome its
difficulties and deal with most of the challenges mentioned above. But there was one problem that
could not be solved using the old medieval methods. The idea of the Commonwealth – together with
unprecedented scientific and technological progress – had been unleashed by the Renaissance. The
zero­growth world of feudalism was forever dead. Despite all of the Venetian­inspired bloodshed and
intrigues, human progress was on the march, and some in Venice realized that the new ideas of
scientific progress and national sovereignty could not be stopped by the Spanish Inquisitor's torture
chamber.
After 1513, new initiatives were taken to transform certain fundamental features of the Empire, to
change it in order to save it. A new direction was required. This all played out over a period of several
decades, with important inputs from Italy, Flanders, Spain, and elsewhere, but, ultimately, the
creation of a new model of Empire would have to come from a new leadership in Venice itself.
12 "Two poor creatures have been burnt, and the whole city has turned Lutheran... Either I am blind or they aim at something else than Luther. They are
preparing to conquer the phalanx of the muses." - in a letter from Erasmus to Thomas More, 1523
13 To understand the face of this evil, see Friedrich Schiller's Don Carlos