Il "mondo nuovo": l'élite veneta fra Rivoluzione e Restaurazione (1797-1815)

In this Ph.D. thesis I investigated and tried to define the process of composition and recomposition of a regional élite during an age of great political instability. My case study was the Veneto area between the end of the Venetian Republic in 1797 and the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815. The aim of the project has been to observe how the stratified and hierarchical society of the Venetian Republic reacted to the major political changes to which it was subjected. This in terms of continuity, considering the role of traditional aristocracies and nobilities, and in terms of rupture, looking at the rise of “new men” coming from liberal professions or commerce. This case-study is noteworthy because the end of the thousand-year-old Republic engendered the brief inclusion of its territories into the Habsburg Empire (1798-1805) and into the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy (1806-1814) causing a major shift in values. Genealogical and geographical barriers were removed, and allegedly any person with knowledge and talents could held primary political and administrative positions, even if factors such as family prestige, richness and social relations continued to have a huge importance. Accordingly, my thesis defines the members of this élite relying both on formal and informal power, i.e. political positions, networks of kinship, friendship and clientelism, analyzed through Social Network Analysis. Focusing on a set of individuals with a prosopographical approach, this research has crossed the traditional chronological boundaries of political regimes to present the transformation of a regional ruling class and its characteristics at the beginning of the XIX century.