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October 19, 2003
Review: Charming cities, ugly cities
CITIES are extraordinary places. They are cockpits of human endeavour, where the astonishing power, which lies within every individual can, in many cases be given full vent. Places where spectacles, both gorgeous and horrendous with all shades in between can variously entertain and terrify. And where most of us, most of the time put on our best coping kit and get on with it.
But how to put this all on paper, in a book? How to tell the story of a city? It is so confoundedly difficult that not many people try. Peter Ackroyd’s London which he describes as a biography appears as so many jottings from a life time’s notebook, while Robert Hughes, Barcelona is a labour of love, as are Jan Morris’ Venice and Trieste. Oxford University Press decided to share the job out for Karachi looking to two editors to find sparky, specialist writers to pinpoint certain characteristics and periods of history.
And then there are guide books. In a curious way with their potted histories and detailed, where to go, what to do, where to eat itineraries you often get an excellent bird’s eye view of a city. I really like the Travellers’ Companion series where short excerpts from travellers to a city are set out in cheerful chapters.
But my fondest memory of how to project a city — in this case the town of Lewes on Britain’s south coast is sitting comfortably watching a sound and light show in front of a small model of the town. The commentary described how the castle had become a museum in Victorian times and the curator was dusting a Stone Age canoe. Suddenly this all came alive when a real life sneeze was heard on the tape.
That sneeze is a far cry from Dubrovnik, that jewel of a city on the Dalmatian Coast facing Italy across the Adriatic Sea and backed by the beastly Balkans. Robin Harris, a distinguished historian and one time member of Mrs Thatcher’s Policy Unit has produced a wonderfully readable account of Dubrovnik or Ragusa as it was called for much of its life. It is very much a historian’s story. Harris begins with the city’s rather dim beginnings on the edge of the Roman Empire and recalls the gradual build up so that by the end of the twelfth century it was a mercantile centre to be reckoned with in that part of the eastern Mediterranean.
Then comes the interesting bit: Ragusa never really became a fully autonomous power, it was always subject to some other state. First of all it owed allegiance to Venice, then Hungary and then in 1430 to the mighty Ottoman Empire. Robin Harris enthusiastically describes the guile and diplomatic sinuosity with which the Ragusian Government used to forge links with these local superpowers without giving up their independence. The balancing act was brilliant. How could, as Robin Harris says Dubrovnik remain both an autonomous mercantile, Catholic-Christian state and yet be accommodated with the Ottoman Empire’s view of its mission and identity.
Later two hammer blows were to knock the stuffing out of Dubrovnik’s carefully contrived existence. First of all a fearful earthquake in 1667 wrought physical havoc. Harris captures the moment brilliantly and with great acuteness describes the subsequent rebuilding directed almost entirely from a Ragusian living in Rome.
The second blow came when the ghastly Napoleon finally brought the city to its knees and demanded their capitulation to the King of Rome, his son. This was in 1808. The city had been in the doldrums for over a century but even so the end was a rude shock. Harris hardly lingers over the final eclipse of the city first under the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1815 and then the Balkan muddle of the twentieth century leading to the city’s ravishment by the Serbs in 1990. Rebuilding has taken place; the city has been declared a place of historic importance by UNESCO and the tourists are back. This book should be required reading by anybody visiting the area.
Dubrovnik: A History
By Robin Harris
Saqi Books, London
ISBN 0863563325
550pp. £25
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