For some reason my mental model of the eastern Mediterranean, to the east of Italy, has always been scrunched up where I thought of it as much smaller than the western Mediterranean. But it’s actually slightly larger if you draw the dividing line through Venice. And the Italian and Greek peninsulas are much larger than I thought. And I just got oriented on where Croatia is. That is the Dalmatian coast across from Italy. I thought it was inland near Serbia for some reason.

Blogger at ribbonfarm.com, running summerofprotocols.com, host of /gloom ☀️

Yep. I’m reading Venetian history these days

As a maritime empire it’s not a natural unit of analysis. Most people’s historical intuitions are very terrestrial.

Same problem with steppe nomads. Nobody has any intuitions about Scythians, Huns, Mongols, Turks. The steppes are kinda a Eurasian “land sea” just with horses instead of boats.

Extremely underrated even for average well-educated history major