Like most nations, people in the United States consider their country to be exceptional. Indeed, people everywhere believe that their country is the center of civilization and the beacon of hope for mankind.

This tendency for self-glorification is so common that one forgets that occassionally what the citizens of a nation claim about themselves is true.

One example is the Republic of Venice. It was an independent city state off the coast of Italy that retained its representative form of government and communal way of life for over 1,000 years. Recently, Venetians have begun to clamor again for independence and so perhaps we should examine their version of what it means to be exceptional.

What we find is indeed remarkable. During the height of their power, the Venetians had little land on which to build and few resources from which to generate wealth other than their own ingenuity. Although other societies have faced similar challenges, most have failed. But the Venetians succeeded and in a way that challenges American ideals.

But if this is so, why?

One theory says that Venice succeeded because it was a true community, and not just a collection of people and institutions on the same piece of ground. The rich, according to this theory, needed the poor and the middle class as soldiers, sailors and artisans in the constant struggle of the commune for profit and adventure.

There was no land for agriculture and no population of serfs and poor farmers for the rich to dominate. A chronic labor shortage caused by high infant mortality and periodic epidemics, typical of urban life in all medieval cities, motivated the rich to protect all members of society for their own good.

I will give a few illustrations of Venetian life that support this reasoning.

The first is the tiny amount of space the Venetians had to live on. The population of the Republic hovered at about 100,000 people for hundreds of years, going up and down in response to epidemics and immigration from the mainland. All these people had to be squeezed onto a series of small islands consisting largely of salt marsh and sandbars.

The Venetians responded to this problem by organizing themselves into 60 small parishes, each of which governed itself more or less independently. A wealthy person was chosen by other wealthy people to lead each parish. The parish priest was chosen by the residents and could be removed by them at will. A single individual was hired to police the parish with help from the neighbors. Many of the parishes specialized in a skilled trade or manufacturing process, increasing the diversity of the Venetian economy.

Venetians clung to their neighborhood identity with fierce pride and loyalty. During festivals, residents from each parish would compete with each other in contests, even brawling in the streets and chasing their adversaries across the water from island to island in small boats.

The rich lived side by side with the middle class and the poor. There were no gated communities and no walls. The palaces of the rich were built around a central plaza where trade and public events were held. The poor and middle class occupied apartments in buildings that surrounded this central business district.

With no agriculture and no serfs to till the soil, the Venetians earned a living by ship building, maritime trade, fishing, manufacturing, diplomacy, money lending and piracy as needed.

Almost everyone in the community except women and domestic servants needed to learn a skilled trade. As a result, the weathy Venetians who ran the community ensured that laborers in all their various professions could organize into guilds to protect their right to decent wages and living conditions.

Venetian maritime laws were benign and egalitarian.

Every ship was required to have three officers: the ship’s master, an accountant and the merchant who sponsored the expedition.

The ship’s master and the accountant were appointed by the government to ensure that the expedition conformed to Venetian law, including the payment of taxes to the government and fair wages to the crew. No member of the crew could be disciplined without the consent of the others.

All men on board were armed to the teeth, as required by law. Even the merchant was part of the fighting force because the Republic had no army or navy except for its citizens.

The government regulated trade routes, ship size, sailing seasons and destinations as a way to reduce risks and improve profits for the community as a whole. The law also required a large crew to ensure that every ship could defend itself in the event of an attack. Ships headed for areas infested with enemies and pirates were required to travel in convoys.

Historians, sociologists and philosophers have speculated why the Venetian Republic did not disintegrate into violence, anarchy, civil war or revolution during its long history, like most nations do. But few have found an answer to the question.

I say that the reason is not so hard to find if one looks closely at the details of how the Venetians lived. Americans would be appalled by their communal behavior — the way the rich lived side by side with the poor and the middle class, the way the rich fought and died in battles beside their countrymen regardless of status, they way the rich and poor together loved and defended their neighborhoods and parishes.

What I think the Venetians solved for a time was the magic of living in a true community. At all levels of Venetian society, people shared the risks and rewards of capitalism, war and adventure.

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Gary Fogg lives in Topsham. Part II of this series appears next week and deals with Venetian government. In form, the Venetian government looked like an oligarchy, but in practice it may have protected the interests of average people better than we do in the United States.