a small contribution

As we all know, the web's not such a good place to do research for any serious project. You rarely know exactly who you're reading, where their work fits into the historiography, whether they're absolutely full of crap. It'd be great if more scholars put more of their work online (as some do, and it looks to be a growing trend. Brian Weatherson of Crooked Timber wrote about the relevant issues just yesterday in fact), but at the moment, the web's a real crapshoot.

So I may as well add to the confusion. Here's a recent paper that discusses whether Venice during the Renaissance should be considered a republic. It's nothing brilliant and only relies on a tiny segment of the scholarship on Venice, but, as far as I can tell, it fills a whole on the web right now. Comments are, of course, welcome.

More papers to follow throughout the semester...