ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the strategic aspects of the Venetian model of managing a multi-ethnic city during the 15th and 16th centuries, the peak of the diversification of the city’s population and the period during which the principal state polices on the issue were formulated and implemented. Analyzing the findings of the burgeoning research on the presence and role of the various ethnic and denominational communities in Venice, the chapter formulates the fundamental premises (utilità and “incorporation without assimilation”), the operative principles (contingency, pragmatism, ranking, acculturation), and the mechanisms (state-structured economic norms, a specific model of socio-economic mobility, and devotional and residential practices) of the Venetian strategy of inclusion. The chapter argues that the Venetian strategy of incorporation succeeded because the principles and mechanisms deployed by state and society made ethnic “otherness” a liminal condition that was bound to gradually gave way to Venezianità, for the balance between the hybridity tolerated by the state, and the multiple identities embraced by the immigrants, was structurally tilted in favour of the former.
