The Economist August 23rd 2014 2 gaining ground across the continent.
Some African leaders, by contrast, plainly like the Chinese approach to government and big business, which puts human rights and transparency totally to one side, while ritually uttering the official mantra of “win-win”: Africans and Chinese benefit equally. The presidents of Angola and Zimbabwe are notorious examples, but others abound. Moreover, if Western donors or investors try to lay down conditions on such matters, African leaders have become adept at threatening to “go east”. As a massive transactional process, China’s entry into Africa has been a dramatic success, and many of those roads and bridges are useful. But as an ideological and cultural undertaking, Mr French’s masterly account suggests that it is getting nowhere. 7
Venetian history
Travails of a modern city Italian Venice: A History. By R.J.B. Bosworth. Yale University Press; 352 pages; $40 and £25
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HE 20m tourists who visit Venice each year come to see a heritage site, possibly the best one in the world. For most of them, Venice’s history ended in 1797 when Napoleon conquered the Serene Republic. This is a matter ofregret for R.J.B. Bosworth, an Oxford don, who contends that those visitors jostling for glimpses ofthe city’s art and architecture are wrong to ignore its recent past. His book concentrates on Venice under Italian rule, which began in 1866 after 69 years of French and Austrian occupation. It is a melancholy story. Venice sacrificed its identity to Napoleon—the city’s council voted for its own termination—and since then it has struggled to find another. Venetians have not been able to resolve a conflict that began in earnest just over 100 years ago, between modernity and the demands of the city’s principal source of revenue. Modernists were keen to develop a great industrial centre across the lagoon. Preservationists, encouraged by art historians and visitors in love with the idea of a city whose streets are canals, preached a rigorous policy of no change: “com’era e dov’era” (“how it was and where it was”). The conflict is ongoing. Only recently the tourist trade vigorously opposed a plan to ban huge cruise ships passing through the Giudecca Canal to dump 35,000 visitors a day in the historical centre. Conservationists argue that the flood of people is no less dangerous to the fabric of the city than the high tides.
Books and arts 77 Vittore Carpaccio
Venetian love affair Ciao, Carpaccio! An Infatuation. By Jan Morris. 160 pages; to be published in Britain by Pallas Athene in October, £12.95, and in America by Liveright in November, $19.95
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O FOODIES, carpaccio conjures up an image of thin slices of raw beef. Jan Morris is more enthralled by the painter after whom the dish was named in Venice in 1970 (its colour brought to mind his red pigments). Vittore Carpaccio had worked in the city over 450 years earlier. His paintings captivate Ms Morris, though she freely admits that this predilection is mainly confined to people who have been able to see them in Venice. The experience, she says, is like reading a lively travel writer. Since she herself has been just such a writer for 50 years, she is the perfect companion for readers of this short, copiously illustrated panegyric. Her favourite Carpaccio hangs in the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, a guild house near St Mark’s Square. The painting (pictured) shows St Jerome, the scholar-saint, in his study surrounded by domestic bric-a-brac. A small dog sits on its hind legs; she imagines it is wagging its
tail and dying to go out for a walk. Carpaccio delighted in painting animals and birds. His paintings teem with them, set amid striking architectural scenery that reflects the Venetian style of the time. Ms Morris entertains the conceit that the artist’s spirit speaks to her through the small bird that she sees in a painting titled “Portrait of a Young Knight”. She returns the greeting with a gentle “Ciao, Carpaccio”. Carpaccio was a masterly draughtsman and his paintings tell uncomplicated stories, some entertaining, some charming. But he can also be ghoulish, littering the earth with torn body parts. Ms Morris notes that he has never been accepted into the higher pantheon of art, nor would she promote him to that rank. For her, Carpaccio was a simple genius who lacked the finesse of contemporaries such as Titian and Giorgione. Ms Morris does not pretend that this book is anything other than a self-indulgent caprice, but it is both enjoyable and instructive. Her publisher says it will be her last. If that really is the case, then “Ciao, Jan!”, and many thanks.
Dog and dogmatist The two most prominent characters in Mr Bosworth’s book were both unrepentant fascists. Gabriele D’Annunzio, a priapic, drug-addicted poet, war hero, military adventurer and man about town, was a mesmeric figure who encouraged triumphalism in Italy’s nationalist right-wingers. They were already calling him “duce” in 1920, before Benito Mussolini, but he did not have the staying power required to
forge a political movement. Giuseppe Volpi, whom Mussolini called Venice’s new doge, was more influential between the two world wars. An industrialist who made a fortune out of both electricity supply and tourism, Volpi was a powerful member of Mussolini’s cabinet. His ambition was to transform Venice. He wanted the city to become a world leader in commerce and industry and be known 1