Greek Fire, as it is often called, was the secret weapon of antiquity, a relic now lost to history that people who study such things posit was a petroleum-based incendiary projectile that burned wet and was near-impossible to extinguish.
Introduced to the broader public through Game of Thrones and to the enemies of the Byzantian Romans by a bronze flamethrower, usually emplaced on a moving ship, the medieval forerunner of napalm first appeared in Constantinople around 678 AD after Kallinikos, a Greek engineer, brought the invention with him after escaping from Syria.
It was particularly useful, not to mention devastating, in repelling Arab invaders of which there was no shortage over the next seven centuries.
Greek Fire helped the Byzantines become the dominant sea power of the Eastern Mediterranean. But their reign on the water was relatively short-lived.
How is it that a people with access to this technology surrendered such an advantage?
One of downfalls of the Byzantines would lay in outsourcing their shipbuilding capabilities to the Venetians.
It turns out that offshoring manufacturing to a willing rival is not a sound strategy. The arrangement afforded Venetian merchants privileged positions within the trading provinces of the Empire that included concessions to transport silks into the lucrative markets of Northern Italy.
From 1126 onwards, Venice held the right to avoid paying any internal duties on commercial transactions, in addition to the original abolition of import-export duties on Venetian shipping.
By the 1100s the Venetians had mastered assembly-line shipbuilding at the Arsenale producing galleys on a massive scale.
In fact, the Venetians displayed a profound understanding of systems and, what’s more, had them in place.
Henry Ford is usually credited with the invention of assembly-line manufacturing. The Venetians were his forerunner by some 700 years even demonstrating the importance of modularity.
Tools and components, according to historian Roger Crowley, were standardised to ensure interchangeability and reduce assembly time. Materials were drawn from centralised warehouses, transported via internal barges, distributed to specialised departments, and tracked.
Disruption was minimised by having the carpentry, foundry, and rope-making workshops arranged in accord with linear flow designs. Unlike Venice, Constantinople wasn’t optimised for the same commercial dominance.
Once the cornerstone behind Byzantine superiority in the region was effectively surrendered to a rival power, the Venetians through mastery of manufacturing and supply chain, would supplant them as the chief naval power for nearly 400 years.
With its unique geography and unrivalled access to source materials like salt and timber, Venice saw the utility and value in a protectionist, neo-mercantilist approach which it exploited as the terminus on key trade route from the Adriatic and into Asia for Eastern goods.
Venice even adopted double-entry bookkeeping well before the rest of Europe. For around three centuries this successful strategic adaptation helped it become a superpower in international trade and geopolitics proving that it’s isolation and detachment from the mainland were attributes that helped it to punch far above its weight.
But as Professor Jakub Grygiel notes, “the ability to formulate and implement a foreign policy that reflects the underlying geopolitical reality is the key to achieving and maintaining a position of power, if not supremacy.”
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