Dante’s �Unpeopled World’
In Borchardt’s rendition Dante had been an heir to Pisa's courtly cosmopolitan language and tradition (even if the Florentine could never admit it). Dante may have inherited from Pisa ideas about empire too, and imagined the possiÂbility of what would have become known as terra nullius lying to the west of Europe.[767] The idea of unappropriated land would shape colonial traditions to come, but this hypothetical geography was informed by the actual knowledge that everywhere outside of Europe belonged now to somebody from outside of Europe.
Pisa had recently lost an overseas empire and a war with Genoa[768] More importantly, the last Crusader states in Tripoli and Acre had fallen only recently, in 1289 and 1291 respectively[769] The Tatars had entered the geopolitical scene. Dante was looking at a postcolonial world.Dante may have inherited from Pisa a colonial imagination as well as its Provencal-inflected language (and if he did not consider Pisa’s recent loss of empire, even though it was the closest to him, he did certainly consider the Templar’s loss of empire in the Levant and in Europe: we do not have reliable information as to whether he was initiated into their orders, but we know beÂyond doubt that he took a very special interest in their politics, and that they, in turn, had been especially involved in managing overseas affairs)[770] In the Divina Commedia, Ulysses does not settle home after his return, and underÂtakes a final sea voyage. Together with a few faithful followers, he proceeds ever westward, seeking knowledge and an â€?unpeopled world’, the â€?mondo sanza gente,. Dante’s Ulysses did not consider returning; he and his men were â€?going to stay’ - they were not settling home because they planned to settle elsewhere. This is not too much of a stretch; after all, Virgil had also told an eminently imperial story about abandoning home, sailing westward, and establishing a new empire.[771] [772] [773] [774] Loss of empire somewhere, prompted dreams of empire elseÂwhere. And Virgil was standing right there beside Dante as he was hearing UlÂysses’ account! Dante’s rendition of Ulysses’ last voyage, emphasises a search for knowlÂedge: â€?Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence / For my old father, nor the due affection / Which joyous should have made Penelope’ could stop this search?1 Emotions could not stop him. Dante’s Ulysses has been typically seen as the epitome of humanity, but I’d like to suggest that he might also be seen as a prototypical coloniser - knowledge and colonialism, as Edward Said seminally demonstrated, would proceed jointly; they probably had proceeded jointly alÂready?2 Ulysses departs and heads towards the open sea. He is in a small boat and with a â€?small party’ ^compagnia picciola,'), sails westward, beyond Sardinia and other islands (what for him would become Pisa’s future colonial domain, but what for Dante was Pisa’s only recently lost or still held possessions), and beyond what would become Spain and Morocco?3 It is a northern route. SomeÂhow, Dante’s Ulysses was sailing west as someone sailing from Pisa would (a Florentine would). Had he sailed from actual Ithaca, he would have taken a much more southern route and encountered Sicily, not Sardinia and not the Balearic Islands, which would have remained to his north. Ulysses and his comrades were old when they arrived by the â€?narrow strait’, the â€?foce stretta'. To convince his comrades and proceed in an enterprise never attempted before, Ulysses utters the famous â€?little oration’ (â€?orazion picciola,). It is typically seen as an original assertion of a personal sovereign capacity, but since it is linked to the sovereign ability of displacing across water (and is therefore place-specific), it may be seen as an articulation of a colonial will as well: O brothers, who amid a hundred thousand Perils’, I said, â€?have come unto the West, To this so inconsiderable vigil Which is remaining of your senses still Be unwilling to deny the knowledge, Following the sun, of the unpeopled world. Commentators generally interpret the reference to an â€?unpeopled world' as reÂferring to the distinction separating the world of the living from the world of the dead; the â€?unpeopled world' must be a world without living people. But there is another possible reading; after all, the world of the dead, this is the whole point of Dante's Commedla, is full with actual people who remember all and interact with visitors - individuals that could not be further from the HoÂmeric shadows. The â€?unpeopled world' may be an actual location. Anthony Pagden suggests that Ulysses/Dante refers in his oration to the possibility of empty land outside of Europe, about the possible existence of some western land ready to be claimed and occupied?5 It is a most suggestive proposition. The imagination of colonialism precedes its practice, and Pisa's empire preÂcedes Dante's Commedla. It is as if a lost empire in Africa and the Levant had resulted in the notion that another further away must be somehow possible, indeed necessary. There had to be a terra Australls Incognlta that would counÂterbalance the emerged lands of the northern hemisphere; there had to be a Christian Kingdom at the back of the Islamic world; there had to be terra nulÂlius in the west as a counterpoint to terra alicuius (somebody's land) in the east.76 â€?Incognita' is key: associated with land, it turns Ulysses' thirst for â€?knowlÂedge' (canoscenza) in an eminently appropriative stance. Another Outremer was needed after the loss of Acri. Dante's Ulysses was setting out to find it. Loss of empire somewhere prompted dreams of another across the water. Crucially, Dante's Ulysses' vision of empire is also seaborne. If Dante could not ignore the Pisan storehouse of ideas about colonialism and its very geography, everyone else eventually did. 77 See Duncan Bell, â€?From Ancient to Modern in Victorian Imperial Thought', The Historical Journal, 49, 3 (2006) 735-59; and Verlinden, Beginnings. 78 A compelling argument linking the ability of managing water and the consolidation of modern sovereignty is offered in David Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature: Water, LandÂscape, and the Making of Modern Germany (New York, W.W. Norton 2006). Borchardt's Prussia was, like most of Pisa's surrounds, reclaimed territory. 79 On the inseparability of â€?imperial or sovereign prerogative' and â€?democratic lawmaking', on â€?the ocean as a legal entity, a jurisdictional space and indeed a jurisdiction in its own right', see Matthew Crow, â€?Littoral Leviathan: Histories of Oceans, Laws, and Empires', this volume. 80 On the ways in which â€?ancient Rome was indeed very present in the construction of the political independence of Pisa' see Conte, â€?Roman Public Law in the Twelfth Century', this volume.